November 9, 2013 - Fellow Travelers

SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director

Fellow Travelers

8pm, Saturday, November 9, 2013
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1751 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and John Kendall Bailey, conducting

Program

Davide Verotta

   Invitation

              Davide Verotta, Piano
       

 
Philip Freihofner
     Filled with Moonlight

              Philip Freihofner, Oboe
              Davide Verotta, Piano
       

David Sprung
     Haiku for Tenor, Wind Quintet, and Piano (2013)

             Michael Desnoyers, Tenor
          

Lisa Scola Prosek   
     The Lariat
            I. El Vaquero
            II. Las Otno Ayam

                 Desirae Harp, Soprano

Eduard Prosek       
     The Curse (2013)

               Eduard Prosek, Voice and Guitar

Mark Alburger   
     Double Piano Concerto ("Fellow Travellers"), Op. 204 (2012)
         I.  Allegro troppo

               Eytan and Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman, Piano

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger                    Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold                        Associate Music Director
John Kendall Bailey                    Associate Conductor
Martha Stoddard                    Associate Conductor

Flute       
Bruce Salvisberg

Oboe
Phil Freihofner
Peter Lemberg

Clarinet
Rachel Condry
Michael Kimbell

Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Michael Garvey
Lori Garvey

Trumpet
Eduard Prosek

Horn
Brian Holmes
Jan Pusina

Soprano
Desirae Harp

Tenor
Michael Desnoyers
Mark Alburger

Baritone
Eduard Prosek

Guitar
Eduard Prosek

Harp
Samantha Garvey

Piano
Miles Graber
Davide Verotta

Percussion
Victor Flaviano

Violin I
Monika Gruber

Violin II
Harry Bernstein

Viola
Nansamba Ssensalo

Cello
Ariella Hyman

Bass
John Beeman

MARK ALBURGER (b. April 2, 1957, Upper Darby, PA) studied with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley.  He is Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and The Opus Project, Conductor of San Francisco Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and Instructor in Music Literature and Theory at Diablo Valley College.  As Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Monthly Journal (21st-centurymusic.com and 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com), Alburger has interviewed many composers, including Charles Amirkhanian, Earle Brown, George Crumb, Alan Hovhaness, Steve Mackey, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich.  He has recently updated and expanded the articles on John Adams and Philip Glass for Grove Online and The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition.  Alburger has been the recipient of many honors, awards, and commissions -- including yearly ASCAP Standard Awards; grants from Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, MetLife, and Theatre Bay Area; funding from the Marra, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Getty Foundations; and performances by ensembles and orchestras throughout the United States.  Alburger's concert and dramatic compositions combine atonal, collage, neoclassic, pop, and postminimal sensibilities -- often in overall frameworks troped on pre-existent material.  His complete works (220 opus numbers to date, including 16 concerti, 23 operas, nine symphonies, the 12-hour opera-oratorio The Bible, and Day 1-3 of The Decameron) are being issued on recordings from New Music.  500+ videos of his music may be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as on many other websites.

DOUBLE PIANO CONCERTO ("FELLOW TRAVELLERS"), Op. 204, was written for and is dedicated to Eytan and Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman in thanks for their wonderful work with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra over several years.  The piece is mapped over Francis Poulenc's Double Piano Concerto, taking in interlopers from Japanese, Hispanic, minimalist, and rock-n-roll traditions.  The first movement features a Dorian pentatonic scale (D E F A B).

PHILIP FREIHOFNER  has been a regularly performing member of SFCCO since 2004. He has a Bachelor's degree in Music from UC Berkeley.

FILLED WITH MOONLIGHT was written to fulfill a commission for a new duet for oboe and piano by the ensemble Dolci.  Oboist Ted Rust and pianist Viva Knight premiered the work December, 2012.  The music takes inspiration from the novel Blackberries in the Dream House, by San Francisco poet Diane Frank, a romance set in 1850's Japan.  In designing the musical world of this piece, the sources included elements of Japanese music and esthetic theory, of Poulenc's fabulous chamber works for winds and piano, and of the Koto work of Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner.

EDUARD PROSEK is a 22-year-old Californian native now residing in Brighton, UK.  His debut EP California (2012) gained him a strong online following, with its title track receiving over 40,000 YouTube views.  Following this initial interest, Prosek's cover of Paul Simon's Homeward Bound was chosen as the soundtrack to a major TV advertisement for Cathedral City last year in the UK taking Prosek to a national audience.  His latest release, Willow Tree, showcases his impressive abilities as composer and arranger.  A full UK tour and album are set for release in 2014.

