A triumph of scheduling, sound
The sensory rush that accompanies your arrival at SF Music Day — the free musical smorgasbord/marathon presented annually by Intermusic SF in the Veterans Building — is immediate, exhilarating and slightly daunting.
So much music, in so many different genres and styles! So many performers! Where to go first?
It turns out there really is no wrong answer to that question. Anywhere you wander over the course of this eight-hour extravaganza is bound to be the right place.
That’s because SF Music Day, which took over the War Memorial Veterans Building on Sunday, Sept. 30, for its 11th incarnation, is a small miracle of both musical curation and organizational moxie. You don’t expect an event with so many moving parts to operate so smoothly, or to bristle with such artistic vitality. But it does.
SF Music Day runs on four parallel tracks, with performances happening simultaneously in the Herbst
Theatre, the second-floor Green Room, and the two performing spaces (the Education Studio and the Taube Atrium Theater) in the Wilsey Center on the fourth floor. Each performance runs about half an hour, with the start times deftly staggered so that listeners can migrate at will without ever hitting a moment of dead time.
The schedule is clear and easy to navigate, and best of all, it’s accurate — the performance times you read there can be counted on. So even if you can only hear one thing at a time, at least you know what you’re missing.
Just as remarkable is the stylistic profusion on display, from jazz groups to classical ensembles to contemporary organizations along with all kinds of unclassifiable offerings in between. If you don’t like what you’re hearing — or even if you do — there’s always something to beckon you forward to the next musical experience.
My visit on Sunday afternoon began on a high note with the explosive and charismatic singing of jazz vocalist Tiffany Austin, a powerhouse of stylish integrity. Given my druthers, I could easily have settled in for a solid half hour of that, but I had other places to go — to the Green Room for a hit of Haydn from the ensemble Agave Baroque, and to the fourth floor where gifted teenagers of the SFJazz High School All-Stars Combo were going head-to-head (behind soundproof doors, fortunately) with the Gold Coast Chamber Players doing Vaughan Williams.
By the time I had to leave, a couple of hours later, I had sampled the beautiful, unusual sonorities of the Luminance Ensemble (improvised music for harp, trumpet and string bass) and heard the piano trio Curium championing the music of Clara Schumann. I’d marveled at the two-piano magic of Zofo (Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi) and of the father-son jazz team of Bob and Mark Applebaum. I’d heard enough of the inventive jazz-rock group David James’ GPS to know I needed to hear more. And I’d just scratched the surface.
The audiences for these events — which ranged from a couple of dozen to well over 100 — were similarly excited, and similarly peripatetic. They walked in and out with delighted freedom. Kids came and went at will, always ready — as kids are — to ditch one thing in favor of something newer and shinier, and the adults partook in the same spirit.
Among the attendees were Nikfar Khaleeli and Kaiser Mulla-Feroze of San Francisco, who were there with their 12-year-old twin daughters, Ariana and Sanayah. All of them seemed thrilled by the buffet-style aesthetic on display.
“I have a short attention span,” said Khaleeli, “and I can’t bear to sit through something for two hours. But here, I love that you can get a bit of everything.”