Michael Milenski - Cap Sur Opera

405 Shrader St. (Shrader at Oak)

Concerts at 405 Shrader are at 7 PM, about 50 minutes in length, an aperitif is offered.

To join the [e]mailing list please write 405Shrader@gmail.com.

To attend a concert please email your interest to 405Shrader@gmail.com (reservations are absolutely necessary as space is quite limited).

405 Shrader is an intimate space. You may wish to wear a masque, though masques are not required.

All concert proceeds go directly to the artists, a minimum of $25 per person is appropriate.

To learn why and how to support 405 Shrader concerts follow this link Fellows, Donors and Benefactors.

Piano at 405 Shrader, with seating for maximum 40 guests

Fall 2024 Calendar

Fri, Oct 4, 7 PM, The Earhart Trio. Pianist Kumiko Uyeda, violinist Kate Stenberg, and cellist Mary Artmann perform the C. Schumann trio in G minor and works by Auerbach and Piazzola.

Fri, Oct 11, 7 PM Aries Duo, flutist Rhonda Bradetich and pianist Katherine Lee perform a program of sonatas and fantasies — works by Poulenc, Alfredo Casella, František Benda, et al.

Fri, Oct 18, 7 PM, The Eos Ensemble (members of the SF Opera and Ballet orchestras), here cellist Evan Kahn, violinist Craig Reiss, and pianist Elizabeth Dorman perform trios by Dvorak and Hadyn.

Fri, Oct 25, 7 PM, Ian Scarfe, piano, a collection of brief pieces beginning with Baroque, roaming through Classicism and Romanticism, arriving at Bartok and Amy Beach.

Fri, Nov 1, 7 PM, Iris Stone. violin, and Soojin Kim, piano, perform preludes by Shostakovich and sonatas by Debussy and Poulenc.

Fri, Nov 8, 7 PM, Kevin Lee Sun, piano (last fall's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated"), offers the 405 Shrader debuts of composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacinto Scelsi and Colin Kemper.

Fri, Nov 15, 7 PM, Oliver Moore, piano, performs Chopin's Polonaise in F# minor, his Fantasy in F minor and his Polonaise-Fantasy in Ab Major as well as the third Chopin Ballade.

Fri, Nov 22, 7 PM, Robert Howard, cello, with Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano perform the Chopin Cello Sonata, the Ginastera Pampeana No.2 plus Fazil Say's "Four Cities."

Fri, Nov 29, Dark (Thanksgiving)

Fri, Dec 6, 7 PM Parker Van Ostrand, piano (last fall's Rachmaninoff 2nd) plays Chopin's 4th Ballade and 3rd sonata.

Fri, Dec 13, 7 PM, TBA

Violinist Kate Stenberg was a co-founder of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Real Vocal String Quartet and was, as well, the first violinist of the Del Sol String Quartet. Mary Artmann has performed in projects for both the Colorado and New York Councils for the Arts and as well has performed for Radio France, Radio Nuevo León and Cologne’s WDR (Germany). Kumiko Uyeda, a graduate of the University of the Pacific and the Manhattan School of Music, is now on the piano faculty of University of the Pacific. She holds a doctorate in Cultural Musicology from UC Santa Cruz.

Flautist Rhonda Bradetich, an Idaho native, has been a member of the Honolulu Symphony and Mexico’s Orquestra de Monterrey. Locally she has played with the San Francisco Symphony and Ballet, among other local symphonic credits. As a soloist she has performed at the Musique Cordiale in Southern France. Oenologically Rhonda is a diplomaed level 2 specialist from the Napa Valley Wine Academy. Pianist Katherine Lee holds a DMA from the University of Texas at Austin. As a young pianist Katherine won numerous Music Teachers National and California Association competitions. She later competed at the U.S. Chopin Competition in Miami, and has since performed at both the Aspen and Tanglewood Music Festivals.

Violinist Craig Reiss plays with both the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras. A graduate of Boston University and the Royal College of Music, he has performed at the Carmel Bach Festival, and at the Tanglewood and Spoleto festivals. Evan Kahn is principal cello of both the SF Opera Orchestra and Opera San Jose, and has performed with the L.A. Opera Orchestra as well. Evan is a very active participant in Bay Area chamber music. Pianist Elizabeth Dorman has appeared as soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, the Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony and Vallejo Symphony.

Pianist Ian Scarfe is the founder of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival. He is a founding member of the Bay Area’s Vinifera Clarinet Trio and Switzerland’s Zurich Beethoven Trio. Among the groups Ian has helped form over the years are Florida’s Hogtown Chamber Music Festival, Portugal’s Festival Viana and Burgundy’s (FR) Festival Rolland. Ian has been a guest artist at Alaska’s Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Oregon’s Astoria Music Festival, and the Telluride Chamber Music Festival in Colorado.

Violinist Iris Stone, a Berlin native, has played in the Berlin Philharmonic and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. She came to San Francisco in 1993 as a Fulbright Scholar where in 1995 she joined San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra. As well she has played in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and is the principal second violin of the Monterey Symphony. South Korean pianist Soojin Kim did graduate studies at Cologne’s [DE] Hochschule für Musik and Tanz continuing doctoral studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music where she was a part of the opera department faculty. As a concerto soloist she has appeared with Cologne’s WDR Sinfonieorchester and Münster’s Sinfonieorchester, and in Korea with the Busan, Daegu and Gyeonggi symphony orchestras.

Kevin Lee Sun was a silver metalist at the 2011 Virginia Waring International Piano Competition and a finalist for the Berlin Prize for Young Artists. He has since performed at Hamburg’s new Elbphilharmonie, at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, the Villa Elisabeth in Berlin, and at the Banff Centre in Canada. In the U.S. he has performed with Stanford University’s New Music Ensemble and San Francisco’s Hot Air Music Festival. Kevin’s undergraduate work at Stanford was in biology and classics. Switching to piano he earned a masters degree in piano at the SF Conservatory of Music. He is now on the piano faculty at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University.

Pianist Oliver Moore is a student of Garrick Ohlsson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is pursuing a Masters of Music degree. Oliver has performed concertos with the North State Symphony, the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra, and the Bear Mountain Music Festival. At the San Francisco Bach Festival he recently gave a solo recital of transcriptions of Bach and Handel by Liszt, Busoni, Saint-Saëns, and Brahms. Earlier this year he was a semifinalist in the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition.

Robert Howard is a graduate of Rice University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has performed at the Tanglewood and Spoleto Festivals, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival and at Italy’s Accademia Chigiana, Robert took the first prize at the Rome Festival Competition. Locally, he has performed with American Bach Soloists, New Century Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Baroque. Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and a Masters degree in Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is currently Pianist-in-Residence. Keisuke is 10 fingers of San Francisco’s famed 20 fingered ZOFO.

Parker Van Ostrand studies with Garrick Ohlsson and Jon Nakamatsu at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2022 he won the Gold Medal in the 71st Wideman International Piano Competition and that November collaborated with Yuja Wang for a two-piano performance at the SFCM Gala. In 2021 Parker was named a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and in 2020 he was a winner in the National Chopin Piano Competition. He recently won the Piano Texas Academy Concerto Competition, then performed Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.

Spring 2024 Calendar

Fri, Apr 5, 7 PM, Sarah Cahill, pianist, premieres "When the Sunrise Lies" by Colombian composer Juan Sebastian Cardona, who will introduce his piece.

Fri, Apr 12, 7 PM, Sold-Out, “Winterreise,” Schubert’s masterpiece performed by bass Jeffrey Tarr and pianist Richard Shuster.

Sun, Apr 14, 5 PM, French violinist Stéphan Tran Ngoc performs the virtuosic six solo sonatas composed by Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), dubbed in his day “The King of the Violin!"

Fri, Apr 19, 7 PM, Tanya Tomkins, performs J.S. Bach’s first and fifth cello suites, on Baroque cello.

Fri, Apr 26, 7 PM, Sold-Out Percussion duo Elizabeth Hall and Divesh Karamchandani beat, hammer, tap and rub a battery of classical percussion instruments as well as improvised objects.

Fri, May 3, 7 PM, Sold-Out ZOFO! Piano duet Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmermann perform transcriptions of Balinese Ceremonial Music as well as works by Debussy, Holst, etc.

Fri, May 10, 7 PM, Violinist Joseph Maile and violist Pei-Ling Lin with pianist Allegra Chapman perform a program titled “Interwoven” (Brahms, Milhaud, Hindemith, etc.).

Fri, May 17, 7 PM, Stanford pianist Thomas Schultz performs Schubert’s “Reliquie" sonata, D 840, plus pieces by Federico Busoni and a new work by Hyo-shin Na.

Fri, May 24, 7 PM, Sold-Out, Friction Quartet, San Francisco’s famed high-octane quartet, performs the Janacek string quartet and other works on an always spectacular program.

