CONTACT US 55 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

415.617.LCCE (415.617.5223)www.LeftCoastEnsemble.orginfo@LeftCoastEnsemble.org

Share your thoughts on music and more with the Left Coast musicians at our after-concert gathering!

Following the San Francisco concert meet us for food and drinks at SAUCE, located just down the street at 131 Gough, between Oak and Page. See you there!

AFTER

THE

CONCERT

Through stirring presentations of chamber music across the Bay Area, Left Coast dissolves boundaries between old and new music and connects musicians and audience. Imaginative programs offer our audiences multiple ways to engage with the music.

Founded in 1992, the ensemble includes fourteen musicians; the players perform in different combinations, using strings, winds, guitar, percussion, voice, and piano to present a wide range of repertoire. Left Coast presents a season of five concert sets annually, with performances in both San Francisco and Berkeley.

In addition, Left Coast offers Music from the Inside Out - an education program for young musicians, and Intersection - a workshop for adult amateurs. The group has commissioned over one hundred new works, sponsors an annual composition contest that draws applicants from around the world, and carries on a tradition of performing the very best that today’s composers, whether established or emerging, have to offer. Left Coast gratefully acknowledges the support of San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund Grants for the Arts. LEFT COAST MUSICIANS Nikki Einfeld Leighton Fong Michael Goldberg Phyllis Kamrin Loren Mach Tom Nugent Stacey Pelinka Andrea Plesnarski Anna Presler Kurt Rohde Jerome Simas Michel Taddei Tanya Tomkins Eric Zivian

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Anna Presler

ARTISTIC ADVISOR Kurt Rohde

PRESIDENT Will Schieber

VICE PRESIDENTLena Zentall

TREASURER Will Schieber

SECRETARY Carol Christ

BOARDJonathan AronsMartin CohnKate KnickerbockerParker MonroeLaurie PitmanAndrea Plesnarski

MANAGING DIRECTOR Nick Benavides

PUBLICITY Genevieve Antaky

MARKETING, WEBSITE, AND SOCIAL MEDIA Lena Zentall PHOTOGRAPHY Jordan Murphy Jeanette Yu Lena Zentall

about left coast

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

Brahms Through the Looking Glass

Sam Nichols in zwei farben for violin and electronics (2017) 6 min Anna Presler violin • Sam Nichols electronics

Jennifer Jolley The Lives and Opinions of Literary Cats (2017) 6 min Anna Presler violin • Tanya Tomkins cello • Eric Zivian piano

Kenneth Lim Trio in C Flat (2017) 7 min Anna Presler violin • Tanya Tomkins cello • Eric Zivian piano

I N T E R M I S S I O N

Johannes Brahms Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 (1891) 35 min I Allegro con brio II Scherzo. Allegro molto III Adagio IV Allegro Anna Presler violin • Tanya Tomkins cello • Eric Zivian piano

Left Coast gratefully acknowledges the support of San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund Grants for the Arts.

Saturday, March 18, 7:30 pm Berkeley Piano Club

Tuesday, March 21, 7:30 pm San Francisco Conservatory of Music

SEASON

24

20162017

put Loren here

Sam Nicholsin zwei farben for violin and electronics (2017)

in zwei farben translates as “in two colors”, a phrase Brahms used in an 1890 letter to

Heinrich von Herzogenberg, the husband of his friend Elizabet von Herzogenberg. Brahms was interested—actually, obsessed—with ambiguity. As a composer he was keenly attuned to context and nuance, able to pull many different strands of music together to create richly detailed webs of associative meanings. At several points in his letters, however, he describes his fear that his words will be misconstrued. The possibility that his reader might have her own interpretation of his intended meaning seemed to pain him. In this particular letter Brahms acknowledges that one of his earlier messages to Herzogenberg was deliberately ambiguous and potentially confusing. In my short piece for violin and electronics I try to capture the playful delight in ambiguity that I find in both the music and the writing of Brahms. It’s dedicated (with straightforward gratitude) to Anna Presler. - Sam Nichols

Composer and sound artist Sam Nichols creates work that brings together a sensitive exploration

of sound with an interest in ambitious, large-scale structures. He’s received commissions from a number of ensembles and organizations, including the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, the Empyrean Ensemble, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. His string quartet Refuge, a Left Coast commission, was selected for performance at the ISCM’s “World Music Days 2014” in Wracłow, Poland. Refuge has been performed by a number of groups, including ACME, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the Lutosławski Quartet, and the Mivos Quartet. He’s received awards from Composers, Inc. (Lee Ettelson Prize), the League of Composers, the University of Illinois (3rd prize, 2010 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Prize), and the Third Millennium Ensemble, among others. Recent projects include This Is Not a Toy for a Child, a cello concerto for David Russell and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra. Upcoming projects include a new piece for composer/violist Kurt Rohde, and a collaboration with artist Robin Hill and ensemble mise-en. Sam teaches in the UC Davis Department of Music, where he co-directs the Sound Lab, and co-organizes a biennial music festival in collaboration with the Mondavi Center for the Arts.