    THE CURSE is the second track on Prosek's newest EP, Willow Tree, released September, 2013.

        We're all born innocent, it's how you lose it,
        that keeps me interested in you
        and you speak so softly I don't catch a thing but,
        when you take a breath, the angels sing.

        So I'll take it as it comes, win or lose I'd
        rather nothing at all, then to choose
        between the one I love, or my instincts
        so I'll keep my mouth shut, and keep listening.

        She's a blessing but, just like any curse she's
        so beautiful it, makes it so much worse.
        She's a blessing but, just like anything you
        never have enough, and when you do it's all too much

LISA SCOLA PROSEK is  a  graduate of  Princeton  University  with  a  degree in  Music  Composition,  her teachers  include  Edward  Cone,  Milton  Babbitt,  Lukas  Foss,  Margherita  Kalil,  and  Gaetano  Giani- Luporini. Scola Prosek has composed and premiered seven operas with librettos in Italian and English.

Excerpts from THE LARIAT, a new opera by Scola Prosek, based on Jaime De Angulo’s 1927 novella, with a poetic libretto in Esselen by Louise Miranda Ramirez, Tribal Chair of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, sung by Desirae Harp.  The work will premiere in 2014, at the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York, and in 2015 with the San Francisco International Arts Festival.  The piece is made possible by a grant from Theatre Bay Area.

Bear, you have taken my love Koltala name yukla nish kolo! I cannot live without him, Eni anpapiake cha’a  anhuyake huniki! Creator, take me too. Las Otno Ayam yukla nicha.

Louise Miranda Ramirez is Esselen, Chumash and Yaqui. She is an enrolled member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, from the Greater Monterey County and the current Tribal Chairwoman.  Her goal as a linguist is to work to return the Esselen language, which she says, “Has been sleeping for over 100 years.” Supported by the California Indigenous Language Survival (ACILS), she attended the Breath of Life Program and Language is Life Conference. ACILS supports research, for California Indian Languages with no speakers that is held at the University of Berkeley. In collaboration with linguist David L. Shaul she worked at reviving the Esselen Language and created a dictionary translated from oral stories and prayers. She has subsequently made pamphlets and books in the Esselen language.

Desirae Harp (Ashi Akxi, The Esselen Girl) is a descendant of the Mishewal Wappo Tribe and Dine Nation and is a multi-talented singer and songwriter. Her songs include themes that focus on decolonization of mind, body and spirit. She sings with numerous groups including Audiopharmacy and is a community activist and mentor for urban youth programs throughout the bay area. She is also a co-founder of the Mishewal Wappo Language Revitalization Project. She is currently attending San Francisco State University.

DAVID SPRUNG (b. Jersey City, NJ) was raised in New York City. An honors graduate from Queens College, where he studied composition with Vittorio Rieti and Luigi Dallapiccola, Sprung also has a Master’s Degree in Composition from Princeton University, where his mentors were Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt.  He has had a dual track career as educator and performer, having served on the faculties of Queens College, City College of New York, Wichita State University, Sonoma State University and California State University, East Bay where he now holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Music.  Additionally, Sprung has been a prominent French horn player, having played principal horn with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Wichita Symphony, Chautauqua Symphony, and most recently, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.   Formerly, he was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.  Since retiring from active teaching and playing, he has been devoting himself to composing and conducting.

Composed in 2013 and being performed for the first time, the texts for HAIKU come from the collection Japanese Haiku (1956, Peter Pauper Press). In a prefatory note, translator Peter Beilenson notes: “There are only seventeen syllables in the haiku; the first and third lines contain five, the second seven. There is almost always in it the name of the season, or a key word giving the season by inference ….. But there is also, in a good haiku, more than a statement of feeling or a picture of nature: there is an implied identity between two seemingly different things.”  The mood of the music is intended to reflect these ideas, although with elaborations using text repetitions and complementary thematic material.   For the entire set, there is a high degree of musical integration; motives and other musical gestures recur throughout, as a means of providing stylistic unity.