Fri, May 31, 7 PM, Sold-Out, Pianist Robert Schwartz performs the Robert Schumann Fantaisie, Stravinsky's Sonata pour piano, and three Rachmaninov transcriptions.

Sun, Jun 9, 5 PM, Pianist Ellen Milenski plays J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations for invited guests.

Artists of the Spring 2024 Season

Pianist Sarah Cahill is well known pianistically and critically in national music circles. She has championed the works of famed West Coast 20th century mavericks Henry Cowell, Terry Riley, and particularly Lou Harrison, as well as the iconic American composers Marc Blitzstein and Frederic Rzewski. Her Sunday radio show, Revolutions Per Minute is heard on KALW. Mme. Cahill is a regular pre-concert speaker with the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Composer Juan Sebastiàn Cardona's orchestral piece “Negra espalda del tiempo” was awarded the 2017 Bogotá Philharmonic Prize in Composition. In 2019, his Choir and Orchestra piece “Cuando fui mortal” won the National Composition Competition.

Bass Jeffrey Tarr has performed with the Washington National Opera, the Baltimore Concert Opera and the Annapolis Opera, among others in the U.S. and Europe. As well Mr. Tarr has sung the bass roles in the Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Mozart Requiem with East Coast orchestras. He holds a Masters of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory, and is the director of vocal studies at Texas Woman’s University. Pianist Richard Shuster is known for his performances of the piano works of Gabriel Faure. A specialist in the Hungarian piano repertory as well, he has taught at the Vienna International Piano Academy, the Marco Polo Festival in Italy, and at Mukogawa Women’s University in Japan. He holds a both masters and doctorate from the Eastman School of Music, and is now the Director of Piano Studies at Texas Woman's University.

Paris born violinist Stéphan Tran Ngoc received first prize in violin at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at the age of 15. Further studies were with Itzhak Perlman and Dorothy Delay at The Juilliard School in New York. In 1990 he took the Grand Prix at the prestigious Long-Thibaud International Competition, and since he has performed on the major French concert stages. Mr. Tran Ngoc has taught at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon and was the head of strings at the London College of Music. He now teaches in Paris. He recorded the Ysaÿe solo sonatas in 1994.

Cellist Tanya Tomkins is renowned for her interpretation of the Bach Cello Suites, having recorded all of them for the Avie label and performed them at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Seattle Early Music Guild, Vancouver Early Music Society, and The Library of Congress. Tanya has been one of the principal cellists in San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for the past 20 years. She is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival. On modern cello she performs at the Moab Music Festival, Napa’s Music in the Vineyards and with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.

Both Divesh Karamchandani and Elizabeth Hall earned Masters degrees in percussion at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Mr. Karamchandani’s Bay Area affiliations include One Found Sound, the Modesto Opera, Sacramento Philharmonic, and the newly formed SF-LA Collective among others. Ms. Hall’s local affiliations include San Francisco Opera, Santa Cruz Symphony, SF Contemporary Music Players. The two percussionists met one another at the 2011 Zeltsman Marimba Festival held that year at Wisconson’s Lawrence Conservatory.

Swiss born and Geneva Conservatory trained pianist Eva-Maria Zimmermann received a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship to the U.S. where she has become a San Francisco resident. She currently teaches at the Nueva School in Hillsborough. Japan born pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and a Masters degree in Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is currently Pianist-in-Residence. Both artists have independent careers as chamber and concerto performers. www.zofoduet.com

Both violinist Joseph Maile and violist Pei-Ling Lin are founding members of the San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet. Mr. Maile studied at the Juilliard School, and holds an Artist Certificate from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Before coming to SF Ms. Lin taught at tIllinois’ Augustana College where she was a member of its faculty string quartet. Both artists teach in San Francisco Conservatory’s Pre-College Program in addition to their many other activities in Bay Area chamber music. Pianist Allegra Chapman was the founder of San Francisco’s Bard Music West. As Mr. Maile and Ms. Lin Allegra is active in San Francisco’s Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. She has often appeared with the Telegraph Quartet as well as appearing with many Bay Area artists in recital.

Pianist Thomas Schultz has performed at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna where he gave master classes at Second Viennese School at the Schoenberg Center. He has performed at the Piano Spheres series in Los Angeles, and with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. For the 2012 John Cage centennial Schultz played Cage’s solo piano music at the Crown Point Press in San Francisco, at NYC’s Bargemusic and at Stanford University. Now retired, Schultz was on the piano faculty at Stanford University for nearly 30 years.

The Friction Quartet was founded in 2011 by students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and since has established itself as a purveyor of new music for string quartet. The quartet was a prize winner at the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition in China and at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition and were finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition. Locally they have appeared with the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Ballet, West Edge Opera and at the SF Jazz Center.

Pianist Robert Schwartz, a faculty member at the SF Conservatory and at Mills College, was awarded the Ravel Prize at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Robert performs and teaches around the world (Beijing, Vienna, Albignac [France], Chautauqua [NY], Portland [OR]) and at the Mendocino Music Festival, Oakland’s Dewing Recitals, San Jose’s Steinway Society, and San Francisco’s Noontime and Old First concerts where he recently recorded Isaac Albéniz’s complete “Iberia.”

Ellen Milenski studied with German pianist Bruno Eisner, Italian pianist Carlo Bussotti at San Francisco State, and Berkeley pianist Julian White and has been on the piano faculty at San Francisco State University. Ms. Milenski divides her time between her homes in San Francisco and the South of France where she performs frequently at Le Moulin des Arts in Entrecasteaux as a solo recitalist and as a collaborative artist

Fall 2023 Calendar

Fri, Oct 6, 7 PM, Derek Tam, harpsichord with Andrew McIntosh, violin and Erik Andersen, viola da gamba perform "Les Rebelles Baroques" of French high Baroque Jean-Féry Rebel, Marin Marais, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.

Fri, Oct 13, Parker van Ostrand, pianist, performs Rachmaninov's second sonata, the Kreisler-Rachmaninoff "Liebeslied" and works by Debussy and Ravel.

Fri, Oct 20, 7 PM, The Vinifera Trio (Ian Scarfe, piano; Matthew Boyles, clarinet; Rachel Patrick, violin) perform Bela Bartok's Contrasts, and works by Aram Kachaturian and Jennifer Higdon, plus an arrangement of Gershwin's An American in Paris.

Fri, Oct 27, 7 PM, Sam Reider, accordion, performs traditional music from around the world including music from Argentina, Venezuela, France, and the United States as well as a selection of original Halloween themed compositions.

Fri, Nov 3, 7 PM, The Telegraph Quartet, program TBA

Fri, Nov 10, 7 PM, Kevin Lee Sun, piano, performs The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, 36 variations on the Chilean song "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" Like the Goldberg Variations, the song will be perceived quite differently when it is repeated at the end.

Fri, Nov 17, 7 PM, Carolyn Engers, piano, performs the very last Franz Schubert sonata, D. 960. Said to be the composer's masterpiece, it is similar in scope to the Winterreise song cycle (to be included in the spring 2024 season). Plus the famed Schubert Impromptu in A flat major.

Fri, Nov 24, Dark (Thanksgiving)

Fri, Dec 1, Allegra Chapman, piano, with cellist Jennifer Kloetzel perform works by four women composers — Nadia Boulanger, Elena Ruehr, Amy Beach and Mel Bonis.

Fri, Dec 8, 7 PM, Pianist Ellen Milenski plays J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (405 Shrader Fellows only)

Artists of the Spring 2023 Season

Derek Tam performs with SF’s Ars Minerva and Elevate Ensemble and with the early music MUSA. He is the principal keyboardist of several northern California symphony orchestras as well as Director of Music at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. Erik Andersen graduated from CUNY’s Aaron Copland School of Music in both modern and historical cello studies. He performs Baroque cello and viola da gamba with San Francisco’s early music ensemble HIP Forum. Violinist Andrew McIntosh performs with L.A.'s Musica Angelica, and San Diego's Bach Collegium San Diego, and he has been the concertmaster for baroque operas with LA Opera. Locally he performed a solo Bach program at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox series.

Parker Van Ostrand currently studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Garrick Ohlsson and Yoshikazu Nagai. This past June he played in the G. Henle Verlag Murray Perahia Masterclass in Munich. In 2022, he won the Gold Medal in the 71st Wideman International Piano Competition and in November, collaborated with Yuja Wang for a two-piano performance at the SFCM Gala. In 2021 Parker was named a 2021 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and in 2020 he was a winner in the National Chopin Piano Competition. Upcoming performances include recitals in Chicago, Ashland, Cape Cod and Washington D.C., and concerto concerts in Arkansas, Louisiana and San Francisco. Parker is from Sacramento.