Jennifer Jolley The Lives and Opinions of Literary Cats (2017)

I was asked by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble to write a piece that imagines the Brahms’s B Major Trio

being heard through the looking glass, and all I could hear were cats. Let me explain: there was a time when Johannes Brahms signed his musical works with the moniker “Johannes Kreisler,” a fictitious composer found in E.T.A Hoffman’s novel The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr. In this novel, a printer’s error accidentally splices and mixes the Tomcat Murr’s autobiography – yes, an autodidact cat wrote his own autobiography – with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler, and the reader has a hard time figuring out who is the cat and who is the composer. And if one cat isn’t enough, at the beginning of Through the Looking-Glass, Alice is playing with her kittens Snowdrop and Kitty, one of which is behaving badly (it’s the black one), right before she steps through that infamous looking-glass. This ultimately begs the question: is this cat music or composer music? Is Johannes Brahms now Johannes Kreisler, or even Tomcat Murr, Snowdrop, or Kitty? - Jennifer Jolley

Jennifer Jolley is a composer and sound artist influenced by urban environments and nostalgia.

She is the co-founder of North American New Opera Workshop (NANOWorks Opera), a chamber opera company devoted to developing and staging short contemporary operas by emerging North American composers, and also authors Why Compose When You Can Blog?, a web log about contemporary composing. Originally from Los Angeles, Jolley is an Assistant Professor of Music at Ohio Wesleyan University. She earned both her D.M.A. and M.M. at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and her B.M. at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. She teaches various music composition courses including computer music programming and sound art.

notes and biographies

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

SERAPHIM / $2,500 +Jonathan Arons and Claire MaxCarol ChristMartin and Kathleen Cohn Philanthropic FundJudith FlynnJohn and Paula Gambs Kate KnickerbockerTherissa McKelvey and Heli RoihaParker Monroe and Tere DarraghWill and Linda SchieberAnonymous

ANGELS / $1,000 - $2,499Tim Allen Bernice Green Richard FabianFaye HinzeThomas Laqueur and Carla Hesse Elizabeth Theil and Brian Kincaid Millicent TomkinsAnonymous in honor of Mildred Oliva and Marilyn Shaw

BENEFACTORS / $500–$999Ross Armstrong Andrew Clason and Sherrod BlanknerChris and Diane Davies Jennifer Howard and Anthony Cascardi Dan Joraanstad and Bob Hermann Horizons Foundation Andrea Plesnarski in honor of Louis Hinze Francoise StoneSean VarahAnonymous

SUPPORTING PARTNERS / $250–$499Stan Adler and Lynn JacobsNick and Maggie BenavidesMargaret DorfmanTom and Judith DunworthJanie Green in honor of Martin CohnAnne KamrinSally LandisLaurie PitmanHenry PreslerLouise Shalit Donald and Mary ShivelyMary E. Wilson and Harvey V. FinebergAnonymous

PARTNERS / $125–$249 Nancy AxelrodNorman Bookstein and Gillian KuehnerPatricia BournePatricia BrisonFrances KendallMarty and Pamela Krasney Elkhanah PulitzerDavid SalemLaurie San Martin and Sam NicholsJune Schneider Frances SingerRandolph and Frances Starn Lena Zentall

contributors

ORGANIZATIONSArts for Oakland Kids

Aaron Copland Fund for Music

ACMP The Chamber Music Network

Alice M. Ditson Fund Columbia University

Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation

Amphion Foundation

The Bernard Osher Foundation

Fromm Music Foundation

Grants for the Arts; City and County of San Francisco

New Music USA

San Francisco Arts Commission

Cultural Equity Grants Program

Vendini (Mark Tacchi, CEO)

Zellerbach Family Foundation

Recent contributions may not yet be reflected.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous individuals and

foundations whose contributions make Left Coast concerts possible.