                  I
 IN THESE DARK WATERS
    DRAWN UP FROM
    MY FROZEN WELL….
GLITTERING OF SPRING
                Ringai

                    II
STANDING STILL AT DUSK
    LISTEN… IN FAR
    DISTANCES
THE SONG OF FROGLINGS!
                Buson

        III
I DREAMED OF BATTLES
    AND WAS SLAIN…
    OH SAVAGE SAMURAI!
INSATIABLE FLEAS!
                Kikaku

        IV
ARISE FROM SLEEP, OLD CAT,
    AND WITH GREAT YAWNS
    AND STRETCHINGS…
AMBLE OUT FOR LOVE
                Issa

        V
DARTING DRAGON-FLY…
    PULL OFF ITS SHINY
    WINGS AND LOOK…
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD
                Kikaku
       
                           VI
[Reply: follows V without pause]
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD…
    IT NEEDS BUT SHINY
    WINGS AND LOOK…
DARTING DRAGON-FLY!
                Basho

        VII
A WHITE SWAN SWIMMING…
    PARTING WITH HER
    UNMOVED BREAST
CHERRY-PETALED POND
                Roka

        VIII
ROARING WINTER STORM
    RUSHING TO ITS
    UTTER END…
EVER-SOUNDING SEA
                Gonsui

        IX
AH! I INTENDED
    NEVER NEVER
    TO GROW OLD…
LISTEN: NEW YEAR’S BELL!
                Jokun

DAVIDE VEROTTA was born in a boring Italian town close to Milano and moved to the much more exciting San Francisco in his late twenties. He studied piano at the Milano and San Francisco Conservatory, and privately with Julian White, and composition at San Francisco State University (MA) and the University of California at Davis (PhD), as well as having a parallel-track academic life in mathematics as a professor at the University of California at San Francisco.  He is actively involved in the new music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area (as soloist, chamber player, member of  SFCCO, National Composer Association, SF,  Irregular Resolutions, co-organizer of the Festival of Contemporary Music).  He teaches piano and composition privately and at the Community Music Center in San Francisco. Recent compositions include works for orchestra with the Berkeley Symphony, chamber opera, dance, piano solo, percussion, and various chamber ensembles.  Upcoming in Spring 2014 is the "tone poem" Il Ponte, for piano, percussion and strings.  For more information, please visit his web site at davideverotta.com.

INVITATION is a short piece for piano, that is the introduction of a large work for piano, percussion, strings,and voice, Il Ponte -- which will be presented in the Bay Area in the Spring of 2014.  As the title indicates the piece represents an invitation to the player and the audience, a luring to enter a different place, leaving behind for a while normal everyday realities.

DONATIONS:

Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold

Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Anne Baldwin
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta

Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Connie & George Cooke
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Marilyn Hudson
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
James Schrempp
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc

Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Roberta Robertson

Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater

To make a tax-deductible donation, please send a check made out to:
Erling Wold's Fabrications
629 Wisconsin Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

Please include a note saying you want the money to go to the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.

May 4, 2013 - Moving Day

SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director

Moving Day

8pm, Saturday, May 4, 2013
Lick-Wilmerding High School Auditorium, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger, John Kendall Bailey, and Martha Stoddard, conducting

Program

Harry Bernstein   
Sonata for Flute, Oboe, and Piano (2003)
I. Playful, Vigorous

Plan B for 

String Quintet (2013)

 
John Beeman   

Sprites (2013)

Davide Verotta

Dances for Orchestra (2013)
     

                     I. Lullaby

                    II. Paidushko

                    III. Pyrrixios
                    IV. Syxnyse
                    V. Halay Halaylar

Intermission

Michael A. Kimbell
Time Does Not Move (2006) (Keller)
   
Michael Cooke   
Incomplete Thoughts: A Passacaglia    (2013)

Martha Stoddard   
Gait Changes (2013)


SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger                    Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold                        Associate Music Director
John Kendall Bailey                    Associate Conductor
Martha Stoddard                    Associate Conductor