The Vinifera Trio is comprised of clarinetist Matthew Boyles who has played in the Philadelphia, New Haven and Louisville symphony orchestras, Ian Scarfe of the Trinity Alps Chamber Players, and violinist Rachel Patrick who has served as concertmaster of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra (Germany) and the Bloomington and Birmingham symphony orchestras.

Sam Reider has traveled to China, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Estonia, Turkey and Azerbaijan as a State Department Musical Ambassador, his accordion on his back. His performances and original compositions have been featured on NPR, PBS and the BBC. A cross-cultural artist, he recently collaborated with cuatro player Jorge Glem for a recording named “Brooklyn-Cumanà” (he is a repatriated San Francisco), and as well he is founder of the genre-bending ensemble The Human Hands. Locally he has collaborated with the Bay Area’s Del Sol Quartet. Sam holds an American Studies degree from Columbia, and an MA in composition from San Francisco State. He is on the faculty of St. Mary’s College in Moraga.

The San Francisco based Telegraph Quartet received the 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. Previous awards include the grand prize of the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Competition (South Bend, Indiana). The quartet was invited to the 2016 Biennale de quatuors à cordes in Paris. In 2018 it debuts at New York City's Carnegie Hall at the Naumburg Award Recital, having appeared at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 2015. The quartet has performed at all major Bay Area chamber music halls and has toured in the U.S., Europe and Asia. www.telegraphquartet.com

Kevin Lee Sun was a silver metalist at the 2011 Virginia Waring International Piano Competition and the only pianist chosen as a finalist for the Berlin Prize for Young Artists. He has since performed at Hamburg’s new Elbphilharmonie, at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, the Villa Elisabeth in Berlin, and at the Banff Centre in Canada. In the U.S. he has worked with Stanford University’s New Music Ensemble, Thomas Schultz’s Summer Piano Seminar at Stanford, and San Francisco’s Hot Air Music Festival. A native of Sacramento Kevin’s undergraduate work at Stanford was in biology and classics, then piano at the SF Conservatory of Music for a Master’s in piano. He is now on the piano faculty at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University.

Carolyn Enger is a New York based pianist who has performed in major east coast recital halls, in European museums, cathedrals and synagogues, in Texas public schools, and just now in towns in the California Gold Rush country. She appeared in the PBS 2018 documentary ExLibris (a series emanating from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). Her recording of Ned Rorem miniatures was one of the New York Times “Best of Classical Recordings” of the year.

Jennifer Kloetzel received the Juilliard School’s Peter Mennin Prize, as well as a Presser Music Award and a Fulbright Scholarship. As a soloist and chamber players she has performed for San Francisco Performances and at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Her 2022 recording of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano was BBC’s Recording of the Month. Pianist Allegra Chapman studied with Peter Serkin at the Bard College Conservatory of Music before taking a Masters Degree at Juilliard. Allegra is the founder and artistic director of San Francisco's Bard Music West, a branch of the Bard (NY college) Music Festival.

Spring 2023 Calendar

Fri, Mar 31, 7 PM, Israeli pianist Rami Bar Niv performs famed transcriptions of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and his Concerto In F, Gershwin’s own transcriptions for solo piano of some of his songs, plus a number Gershwin’s ragtimes, tangos and preludes that he composed for solo piano.

Fri, Apr 7, dark (Good Friday)

Fri, Apr 14, 7 PM, Refugees from the Bohemian Club Orchestra with pianist Ellen Milenski perform the Mozart Wind Quintet K. 452 (“the best thing I’ve ever written” said the 28 year old Mozart), a work that inspired the following Beethoven Op. 16 Wind Quintet.

Fri, Apr 21, 7 PM, Evan Kahn, cello and Amy Zanrosso, piano perform Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing Suite; Lera Auerbach’s Prelude No. 12; Schumann’s Five Pieces in Folk Style and Henriette Bosmans’ Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Minor.

Fri, Apr 28, 7 PM, ZOFO piano duet, Eva Marie Zimmerman and Keisuke Nakagoshi perform Gustav Holst Saturn; Urmas Sisask The Milky Way; Eleanor Alberga 3-Day Mix; Gabriela Lena Frank Haillí Lírico (a sneak pre-premiere preview); David Garner Four for Shiva. Last, but not least is Astor Piazzolla’s Allegro tangabile.

Fri, May 5, 7 PM, Violinist Kate Stenberg and pianist Sarah Cahill celebrate famed California composer Lou Harrison's birthday a week early (b. May 12, 1917 — d. 2003), performing his Sonata for solo violin (1937), Tandy's Tango for solo piano (1992), movements from the Grand Duo and the Varied Trio for violin and piano as well as a number of unpublished compositions.

Fri, May 12, 7 PM, Lino Rivera, piano, will look us in the eye to determine what he will perform for us from the following list: Liszt: Sancta Dorothea, S. 187; Liszt: Hymn to Saint Cecilia, S. 491; Beethoven: Sonata in Eb, Op. 31, #3; Schubert: Klavierstucke, D. 946, #1 and #2; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in Bb, WTC I.

Fri, May 19, 7 PM, Circadian String Quartet: Monika Gruber, violin; David Ryther, violin; Omid Assadi, viola; David Wishnia, cello perform the very last Beethoven string quartet, Op. 135 (1825) followed by the Mendelssohn string quartet Op. 13 (1826).

Fri, May 26, dark (Memorial Day)

Fri, Jun 2, 7 PM, Joel Pattinson, violin and Paul Schrage, piano perform Schumann’s Violin Sonata no. 2, Op. 121 and Coleridge-Taylor's 4 African Dances, Op. 58. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is a British composer and conductor.

Fri, Jun 9, 7 PM, Pianist Daniel Colalillo performs John Adans' China Gate, Scriabin's Black Mass Sonata (No. 9), as well as preludes by Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff and John Corigliano.

Artists of the Spring 2023 Season

Born in Tel-Aviv, Rami Bar Niv graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv where he won the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Competition and a scholarship to the Mannes College of Music in New York. A long career has taken him to all the continents of the planet, the Israeli government bestowed its “Best Performer Award” upon him. He is the author of two books, The Art of Piano Fingering: Traditional, Advanced, and Innovative and Blood, Sweat and Tours. He has recorded this Gershwin program for the CBSIsrael label.

Photo: W.A. Mozart at age 28. Peter Weinberg, the principal clarinetist of the Bohemian Club Orchestra, is the only practicing San Francisco attorney to have performed at Carnegie Hall. Daniel Deitch plays bassoon among related wind instruments in Baroque orchestras throughout the U.S., and is a well known repairer of such instruments. Frederick Fox practiced emergency and geriatric medicine and now plays principal oboe in the Bohemian Club Orchestra. George Gelles, the former principal horn of the Bohemian Club Orchestra, has been a program officer with the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Ellen Milenski is a Boho (in her way) pianist well known to 405 Shrader audiences.

Cellist Evan Kahn holds a masters degree from SF Conservatory. He is principal cellist of Opera San Jose and of Symphony Silicon Valley, and is assistant principal of San Jose Chamber Orchestra. He was Musical America’s Artist-of-the-Month in 2019. Pianist Amy Zanrosso, a musical genre bending artist, has performed with Sweatshop Tango Ensemble and Tangonero, as well she frequently performs at all San Francisco major chamber music venues. Amy coaches chamber music at SF Conservatory.

Swiss born and Geneva Conservatory trained pianist Eva-Maria Zimmermann received a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship to the U.S. where she has become a San Francisco resident. She currently teaches at the Nueva School in Hillsborough. Japan born pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and a Masters degree in Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is currently Pianist-in-Residence. Both artists have independent careers as chamber and concerto performers. www.zofoduet.com

Violinist Kate Stenberg was a co-founder of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Real Vocal String Quartet and was, as well, the first violinist of the Del Sol String Quartet. Sarah Cahill has had artistic relationships with famed 20th century mavericks — Henry Cowell, Marc Blitzstein, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, and particularly Lou Harrison. Kate and Sarah as the Stenberg Cahill Duo have performed this Lou Harrison program just now at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, and Lou Harrison concerts at the Mendocino Music Festival, and at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.

Lino Rivera, pianist has performed with the Manila Symphony Orchestra and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. In the Bay Area Rivera works with Composers, Inc. promoting new works for piano. Notable local appearances include Beethoven sonatas at Saratoga’s Villa Montalvo with historian Robert Greenberg, plus concerts at Old First and all major Bay Area chamber music venues. His solo recitals have taken him internationally to Nuremberg and Zurich and nationally to Kent University, Corpus Christi, Savannah, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Anchorage.

Circadian String Quartet, born in 2013, has collaborated with dancers for its “Stravinsky Project” performing transcriptions of the Rite of Spring, Firebird and Petroushka. Important commissions include Sahba Aminikia’s “The Weight of the World” for narrator and quartet, as well as new works by Ben Carson, Noam Lemish and Ian Venables. Recent projects include the quartet’s “Chiaroscuro” improvisations, collaborations with santour player Hamid Taghavi, and the premiere of David Ryther’s opera “Eurydice’s Defiance.”