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

FRIENDS / up to $124Ross BauerLinda and Gilbert BenavidesAlberto and Eva BertoliHendrik Bluhm and Ina StahlCharlie BowenColleen BrentJohn and Mary CarisJamie and Alan CarlsonBliss and Gita CarnochanLouise George Clubb Alice Corning Arthur DavisBeth and Norman Edelstein Jo FloydCharles and Liz Fracchia John GatesChris and Patty Gilbert Eric and Paula Gillett Christina and John Gillis Margot Golding Kay Sprinkel Grace Krista GullicksonKurt Hauch Barbara HerouxSiegfried and Sarah HessePhilip HicksRichard Hutson and Kathleen Moran Barbara Imbrie David JaffeCary and Elaine James Martha JonesM. Catherine McGuire G.A. Mendelsohn Marian ParmenterJanet PelinkaElizabeth PenaWilliam and Ann Putnam Ryan ReyBill and Carol RohdeRichard RogersSondra and Milton Schlesinger Susan Shalit and Mary LoggerKate StenbergMichel TaddeiBruce Tarter and Gabriela Odell Alicia Vaccaro Mary WildavskyAlex Zwerdling

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

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A GARLAND FOR WEINBERGWe celebrate the distinctive Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg with a performance of his Clarinet Sonata and new works written in tribute to this neglected musician. The delicate purity of his music points to an indestructible human substance. -Frankfurter Rundschau

Sunday, October 8, 2017, 7:30 pmBerkeley Hillside Club

Monday, October 9, 2017, 7:30 pmSan Francisco Conservatory

DEATH AND A KNIGHT Left Coast presents a double feature:The West Coast premiere of Never was a knight... Kurt Rohde’s new work about the interior life of Don Quixote. PLUS A new production of Kurt Rohde and Tom Laqueur’s Death With Interruptions. In this tale by José Saramajo, death falls in love with a cellist. Difficult and fascinating complications ensue.

The original production sold out two weeks in advance. Don’t miss these two 21st century masterpieces.

Saturday, November 4, 2017, 7:30 pmZ Space, San Francisco

Sunday, November 5, 2017, 2 pmZ Space, San Francisco

announcing season 25

VISIONS DE L’AMEN Olivier Messiaen’s towering Visions de l’Amen for two pianos, performed by keyboard champions Eric Zivan and Sarah Cahill. Colorful, mystical, and glorious, it sometimes sounds like all the church bells in Paris ringing at once!

Thursday, February 1, 2018, 7:30 pmBerkeley Piano Club

Saturday, February 3, 2018, 7:30 pmBerkeley Piano Club

Monday, February 5, 2018, 7:30 pmSan Francisco Conservatory

SONNETS TO ORPHEUS Why do we love the Orpheus myth? It has intrigued composers from every century because music is the story’s true hero, defeating death and despair. Left Coast presents works about Orpheus by Eric Moe, Claudio Monteverdi and others.

Saturday, March 17, 2018, 7:30 pmBerkeley Hillside Club

Monday, March 19, 2018, 7:30 pmSan Francisco Conservatory

A RARE SERENADESaturday, May 19, 2018, 7:30 pmBerkeley Hillside Club

Monday, May 21, 2018, 7:30 pmSan Francisco Conservatory

A rare live performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Serenade, a witty and deeply satisfying work for guitar, mandolin, two clarinets, strings and baritone.

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

Kenneth Lim Trio in C Flat (2017)

Created as a companion piece to Brahms’ Trio in B, Trio in C Flat makes allusions to the original

Brahms piece in ways that can be readily heard – in the figurations, the clear but distorted scales, and subtle hints at the tonic. While this piece is neither on nor about Brahms, I took the opportunity to explore and reconstruct the narrative arc that I find in the composer’s work, with a particular interest in how effortlessly the thematic material lends itself to geometric dis-/reassembling. I conceived of this piece as a kind of musical prelude, a piece that would set the stage and lead to the main event to come.

- Kenneth Lim

Kenneth Lim is an emerging composer currently studying composition at UCLA. Born in Indiana,

Lim started lessons in violin at an early age, soon after followed by the piano. He studied math as an undergraduate, and linguistics at the graduate level. Lim’s music has been performed by Ensemble Aventure and Viccenium Void, among others. Lim is also an accomplished jazz pianist.

Johannes BrahmsPiano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 (1891)

In 1854, laboring under the “curse” of Schumann’s glowing predictions for Germany’s new rising star,

a young twenty-one year old Brahms decided to publish his first chamber composition, the Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8. This was no small undertaking: Brahms was a fierce self-critic and is known to have consigned several early chamber works to the fire. Thirty-five years later, in 1890, with all but a few final works ahead, the mature, master Brahms returned to the same trio compelled to revise. With his characteristic humor, Brahms claimed, “I didn’t provide it with a new wig, just combed and arranged its hair a little”. His changes were in fact substantial: he shortened the work by about one-third, significantly modifying all but the scherzo. It was around this time that Brahms decided to retire, after which he was coaxed momentarily by a late affair with the clarinet into a final small set of compositions. This piano trio therefore has a special significance for Brahms the chamber composer: it began his public career and it preoccupied his attentions again at the end of an astonishing series of masterpieces. In its final form, the B major piano trio bears the hand, the mind and the heart of both the young and the elder Brahms.