Flute       
Bruce Salvisberg
Harry Bernstein

Oboe
Phil Freihofner

Clarinet
Michael Kimbell
Rachel Condry

Bassoon
Michael Cooke

Trumpet
Cindy Collins

Horn
Priscilla Nunn

Trombone
Alex Bond

Narrator
Emmanuel Williams

Piano
Allan Crossman
Davide Verotta

Percussion
Victor Flaviano
Anne Szabla
Mark Alburger

Violin I
Monika Gruber

Violin II
Alise Ewan

Viola
Raphael Gold
Harry Bernstein

Cello
Ariella Hyman

Bass
John Beeman

HARRY BERNSTEIN has been involved in San Francisco Bay Area music for many years as a composer, performer and teacher. He began his musical training on the trumpet, later learning the recorder as well as the Baroque the modern flutes. More recently, his life has been altered by the invasion of a viola. This occurred a few years after Bernstein began his association with City College. Why take up a stringed instrument in one's fifties? In his case, he took on the challenge of learning the viola in order to explore both orchestral and chamber music, and to learn how to write more effectively for strings.  Not long after earning a D.M.A. in early music performance from Stanford University, he moved 30 miles north to San Francisco where he has lived ever since. He has studied composition with Jerry Mueller and has written vocal and instrumental music.  Bernstein is co-founder of the Golden Age Ensemble, a duo presenting varied programs of instrumental and vocal music around the Bay Area and is a partner in Micro Pro Musica Press, SF, which offers music engraving, arranging and transcription services. He is currently active with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra (flute), the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (viola), and that unpredictable composers' circle known as Irregular Resolutions. Bernstein is an instructor in both the Music and Older Adults Departments at City College of San Francisco, and also teaches privately.

"SONATA FOR FLUTE, OBOE, AND PIANO in 2003 for a concert by Irregular Resolutions. We built a program around a cellist and also multi-instrumentalist Nik Phelps, of the Sprocket Ensemble, who could play flute, oboe, clarinet, and trumpet. The trio is of humorous intent, even though it is hard to play a wind instrument with your tongue in your cheek (not at all chic)!  There are short contrasting sections, with the winds sometimes playing 'against' the piano, and occasional quotations of other music, which come to a head with a virtual quotation duel."

The string quintet movement, PLAN B, was the piece that came up after the original plan to write a quartet, a sextet and another "ette,” as yet unnamed, failed to materialize within the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra time restraints—probably due to a lack of “etiquette” on my part. Plan B arose because of my enjoyment of playing string quintets and sextets in recent years. There are three short sections, each one a little faster than the last. The first section is slow, with a touch of Cole Porter world-weariness; the second has elements of tango and the third takes on something of the mood of swing.

JOHN BEEMAN studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master’s degree.  His first opera, The Great American Dinner Table was produced on National Public Radio.  Orchestral works have been performed by the Fremont-Newark Philharmonic, Santa Rosa Symphony, and the Peninsula Symphony.  Beeman has attended the Ernest Bloch Composers’ Symposium, the Bard Composer-Conductor program, the Oxford Summer Institutes, and the Oregon Bach Festival, and has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Music Center and ASCAP.  Compositions have been performed by Ensemble Sorelle, the Mission Chamber Orchestra, the Ives Quartet, Fireworks Ensemble, Paul Dresher, the Oregon Repertory Singers and Schola Cantorum of San Francisco.

Sprites are immense, but brief, flashes of red light that appear above thunderstorms.  This unusual weather phenomenon was only first documented in 1989.  Blue jets, similar optical phenomenon, are cones of blue light shooting above the clouds.  The cause of these flashes, though not yet determined, may be connected with electrical discharges from storms.  SPRITES (2013) was inspired by these unusual weather events.

Multi-instrumentalist MICHAEL COOKE is a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy, ASCAPLUS, and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner can be heard on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and composition. In 1991 Cooke began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies.  He has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States.  Cimarron Music Press began published many of Cooke's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America.  In 1999, Cooke started the jazz label Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The San Francisco Beacon describes Cooke's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Cooke's playing on Searching, Statements, and The Is. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music.

"INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS: A PASSACAGLIA was born out of the news that the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra would not have our customary three bassoons.  I stopped the piece on which I was working, and came up with another: a contempoary passacaglia where the bass line was in one time and the other instruments in others.  I was thinking to use either multiple conductors or metronomes with earpieces.  Desiring inspiration, I looked though some of my incomplete compositions for a bass line, and found something useable in a draft of an opera from many years ago.  The figure went through some modifications and was given a lazy lilt in 7/8.  I wanted to layer fragments of music on top, which were inspired by scraps of music not yet finished and other incomplete utterances.  As I felt the work should be written in a stream-of-conscious-manner, an interruption motif came into being as a way to switch thoughts.  While I eventually decided that the original idea of multiple times might be hard to pull off, I came up with other ways to have multiple times.  In the end, I hope to have created a thought-provoking work that is more than the collection of Incomplete Thoughts that began it."
   
MICHAEL A. KIMBELL (b. 1946) studied composition with John Davison, Alfred Swan, Robert Palmer, and Karel Husa, and received his DMA in composition from Cornell University in 1973.  Ten of his orchestral compositions have been performed by the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and San Francisco Sinfonietta.  His Arcadian Symphony won the 1998 Southern Arizona Symphony Competition and was also performed by the San Jose Mission Chamber Orchestra.  Kimbell's Poème for Violin and Harp has been performed in Austria and Germany and at the 2011 World Harp Congress in Vancouver.  Other chamber works as well as songs and the short opera The Hot Iron have received numerous performances.