Pianist Paul Schrage has performed at the INSAP Festival in Chicago, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Casa Huey Barbosa in Rio de Janiero, and with the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste of Kinshasa. He currently serves as Music Director of the Midsummer Mozart Festival. Violinist Joel Pattinson is a teacher, performer, and adjudicator throughout California and the US. He operates the South Bay String Academy of Sunnyvale, California. His specialties include Baroque, Classical, and Romantic Performance Practice as well as Renaissance Counterpoint.

Pianist Daniel Colalillo is based in New York City where he has performed at the Carnegie Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, Bargemusic and Symphony Space. As well he has performed at Columbia and Princeton Universities, and around the country — Philadelphia, Nashville, Toronto and Montreal. Daniel is the Artistic Director of Classical Keys, a NYC concert series. As a teacher Steinway & Sons named him its "Top Piano Teacher" in 2022. He holds a Master of Music from the Mannes School of Music at NYC’s The New School.

Fall 2022 Calendar

Fri, Oct 7, 7 PM, The Delphi Trio bis San Francisco’s prestigious piano trio returns to open the season with the Maurice Ravel and Rebecca Clark piano trios, a bis of these two masterpieces heard last fall at 405 Shrader!

Fri, Oct 14, 7 PM, Celebration Mary Artmann, cello and Lisa Maresch, piano celebrate Kaija Saariaho’s 70th birthday with her Im Trauma, plus Schumann’s Pieces in Folk Style and the famed Shostakovich Sonata.

Fri, Oct 21, 7 PM, Guitarissimo Lyle Sheffler, guitar, performs works from the virtuoso guitar repertory (Albéniz, Piazzolla, Barrios, et al).

Fri, Oct 28, 7 PM, Three Short Films in the avant-garde cinema genre. Opera stage directors Roy Rallo and Peter Littlefield introduce these brief (17 minutes each) cinematographic studies titled What She Learned from Plants, Travelers, and Brother Dud.

Fri, Nov 4, 7 PM, Two Unexpected Premieres New York based pianist Carolyn Enger performs two brand new works by San Francisco based composers JJ Hollingsworth and Jonathan Bingham, plus works by Arvo Pärt and Caroline Shaw.

Fri, Nov 11, 7 PM, A Midwestern Pianist Clare Longendyke comes to San Francisco to perform works by Haydn, Chopin and Debussy balanced by pieces by Clara Schumann, Amy Williams and Catherine Likhuta.

Fri, Nov 18, 7 PM, Friction Quartet San Francisco’s wildest string quartet (not arguable) performs results from the latest (third) round of its commissioning initiative — works by Alex Dowling, Andrew Rodriguez, Annika Socolofsky, and Michi Wiancko.

Fri, Nov 25, Thanksgiving weekend No concert.

Fri, Dec 2, 7 PM, Transcendence Pianist Robert Schwartz performs Appassionata and Harmonies du Soir from Liszt's Transcendental Etudes (Nos. 10 and 11) to complement Beethoven's lofty "Tempest" Sonata (Op. 31, No. 2).

Fri, Dec 9, 7 PM, A Bohemian Night of Music Refugees from the Bohemian Club Orchestra with Boho pianist Ellen Milenski perform the Mozart Wind Quintet K. 452 (“the best thing I’ve ever written” said the 28 year old Mozart), a work that inspired the Beethoven Op. 16 Wind Quintet to be performed after a nearby Bohemian intervention of food and drink.

Artists of the Fall 2022 Season

Violinist Liana Bérubé, a founding member of the Delphi Trio, studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is the acting concertmaster of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. Tanya Tompkins is a principal cellist of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra while on modern cello she regularly performs at the Moab Music Festival. With pianist, Eric Zivian, she is founder of Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon Music Festival. Pianist Allegra Chapman is a founder of San Francisco’s Bard Music West. In addition to the Delphi Trio she is a part of Chordless, a voice and piano duo with soprano Sara LeMesh. She has performed with many local chamber ensembles including the Telegraph Quartet.

Cellist Mary Artmann has performed in projects for both the Colorado and New York Councils for the Arts and as well has performed for Radio France, Radio Nuevo León and Cologne’s WDR (Germany). In the Bay Area she has performed with the SF Contemporary Music Players and the Hidden Valley String Orchestra. Pianist Lisa Maresch has performed at the Mannes School in New York, Round Top International Music Festival in Texas, Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina, among many national credits. She has been on the faculties of the University of Nevada and the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music at Chapman University.

Lyle Sheffler studied at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory before earning a Masters degree in classical guitar from San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has since performed at Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall, Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage and at the Hanoi Opera House among other venues worldwide. He has participated in France’s famed Ile de Ré International Guitar Festival and at the Iserlohn Classical Guitar Festival in Germany as well being part of Poznon’s (PL) Polish Guitar Academy.

Dramaturg Peter Littlefield has been associated with opera productions in major theaters in the U.S. and Europe, his Partenope (Handel) at English National Opera winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production. In New York his theater work has been seen at the Kitchen, the Pyramid and the Fischer Center among other venues. Roy Rallo staged the Day of the Dead trilogy at 405 Shrader, as well as productions at Long Beach Opera, San Francisco Opera, the Met and Chicago Lyric Opera, and at the Opéra de Bordeaux and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar.

Clare Longendyke, pianist, is based in Indianapolis. She has appeared at the University of Chicago Presents, National Public Radio’s Performance Today, the Fazioli Piano Series in Los Angeles and at Sound Bites at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Clare has appeared as soloist with Symphonicity in Virginia and the Federal Way Symphony in Washington state as well as with other orchestras around the country. She holds a Doctor of Music from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Robert Schwartz, a faculty member at the SF Conservatory and at Mills College, was awarded the Ravel Prize at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Robert performs and teaches around the world (Beijing, Vienna, Albignac [France], Chautauqua [NY], Portland [OR]) and at the Mendocino Music Festival, Oakland’s Dewing Recitals, San Jose’s Steinway Society, and San Francisco’s Noontime and Old First concerts where he recently recorded Isaac Albéniz’s complete “Iberia.”

Spring 2022 Calendar

Fri/Sat, Apr 1/2, 7 PM, ZOFO San Francisco's famed piano duet performs Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and Ravel’s spectacular La Valse.

Fri/Sat Apr 8/9 Sierra Ensemble, this prestigious piano/violin/French horn trio makes, at last, its 405 Shrader debut! Friday is the famed Brahms Trio and Charles Koechlin's Quatre Petites Pièces, Saturday is the Brahms trio plus Tolga Özdemir's Chaoopolis (from the Trio's residency in Turkey).

Apr 15/16, Easter Weekend No concerts.

Fri/Sat, Apr 22/23, 7 PM, Telegraph Quartet San Francisco's world class string quartet. Friday's program is Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Saturday's program is John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6 with Brahms String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51 No. 2.

Fri/Sat, Apr 29/30, 7 PM, The Graber Artmann Stenberg Piano Trio In its 405 Shrader debut this eponymous trio performs major works by Shostakovich, Rebecca Clark and Maurice Ravel. Friday is Shostakovich/Clark, Saturday is Ravel/Clark

Fri, May 6, 7 PM, Peter Wilson, violin with pianist Paul Schrage perform Korngold's Much Ado About Nothing suite, Kreisler’s spectacular Tempo di Minuetto and Beethoven’s Sonata no. 4 for Violin and Piano, Op. 23.

Fri, May 13, 7 PM, Pianist Monica Chew performs several of Maurice Ravel's Miroirs, the Shostakovich F# Prelude and Fugue and other works that illustrate her programs's theme — "Water and Ice!"

Fri, May 20, 7 PM, Violinist Rachel Patrick with pianist Ian Scarfe (the Vinifera Trio without its clarinet) perform the Grieg C Minor Sonata and Ravel's "Tzigane" Additional works TBA.

Fri, May 27, Memorial Day Weekend No concerts.

Fr, Jun 3, 7 PM TBA

Sat, Jun 11, Ex Urbis! At China Camp (near San Rafael) Cellist Evan Kahn and violinist Iris Stone perform Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello Duet in China Camp's shrimp shed! Plus duets by Mozart and Jorg Widmann for violin and cello (no piano!).

Artists of the Spring 2022 Season

Sierra Ensemble has performed at the Incline Chamber Music Series, at the Chamber Music Concerts of Brookings, Oregon, the Crocker Gallery Concerts in Sacramento, at Old First Concerts and the Presidio Sessions in San Francisco, and at Boston Court in Pasadena, California, as well as many educational outreach programs in Cerritos and west Contra Costa County. In 2013 the trio was awarded a CEC ArtsLink and U.S. Department of State grants for two residency programs in Turkey. The ensemble has commissioned a great many new works for its rare horn, violin, piano makeup.