Though an early work, the first of his three piano trios is unmistakably Brahms. Lasting nearly half of its total duration, the first movement is a massive sonata beginning with a beautiful theme in the cello, jarred by violent contrast and escalating into a mountain of dramatic development. A restless, dark character dominates most of the trio from the first movement’s secondary themes to the brooding march of the scherzo to the wind-blown sweep of the finale rondo. While the light of B major frequently breaks through, the majority of the Trio gravitates to minor related keys, ending, despite the suggestions of its title, on a solid b minor chord. Typical of Brahms, the textures are thick, frequently juxtaposing the heavy romantic piano with the strings, violin and cello unified in a variety of parallel harmonies and symmetric counter motions. To counterbalance such weight, Brahms offers the third movement adagio, a slow movement of such repose that it seems to hover, nearly motionless, an introspective intermezzo from another world. The lightest movement in multiple senses of the word, it is perhaps the most emotionally compelling, certainly, the most peculiar. The soft musical meditation focuses primarily on the piano with echoing commentary by an ethereal chorus of strings. The central section of its ternary form gathers into a tender, melancholy song first in the cello, passing to the piano and the violin across interludes that are somber, even haunting. Ephemeral, the concrete diffuses again into the abstract, the reappearance of the now familiar beginning transforming the indefinite into the transcendent. - Kai ChristiansenChristiansen is the founder of the chamber music exploratorium at earsense.org

notes and biographies

WHEN LESS IS MORE

Chamber MusicWITH MEMBERS OF THE

SF SYMPHONY

FEB 19Brahms Clarinet Quintet and More

MAR 19Music by Schubert, Prokofiev, Brahms

APR 30Works by Martinů, Britten, Dvořák, & Gaubert

MAY 28Works by Barber, Harrison, Goosens, & Poulenc

Four concerts, Sundays at 2pm

sfsymphony.org/chamber 415-864-6000

Concerts at Davies Symphony Hall unless otherwise noted. Programs, artists, and prices subject to change. Box Office Hours Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat noon–6pm, Sun 2 hours prior to concerts Walk Up Grove Street between Van Ness and Franklin

SECOND CENTURY PARTNER

Inaugural Partner

SEASON PARTNERS

Official Airline

20162017 season 24, program 4 - march 2017

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, VIOLIN Anna Presler, a longtime member of Left Coast, teaches at the Sacramento State School of Music and was a member of New Century Chamber Orchestra for twenty years. Ms. Presler was a fellow at Banff Art Centre, International Music Seminar at Cornwall, and Tanglewood Music Center. She holds degrees from Yale University, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and North Carolina School of the Arts.

CELLO Tanya Tomkins, the first cellist to win the International Bodky Competition for Early Music Soloists, is currently one of Philharmonia and Portland Baroque’s principal cellists. An ABS Academy faculty member, Ms. Tomkins also teaches regularly at the San Francisco Conservatory. She has recorded the Bach Suites and performed all six in one day at the Library of Congress.

PIANO Eric Zivian is a graduate of Curtis Institute, Juilliard School, and Yale School of Music. He studied composition with Ned Rorem, Jacob Druckman, and Martin Bresnick, and piano with Gary Graffman and Peter Serkin. Mr. Zivian has performed new music with Earplay and Empyrean Ensemble, and Beethoven and Mozart with Santa Rosa Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and Philharmonia Baroque.

Set 5: FRANCOPHILIAFrench music stands apart - distinctively sophisticated, refined, brutal, and ravishing. In this program of music for soprano, flute, cello and piano, listen and consider the question: “What defines the French sound?”

Music of Claude Debussy • Aaron Copland • Kurt Rohde Maurice Ravel • Henri Dutilleux

Tuesday, May 30, 7:30 pmSan Francisco Conservatory of Music

Thursday, June 1, 7:30 pmBerkeley Piano Club

musician biographies

Left Coast’s education program, Music From the Inside Out, provides composition workshops to students at Oakland School for the Arts, San Francisco Community Music Center, and French American International School, working in consort with their musician teachers Nick Kanozik, Alex Keitel, and Phillip Lenberg.

If you are interested in attending one of the workshops to observe composition work in progress, please contact us at info@leftcoastensemble.org.

music from the inside out

season 24 final concert

Redwood Grove Summer Concert Listen to music in the magical outdoor amphitheater at the Botanical Garden!

Music ofWolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Arvo Pärt Caroline Shaw • Maurice Ravel

Thursday, June 29, 5:30pmUC Berkeley Botanical Garden

Ticket includes Garden admission before 5 pm.Picnics welcome.Shows will sell out – buy your tickets in advance!http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/education/public-programs/summer-concerts/

redwood grove concert