TIME DOES NOT MOVE features the poem Die Zeit geht nicht by Gottfried Keller (1819-1890), the greatest German-Swiss writer of the 19th Century.  The complete poem (English version by Edith and Michael Kimbell) is spoken in melodrama fashion.  The music incorporates an 1821 Swiss folksong melody by Wilhelm Müller, variously titled “Ich stand auf hohem Berge” (“I stood on a high mountain”) and “Im Krug zum grünen Kranze” (“In the Jug and Green Garland”).  The melody appears very gradually, first as melodic fragments, then as a fugue based on the second phrase of the melody, and finally in full quotation by the flute.

MARTHA STODDARD earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Humboldt State University and her Master of Music degree from San Francisco State University, where she studied flute, conducting and composition.  She was named Program Director for the John Adams Young Composers Program at the Crowden Music Center in 2012 and has held the position of Artistic Director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra since1997. She is Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Composers’ Chamber Orchestra and Director of Instrumental Music at Lick-Wilmerding High School.  Other activities include operatic engagements as Musical Director for Lisa Scola Prosek's Belfagor and Trap Door, John Bilotta's Trifles, Mark Alburger's Job: A Masque, and the collaborative Dieci Giorni, which premiered in San Francisco in 2010.  In August, 2012 she conducted the premiere of Scola Prosek's Daughter of the Red Tsar, featuring tenor John Duykers.  A three-time recipient of AscapPlus Awards, her music has been performed in San Francisco through the American Composers Forum, by the Sierra Ensemble, Avenue Winds and in the UK by flutists Carla Rees and Lisa Bost.  She has had performances by the San Francisco Choral Artists, Schwungvoll!, the Community Women’s Orchestra, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Womensing, Bakersfield Symphony  New Directions Series, in the Trinity Chamber Concert Series and the New Music Forum Festival of Contemporary Music.  Recent commissions include Points of Reference, Outbursts: an Homage to Brahms, Orchestral Suite for the Young of all Ages, and Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano.  Stoddard is a featured performer on alto flute in John Bilotta’s Shadow Tree (Capstone Records CPS-8787), and as conductor for Janis Mercer’s, Voices (Centaur Recordings, CPS 2951). 

"The idea for GAIT CHANGES (2013) came to me as I was walking the loop around the top of San Bruno Mountain.  While walking I  imagined different rhythmic patterns associated with  my footsteps. To these patterns  I  infused  melodies themselves over undulating rhythms, noting the changes in gait with different interludes and musical character.  I specifically crafted a soloistic piano interlude for my friend and mentor, Allan Crossman, whose love of walking is often conveyed in his own compositions which I have been privileged to conduct."

DAVIDE VEROTTA was born in a boring Italian town close to Milano and moved to the much more exciting San Francisco in his late twenties.  He studied piano at the Milano and San Francisco Conservatories, and composition at the San Francisco State University and University of California at Davis.  He is actively involved in the new music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. [Don't miss the 11th Festival of Contemporary Music, of which I am one of the organizers!  With more than 30 composers it is coming up in June,  July and August http://newmusicforum.com.] He teaches piano and composition privately and at the Community Music Center in San Francisco.  Recent compositions include works for orchestra with the Berkeley Symphony, chamber opera, dance, piano solo, percussion quartet, and various chamber ensembles.  For more information, please visit davideverotta.com.

DANCES FOR ORCHESTRA (2013) is the orchestral version of Dances to Mytilini, a quartet inspired by the folkloric traditions of the eastern Balkans and Turkey. The piece, about twice the length of the quartet, is organized in a cycle of five dances that metaphorically depicts a geographical and episodic journey. The geographical journey starts in Rumania and descends to the final destination, Mytilini, through Bulgaria, Thrace, and Attica.  The five episodes correspond to early life (a lullaby dance), early adulthood (the quick-paced Paidushko), war (Pyrrixios) followed by confusion and dismay (Syxnyse), and finally by a joyful, exuberant ending, Halay Halaylar.


DONATIONS:

Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold

Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Anne Baldwin
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta

Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Connie & George Cooke
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Marilyn Hudson
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
James Schrempp
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc

Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Roberta Robertson

Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater

To make a tax-deductible donation, please send a check made out to:

Erling Wold's Fabrications
629 Wisconsin Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

Please include a note saying you want the money to go to the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.

Special thanks to Lick-Wilmerding High School, for providing concert and rehearsal space.