The San Francisco based Telegraph Quartet received the 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. Previous awards include the grand prize of the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Competition (South Bend, Indiana). The quartet was invited to the 2016 Biennale de quatuors à cordes in Paris. In 2018 it debuts at New York City's Carnegie Hall at the Naumburg Award Recital, having appeared at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 2015. The quartet has performed at all major Bay Area chamber music halls and has toured in the U.S., Europe and Asia. www.telegraphquartet.com

Violinist Kate Stenberg was a co-founder of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Real Vocal String Quartet and was, as well, the first violinist of the Del Sol String Quartet. She currently performs as the Kate Stenberg / Sarah Cahill Duo. Cellist Mary Artmann has performed in projects for both the Colorado and New York Councils for the Arts and as well has performed for Radio France, Radio Nuevo León and Cologne’s WDR (Germany). Pianist Miles Graber is a Juilliard graduate who in recent years has worked with many of the Bay Area’s symphony orchestras and opera companies. He is a part of the Alcyone and Sor Ensembles and MusicAEterna among others.

Violinist Peter Wilson is a former senior musical advisor to The White House, where he performed during five Presidential administrations. A Master Gunnery Sergeant, he served as String Section Commander for “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Peter serves as Music Director of the Richmond Philharmonic and Waynesboro Symphony Orchestras in Virginia. Pianist Paul Schrage has performed at the INSAP Festival in Chicago, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Casa Huey Barbosa in Rio de Janiero, and with the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste of Kinshasa. He has been the Pianist-in-Residence of the Contemporary American Music Project, and currently serves as Music Director of the Midsummer Mozart Festival.

Monica Chew, pianist, after undergraduate studies the University of North Carolina in piano and mathematics received her Masters in piano performance at SF Conservatory and her doctorate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Once an analyst for both Google and Mozilla, in recent years she has created thematic musical evenings, like "Fugue This!, a fugue tour from Bach to Shostakovich" and "Schumann Storytime looking at Clara, Robert with Johannes Brahms." In 2017 she released a CD "Tender and Strange," featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin.

Pianist Ian Scarfe is the founder of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival. As a guest artist he has performed the Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto with USF’s Parnassus Symphony and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with One Found Sound. Violinist Rachel Patrick who has served as concertmaster of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra (Germany) and the Bloomington and Birmingham symphony orchestras.

Cellist Evan Kahn holds a masters degree from SF Conservatory. He is principal cellist of Opera San Jose and of Symphony Silicon Valley, and is assistant principal of San Jose Chamber Orchestra. He was Musical America’s Artist-of-the-Month in 2019. Violinist Iris Stone has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Chamber Ensemble, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and is currently a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

Fall 2021 Calendar

Fri/Sat, Oct 8/9, 7 PM, Herb Alpert UCLA School of Music professors Douglas Masek, saxophone, and Neal Stulberg, piano, perform works from à la Mozart to à la Coltrane, plus Piazzola.

Fri/Sun, Oct 15 7 PM, Oct 17 5 PMBoston Virtuosa Liana Paniyeva, piano, performs Schumann Sonata No. 1, Rachmaninoff Preludes Op 23 Nos. 4 and 6, and Liszt transcriptions of Schubert lieder.

Fri/Sat, Oct 29/30, 7 PM, San Francisco Virtuosi Evan Kahn, cello, and Keisuke Nakamichi, piano, perform sonatas by Samuel Barber, Elliot Carter (405 Shrader debut) and Oakland composer Taylor Joshus Rankin.

Fri/Sat, Nov 5/6, 7 PM, All Saints' Day a few days later, mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur of the 2019 Schubert's Der Erlkönig resurrect more of the world's most beautiful lieder.

Friday, Nov 12, 7 PM, Guitarissimo Lyle Sheffler performs works from the virtuoso guitar repertory (Albén1z, Piazzolla, Barrios, et al).

Fri/Sat, Nov 19/20, 7 PM, [Sold out] Hardly Fiddlesticks Alisa Rose, violin and Amy Zanrosso, piano, perform Brahms' magnificent d minor sonata and Schumann's passionate a minor sonata.

Friday, Dec 3 Tales of the City (Vienna) conductor/pianist/raconteur Andreas Mitisek performs four-hand gems from old Vienna with pianist Ellen Milenski, and commentary.

Friday, Dec 10, [Sold Out] Night of Music The Delphi Trio, violinist Liana Bérubé, cellist Tanya Tomkins, and pianist Allegra Chapman perform Beethoven's Archduke at the aperitif hour (7 PM), and Schumann's Fantasiestücke at the digestif hour (9 PM), plus additional works.

Artists of the Fall 2021 Season

Saxophonist Douglas Masek performs with the LA Phil, the LA Opera among other prestigious ensembles. He has performed at the Ojai, Aspen and Santa Fe (chamber) music festivals, and as soloist in festivals throughout the world (Singapore, Romania, China, etc). Neal Stulberg, now head of orchestral studies at UCLA, has conducted most major American orchestras (LA Phil, etc). As a pianist he is known for performances of Mozart concertos conducted from the keyboard. He recently performed the complete Mozart violin sonatas with Guillaume Sutre in Los Angeles and at France’s Saint Emilion festival.

Liana Paniyeva graduated from the Donetsk Music Academy in the Ukraine, then earning a Professional Studies Certificate from the Manhattan School of Music and and an Artist Diploma at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford (CT). She has placed in many competitions throughout Europe and the United States and concertizes throughout the world (South Africa, Syria, Israel, Norway, etc.).

Los Angeles born cellist Evan Kahn holds a masters degree from SF Conservatory. He is principal cellist of Opera San Jose and of Symphony Silicon Valley, and is assistant principal of San Jose Chamber Orchestra. He was NPR’s Artist-in-Residence with Performance Today in 2018 and Musical America’s Artist-of-the-Month in 2019. Japan born Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and in 2005 Masters degree in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is now Pianist-in-Residence. In 2009 he founded the piano duo ZOFO with pianist Eva-Maria Zimmerman, this duo the recipient of Grammy’s Best Chamber Music Performance in 2013. He has performed with the San Francisco Symphony as well as many local chamber orchestras.

Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich has performed recitals at the La Jolla Athenaeum and the Sala Cecilia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro among other prestigious venues. Among her recordings she counts the complete Mahler song cycles with the Alexander String Quartet. She has appeared at Opera Parallèle in Today It Rains and at West Edge Opera in Breaking the Waves. Pianist Jeffrey LaDeur performed an acclaimed all Debussy program at Carnegie Hall, later recorded as “The Unbroken Line.” He recently performed the Brahms B-Flat concerto with the Cambrian Symphony. Jeffrey is the founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. With Kindra Scharich he recently recorded a Beethoven / Schumann collection titled My Distant Beloved.

Both Alisa Rose and Amy Zanrosso are musical genre bending artists, violinist Alisa a member of both Real Vocal String Quartet and Supermule. Pianist Amy has performed with Sweatshop Tango Ensemble and Tangonero. Both however and fortunately are serious chamber music players, Amy coaching chamber music at SF Conservatory, Alisa having a resumé of distinguished chamber music collaborations.

Andreas Mitisek, former general director of Long Beach Opera, has served on the Board of Directors of Opera America, in 2014 the Chicago Tribune named him as the Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music. Opera News named him as one of the 25 people that will be a major force in the field of opera in the coming decade. Ellen Milenski studied with German pianist Bruno Eisner, Italian pianist Carlo Bussotti at San Francisco State, and Berkeley pianist Julian White and has been on the piano faculty at San Francisco State University.

Spring 2021 Calendar

Fri/Sat, March 19/20, 7 PM, Three Concertos W/O Orchestra Pianist Daniel Glover performs Bizet's transcription of Saint-Saëns’ beloved Second Concerto, Charles-Valentin Alkan’s transcription of the first movement of Beethoven's Third Concerto, and his own transcription of the Canzone from Samuel Barber's piano concerto.

Friday, Apr 2, 7 PM, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt Pianist Robert Schwartz plays Capriccios, Intermezzos, Etudes and a Polonaise-Fantasie by the famed trio of composers at the epicenter of the nineteenth century Romantic piano repertory.

Fri/Sat, April 9/10, 7 PM, Thirteen Insects, Four Moons Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi performs many famous composers’ take on the sights and sounds of famously spectacular insects! All this basking in several Clair(s) [light(s)] de la Lune [moon], including the iconic glows of Debussy and Fauré,

Fri/Sat, April 23/24, 7 PM, Flight of the Butterfly Cellist Evan Kahn performs J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 2 in d minor for solo cello, plus the U.S. premiere of Argentine composer Damián Ponce de León’s “La ruta de la mariposa” and more.

Fri/Sat, May 7/8, 7 PM, Claude Debussy Pianist Ellen Milenski pursues the ethereal Debussy, and the tragic, playful and orgiastic Debussy. Not to ignore the exotic Debussy in a program built of small masterpieces that end, more or less, on C-sharp.

Fri/Sat, May 21/22, 7 PM, The Goldbergs, Pianist Elizabeth Dorman performs J.S. Bach’s 30 variations on a brief and beautiful aria (1741) determined to assuage the insomnia of the Russian ambassador to Saxony, first performed by Bach's pupil Johann Gottlieb Goldberg.

Fri/Sat, Jun 4/5, 7 PM, ZOFO is Back! ZOFO, San Francisco's famed 20 fingered piano duo in its first concerts since all this began, performs Ravel's famed 4-hand Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose Suite), plus works by Terry Riley, Eleanor Alberga and Erberk Eryılmaz.

Artists of the Spring 2021 Season

Daniel Glover holds a master's degree from New York's Juilliard School. He took first prize in the prestigious Liederkranz Competition in 1990. His 1992 Carnegie Hall recital debut in New York was the result of winning the Artist's International Competition. Mr. Glover has played recitals in Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery and at the St. Petersburg Palaces Festival in Russia. Locally he has performed the major concerto repertory with the Saratoga Symphony, the North Bay Philharmonic, the Kensington Symphony, the Red Wood Symphony, and the Palo Alto Symphony among others.

Japan born Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and in 2005 Masters degree in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is now Pianist-in-Residence. In 2009 he founded the duo piano ZOFO with pianist Eva-Maria Zimmerman, this duo the recipient of Grammy’s Best Chamber Music Performance in 2013. He has performed with many Bay Area symphony orchestras and chamber groups, including the San Francisco Symphony. Keisuke tours as principal pianist and slide guitarist with Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.

Los Angeles born cellist Evan Kahn holds a masters degree from SF Conservatory. He is principal cellist of Opera San Jose and of Symphony Silicon Valley, and is assistant principle of San Jose Chamber Orchestra. As a concerto soloist Evan has performed with many Northern California orchestras and is resident cellist for Bay Area music collectives After Everything, Mythica Foundation, and hip-hop band Ensemble Mik Nawooj. He was NPR’s Artist-in-Residence with Performance Today in 2018 and Musical America’s Artist-of-the-Month in 2019.

Ellen Milenski studied with German pianist Bruno Eisner, Italian pianist Carlo Bussotti at San Francisco State, and Berkeley pianist Julian White and has been on the piano faculty at San Francisco State University. Ms. Milenski divides her time between her homes in San Francisco and the South of France where she performs frequently at Le Moulin des Arts in Entrecasteaux as a solo recitalist and as a collaborative artist

San Francisco native Elizabeth Dorman has appeared as soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, the Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, and the Santa Rosa Symphony among others. As a recitalist she has performed at the Kennedy Center, Davies Symphony Hall, Herbst Theater, Merkin Hall, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Leipzig’s Hochschule für Musik, and at the festivals of Tanglewood, Britt, Sarasota, Aspen, Toronto Summer Music, Icicle Creek, and Banff Centre. Elizabeth is well known for her performances of J.S. Bach’s keyboard music on the modern piano.

Fall 2020 Studio Calendar

Friday, Oct 9, 7 PM, Schubert Pianist Jeffrey LaDeur performs Schubert’s elegiac sonata in a minor, D. 845, Chopin's fiery Allegro de Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's brief and beautiful "October."

Friday, Oct 23, 7 PM Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, Liszt's un sospiro Pianist Ian Scarfe performs the two most beautiful pieces in the salon repertory as the centerpieces of his intimate musical aperitif.

Friday, Nov 20, 7 PM Chopin Mozart, Bach Pianist Lino Rivera performs Mozart’s passionate Sonata in c minor, K. 457, Chopin's majestic Polonaise Fantasie, Op. 61, and the teenage J.S. Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother.

Fall 2020 Streamed Concerts Calendar

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From Friday, Oct 16, 7 PM, Schubert Pianist Jeffrey LaDeur performs Schubert’s elegiac sonata in a minor, D. 845, Chopin's fiery Allegro de Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's brief and beautiful "October." Click on title Schubert Chopin Recital to attend (virtually) Jeffrey's recital.

From Friday, Oct 30, 7 PM Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, Liszt's un sospiro Pianist Ian Scarfe performs the two most beautiful pieces in the salon repertory as the centerpieces of his intimate musical aperitif. Click on title Salon Recital to attend (virtually) Ian's concert.

From Friday, Nov 27, 7 PM Chopin, Mozart, Bach Pianist Lino Rivera performs Mozart’s passionate Sonata in C minor, K. 457, Chopin's mysterious Polonaise Fantasie, Op. 61, and the teenage J.S. Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother (re-imagined by Ferruccio Busoni). Concert available until December 4.

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Artists of the Fall 2020 Season

Jeffrey LaDeur performed an acclaimed all Debussy program at Carnegie Hall, later recorded as “The Unbroken Line.” He recently performed the Brahms B-Flat concerto with the Cambrian Symphony. Jeffrey is the founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. With mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich he recently recorded a Beethoven / Schumann collection titled My Distant Beloved.

Pianist Ian Scarfe is the founder of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival and Nonsemble 6 (a purveyor of modern music), and a founding member of the Vinifera Trio. As a guest artist he has performed the Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto with USF’s Parnassus Symphony, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Fairbanks (AK) Summer Arts Orchestra and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with One Found Sound.

Spring 2020 Calendar [CANCELED]

Friday, Apr 3, 7 PM Gold Metals Fervida Trio (piano, violiin, cello) — first prize winners of the 2018 Galante Prize Competition, the Gold Medal and Beethoven Prize winners at the 2019 PAC Chamber Music Competition and a gold metal at the 2019 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition — perform Mendelssohn's C minor trio.

Friday, Apr 10 No concert (Passover and Easter weekend)

Friday, Apr 17, 7 PM Mmes. Schumann and Mendelssohn Dan Flanagan, violin, Victoria Ehrlich, cello and Carl Blake, piano perform Fanny Mendelssohn's delectable Trio in d minor and Clara Schumann's masterful Trio in g minor.

Friday, Apr 24, 7 PM Historic Instruments Fortepianist Eric Zivian of the Valley of the Moon Chamber Music Festival performs Beethoven Op. 27 No. 1, violinist Joseph Lee, former first violin of the Juilliard Quartet, performs Beethoven Op. 30 No. 1.

Friday, May 1, 7 PM Petrarch, Byron, Dante Jeffrey LaDeur, pianist, founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival, performs Franz Liszt’s poetic Annees de Pelerinage (complete), many of its pieces based on literary works.

Friday, May 8 Saxophone Solos Douglas Masek, saxophone with Neal Stulberg, piano, just back from their concert tour of South Africa, perform works from à la Mozart to à la Coltrane, plus Piazzola (Mo. Stulberg is head of orchestral studies at UCLA, Mr. Masek is professor of saxophone at UCLA).

Friday, May 15, 7 PM Orphic Percussion It's all in the name — these four virtuosos recently performed Dances for Percussion Quartet with San Francisco’s Symphony Parnassus. The quartet, based in Northern California, performs at prestigious venues throughout the U.S.

Friday, May 22, 7 PM The Goldberg Variations Anne Rainwater, pianist, plays live her splendid 2018 recording of the Johann Sebastian Bach’s 30 variations on a brief and beautiful aria.

Saturday, May 30, 7 PM China Camp! Tristan Scroggins (coming direct from Nashville) and Alisa Rose (of 405 Shrader Prokofiev fame) perform mandolin and fiddle country folk in beautifully distilled classical and Americana styles.

Friday, Jun 5, 7 PM Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi piano duo, better known as ZOFO, commemorate this Beethoven anniversary in a big, great big way.

Saturday, Jun 6, 7 PM Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi piano duo, better known as ZOFO, commemorate this Beethoven anniversary in a big, great big way.

Fall 2019 Calendar

Friday, Oct 4, 7 PM Pianist Ian Scarfe with Trinity Alps Chamber Players perform Brahms' massive Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 60 with Dvorak's Bagatelles Op. 47.

Saturday, Oct 5, 7 PM Pianist Ian Scarfe with Trinity Alps Chamber Players repeat of Oct 4 performance.

Friday, Oct 11, 7 PM Pianist Liana Paniyeva performs the Bach/Busoni Chaconne in d minor and the Chopin Sonata No. 3.

Thursday, Oct 17, 7 PM Harpsichordist Derek Tam performs J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (an aria and its thirty variations played on a Ron Haas double manual harpsichord). Sold Out

Friday, Oct 18, 7 PM Harpsichordist Derek Tam performs J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (an aria and its thirty variations played on a Ron Haas double manual harpsichord). Sold Out

Friday, Oct 25 Guitarist Adam Levin performs music for solo guitar by Spanish masters of the past and present (Turina, Tedesco, Morales-Caso, Halffter, Antón Carcía Abril). Sold Out

Friday, Nov 1, 7 PM Songs for this "Day of the Dead" Soprano Kindra Scharich and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur perform Richard Strauss' "Allerseehen" (All Souls' Day), and other songs about death as a redeemer, friend, foe, and lover. For tickets click here.

Friday, Nov 8, 7 PM Pianist Laura Farré Rozada performs French dreamlike music by Messiaen, Dutilleux, et al. For tickets click here.

Friday, Nov 15, 7 PM The RossoRose Duo (Amy Zanrosso, piano and Alisa Rose, violin) perform Prokofiev's second Sonata for Violin and Piano and Lera Auerbach's Preludes. For tickets click here.

Friday, Nov 22, 7 PM The Telegraph Quartet performs the Bartok String Quartet No. 4 in C Major and the Beethoven String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor, Op. 131. Sold Out

Sunday, Nov 24, 5 PM The Telegraph Quartet performs the Bartok String Quartet No. 4 in C Major and the Beethoven String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor, Op. 131. For tickets click here.

Friday, Dec 6, 7 PM Pianist Michael J. Smith and Cellest Eric Moore. Scraibin's fifth piano sonata, and Luigi Dallapiccola"s Chaconne, Intermezzo and Adagio for solo cello. Sold Out

Artists of the Fall 2019 Season

Liana Paniyeva graduated from the Donetsk Music Academy in the Ukraine, then earning a Professional Studies Certificate from the Manhattan School of Music and and an Artist Diploma at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford (CT). She has placed in many competitions throughout Europe and the United States and concertizes throughout the world (South Africa, Syria, Israel, Norway, etc.).

Derek Tam is a specialist on historical keyboards. He performs with SF’s Ars Minerva and Elevate Ensemble and with the early music MUSA. He is the principal keyboardist of several northern California symphony orchestras as well as Director of Music at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church.

Adam Levin was a Fulbright Scholar in Madrid where he researched contemporary Spanish guitar composition cul-minating in a four volume recording for Naxos. He has performed at New York’s Poisson Rouge, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kennedy Center, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, and often on NPR’s Performance Today. Adam has performed extensively in Spain and Brazil as well as concertized throughout Europe and in China. A graduate of New England Conservatory of Music, Adam teaches at the Universities of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich has performed recitals at the La Jolla Athenaeum and the Sala Cecilia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro among other prestigious venues. Among her recordings she counts the complete Mahler song cycles with the Alexander String Quartet. She has appeared at Opera Parallèle in Today It Rains and at West Edge Opera in Breaking the Waves. Pianist Jeffrey LaDeur performed an acclaimed all Debussy program at Carnegie Hall, later recorded as “The Unbroken Line.” He recently performed the Brahms B-Flat concerto with the Cambrian Symphony. Jeffrey is a founding member of the Delphi Trio, and the founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. With Kindra Scharich he recently recorded a Beethoven / Schumann collection titled My Distant Beloved.

Laura Farré Rozada holds a Master of Music from London's Royal College of Music, and is completing a doctorate at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She has performed on five (of the seven) continents, in the UK with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Ensemble Court-Circuit and recently at Canada’s Banff Centre with Ensemble Evolution 2019. Laura has bachelor and master degrees from the Catalonia College of Music (and is a bachelor in mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia). This concert is a part of her tour introducing her CD, The French Reverie.

Both Alisa Rose and Amy Zanrosso are musical genre bending artists, violinist Alisa a member of both Real Vocal String Quartet and Supermule. Pianist Amy has performed with Sweatshop Tango Ensemble and Tangonero. Both however and fortunately are serious chamber music players, Amy coaching chamber music at SF Conservatory, Alisa having a resumé of distinguished chamber music collaborations. www.arosefiddle.com, www.amyzanrosso.com

Pianist Michael James Smith has been a fellow at Carnegie Hall/The Juilliard School’s Ensemble Connect; he has worked with the Weill Music Institute and the Mark Morris Dance Group; he has performed at Carnegie’s Weill Hal and the National Sawdust, and at the Mondavi Center (UC Davis). He holds a PhD in piano performance from SUNY Stony Brook. Cellist Eric Moore holds verious degrees in music from the University of Michigan. He has been principal cello of the La Jolla Symphony among others. He teaches at Pacific Union College (Napa Valley), is the author of the cello method Cellosophy, and is the founder of Napa’s New Music Decanted as well as co-founder of Cello Camps in San Diego and Ann Arbor.

Spring 2019 Calendar

Friday, Apr 5, 7 PM Pianist Robert Schwartz returns to 405 Shrader to perform Franz Liszt’s monumental Sonata in b minor plus Haydn's Sonata in E-flat Major. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Apr 6, 7 PM Pianist Robert Schwartz Repeat of the Apr 5 performance. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, Apr 12, 7 PM The Friction Quartet returns to 405 Shrader to perform Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 2 in C Major plus “The Roadrunner by” Nicolas Benavides. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Apr 13, 7 PM The Friction Quartet performs Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 1 plus “Two Hearts” by Sarang Kim and Abaciscus by Geoffrey Gordon. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, Apr 19 Good Friday/Passover, no performance

Friday, Apr 26, 7 PM Percussion Duo Elizabeth Hall and Divesh Karamchandani’s battery of classical percussion instruments (marimba, bells, drums, etc.) explores world music traditions in original compositions for percussion. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Apr 27, 7 PM Percussion Duo Elizabeth Hall and Divesh Karamchandani’s battery of classical percussion instruments. Repeat of Apr 26 performance. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, May 3, 7 PM Anton Arensky "Cello" Quartet Rachmaninoff’s teacher Anton Arensky's magnificent String Quartet No. 2 scored for two cellos [!], viola and violin performed by members of the Alden and Delphi Trios (Yuri Kye, violin, Brady Anderson and Michelle Kwon, cellos) and Aaron Rosengaus, viola. Plus two Haydn “barytone” (a cross between a lute and a gamba) trios.

Friday, May 10, 7 PM Pianist Allegra Chapman performs the brief if daunting Bacewicz Sonata No. 2 and the intimate Thomas Adès Toccata for Toy Piano, plus the Beethoven Sonata in E Major, Op. 109 and three Chopin mazurkas. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, May 17, 7 PM Violinist Monika Gruber returns to 405 Shrader to perform Camille Saint-Saën’s romantic 2nd sonata for violin and Maurice Ravel’s modernist sonata for violin with pianist Chia-Lin Yang. https://fr.brownpapertickets.com/event/4211186 For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, May 24, 7 PM Pianist Anne Rainwater plays Ravel’s colorful Jeux d'Eau, Ligeti's Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow), J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 6 plus the three minute “Anamorfosi” (1980) by Sicilian composer Salvatore Sciarrino. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Jun 1, 7 PM The Zëlos Saxophone Quartet at China Camp!

Friday, June 7, 7 PM The Wooden Fish Ensemble Shoko Hikage plays the koto, Yuki Endo plays the shinobue, with pianist Thomas Schultz. Composer Hyo-shin Na offers a new piece for piano and koto, plus the ensemble performs new and old music from Japan and Korea. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Artists of the Spring 2019 Season

Robert Schwartz performs and teaches around the world (Beijing, Vienna, Albignac [France], Chautauqua [NY], Portland [OR]) and throughout northern California — the Mendocino Music Festival, Oakland’s Dewing Recitals, San Jose’s Steinway Society, and in San Francisco at Noontime Concerts and at Old First Concerts where he has recorded the complete “Iberia” by Isaac Albéniz.

The Friction Quartet’s high octane music making has been called terribly beautiful and chillingly effective. The quartet was founded in 2011 by students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and since has established itself as a purveyor of new music for string quartet. The quartet was a prize winner at the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition in China and at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition and were finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition. Locally they have appeared with the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Ballet, West Edge Opera and at the SF Jazz Center.

Both Divesh Karamchandani and Elizabeth Hall earned Masters degrees in percussion at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Mr. Karamchandani’s Bay Area affiliations include One Found Sound, the Modesto Opera, Sacramento Philharmonic, and the newly formed SF-LA Collective among others. Ms. Hall’s local affiliations include San Francisco Opera, Santa Cruz Symphony, SF Contemporary Music Players. The two percussionists met one another at the 2011 Zeltsman Marimba Festival held that year at Wisconson’s Lawrence Conservatory.

Anton Stepanovitch Arenski [Антон Степанович Аренский] (1861-1906) was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and the teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. The "cello" quartet Opus 35 is a very rare work. It is dedicated to the memory of Tchaikovsky, Arensky's friend and mentor. The first part opens and closes with the theme of an orthodox psalm, the central movement are variations on Tchaikovsky’s song "Legend" (Op.54) while the Finale gives way to a folksong celebrating the majesty of the Tsar (previously used by Mussorgsky in Boris Godonov).

Pianist Allegra Chapman studied with Peter Serkin at the Bard College Conservatory of Music before taking a Masters Degree at Juilliard, and since has done post-graduate studies at San Francisco Conservatory. She is on the faculty of the Xi’an International Music Festival. Allegra is the founder and artistic director of San Francisco's Bard Music West, a branch of the Bard (NY college) Music Festival, that takes place each spring. www.allegrachapman.com

Monika Gruber studied at the Hochschule for Music in Weimar, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Chia-Hee Yang, winner of many national and international piano competitions, earned a doctorate of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. In addition to her concerto appearances she has performed with many violinists throughout the world. Both artists are active Bay Area chamber musicians.

Oakland pianist Anne Rainwater holds a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Music in Contemporary Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. Anne has performed At Austria’s Donau Festival and at Hamburg’s Kampnagel, and at the Kennedy Center and Princeton University among other international and national venues. Recent local solo appearances include the Center for New Music, Berkeley’s Maybeck Studio, and the Old First Series. Her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations has just been released.

Based in San Jose, the Zëlos Saxophone Quartet players are avid performers wherever they may find a stage. Recent awards include first place in the 2018 Frances Walton Competition, and advancement to the National Finals of the MTNA Chamber Music competition. Nationally the quartet has performed at Festival South in Missouri and the National Music Festival in Maryland. The quartet has coached with the well-known Mana Saxophone Quartet as well as with the Verona and Amethyst String Quartets.

The Wooden Fish Ensemble takes its name from the percussion fish shaped instrument Buddists use to keep the rhythm during sutra chanting (the center seated figure holds a wooden fish). The shinobue is a bamboo flute, the koto is a 13 stringed plucked instrument (zither). Composer Hyo-shin Nan has twice been awarded the Korean National Composers Prize, and in the west she has been commissioned by the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations. Her works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet and the Korean Traditional Orchestra of Korea's National Theatre.

Fall 2018 Calendar

Friday, Oct 5, 7 PM The Vinifera Trio as soloists, Matthew Boyles plays Debussy’s Rhapsodie in B-flat for solo clarinet, Rachel Patrick plays the second Bartok Rhapsody for Violin, and Ian Scarfe plays the two Brahms Rhapsodies Op. 79 for solo piano.

Friday, Oct 12, 7 PM Pianist Thomas Schultz performs Frederic Rzewski’s daunting The People United Will Never Be Defeated — 36 variations on the Peruvian folksong "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!", a monumental work that critics compare to J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Friday, Oct 19, 7 PM E4TT (that’s Ensemble for These Times — voice, cello, piano) performs works from its recent CD “Emigres & Exiles in L.A.” (and its films) — names like Korngold, Previn, Tansman, Toch, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and, yes, Schoenberg.

Friday, Oct 26, 7 PM The Costanoan Trio (forte piano, classical period violin and cello) plays music of the 1700’s and early 1800’s — names like Cimarossa, Boccherini, Haydn and Mozart. The sounds of music just as sounded 300 years ago in European palaces.

Wednesday, Oct 31, 7 PM Bass Baritone Philippe Sly, the Aix Festival and Opéra de Lyon’s Don Giovanni, the San Francisco Opera’s Figaro, sings Schubert’s famous song-cycle Winterreise at 405 Shrader [!]. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, Nov 9, 7 PM “Eight Strings & a Whistle” — that’s the viola plus a cello and then a flute of this NYC based ensemble that explores four centuries of music for three players. This rare combination of instruments creates unique and entertaining colors in old and new repertory. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com [SOLD OUT]

Friday Nov 16, 7 PM Don Ehrlich, San Francisco Symphony’s former associate principle violist performs Twelve Fantasias by Georg Philipp Telemann, works that were lost for 250 years and found only a couple of years ago. Be among the first . . . For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com [SOLD OUT]

Friday, Nov 30, 7 PM EQV. The forces for this special evening at 405 Shrader are five solo voices pulled from San Francisco’s most prestigious vocal ensembles to perform Monteverdi’s madrigal masterpiece “Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell’amata” (Tears of a lover at the tomb of his beloved). For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com [SOLD OUT]

Friday, Dec 7, 7 PM Daniel Glover, San Francisco’s virtuoso pianist performs Franz Liszt’s gigantic Sonata in b minor. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com [SOLD OUT]

Previous Seasons

Spring 2018 Calendar

Friday, Apr 6, 7 PM. Trio Celeste, an “unfailingly stylish” piano trio returns to 405 Shrader with Beethoven's Op. 11, Mendelssohn's C minor and Piazzolla Tangos!

Thursday, Apr 12, 7 PM. Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque, a book talk by author Catherine Kautsky about Debussy’s Paris: “A fascinating fusion of music, literature, and social history that transports us to the Parisian milieu of a composer whose music captured the spirit of its time” (Amazon.com)

Friday, Apr 13, 7 PM. Pianist Catherine Kautsky, illustrates her book talk by performing works by Debussy (and others)! “A pianist who can play Mozart and Schubert as though their sentiments and habits of speech coincided exactly with hers (New York Times).

Friday, Apr 20, 7 PM. Pianist Jenny Lin plays Philip Glass. Mme. Lin will use her “gift for melodic flow” (Anthony Tommasini, NY Times) for as many Philip Glass’ Etudes as she can fit into a 405 Shrader evening. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Apr 21, 7 PM. Jenny Lin plays more Philip Glass. Mme. Lin will use her “remarkable technical command” (James Oestreich, NY Times) to perform Philip Glass’ Mad Rush, Metamorphosis and the American premiere of a new Glass work. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, Apr 27, 7 PM. The Telegraph Quartet, winner of the prestigious 2016 Naumberg Chamber Music Competition [!] returns to 405 Shrader.

Sunday, May 6, 5 PM. Gini Wilson Trio, with jazz pianist Gini whom Herb Caen dubbed “the Duchess” of SF’s fabled restaurant Stars, vibraphonist Tommy Kesecker and bassist Carla Kaufman in our annual Sunday afternoon jazz aperitif.

Friday, May 11, 7 PM. Kaija Saariaho 405 Shrader première. Allegra Chapman (piano), Laura Gaynon (cello), Jessica Chang (viola) perform Finnish composer Saariaho’s dreamlike Je sens en deuxiéme coeur, plus the Brahms Horn Trio, Op. 40 [!]. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, May 18, 7 PM. Monica Chew, clavichord, (a 14th century keyboard instrument loved by Stevie Wonder), performs pieces by Jacquet de la Guerre (1687), Gesualdo (1605), C.P.E. Bach (1781), and Toru Takemitsu (1986). She plays a 2011 German copy of an 18th century Pennsylvania clavichord. For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Friday, May 25, 7 PM. ZOFO, SF’s “dazzling” (L.A. Times) piano duo returns with Stravinsky's mighty Petrushka and Dukas' famed scherzo The Sorcerer's Apprentice with Casella's Pupazetti (stick-figures) as the encore.

Friday, Jun 1, 7 PM. San Francisco Guitar Quartet. This famed San Francisco ensemble “performs beautifully, making full use of their broad dynamic range and remarkable accuracy” (Minor 7th Review). For tickets please go to www.BrownPaperTickets.com

Saturday, Jun 2, 7 PM. San Francisco Guitar Quartet, 405 Shrader at China Camp! This famed ensemble performs for 405 Shrader Fellows at California State Park’s historic Chinese fishing village on San Francisco Bay.

Friday, Jun 8, 7 PM. Benefit for the Grotrian's new hammers. Pianist Ellen Milenski performs the Bartok Sonata No. 2, the Berg Sonata and Prokofief's flute sonata with Bethanne Walker, in our annual benefit for the Grotrian piano at 405 Shader.

Artists of the Spring 2018 Season

Trio Céleste is currently Ensemble-in-Residence at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. Ukraine born violinist Iryna Krechkovsky is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a PhD at SUNY Stony Brook. Cellist Ross Gasworth has a masters degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has played in the symphonies of San Diego and Houston, and was principal cellist of the Waco Symphony and the YouTube Symphony. Korean born pianist Keven Kwan Loucks is a graduate of the Juilliard School, and a PhD at SUNY Stony Brook. www.trioceleste.com

Catherine Kautsky's teachers include Rosina Lhevinne and Leon Fleisher. She has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Phillips Collection, Jordan Hall, and the Chicago Cultural Center, with the St. Louis Symphony and Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, and she has performed chamber music at the Aspen, Tanglewood, and Grand Teton Festivals. As a lecturer her subjects have included “On the Trail of Chopin and George Sand,” “WWI: A Centenary Look at the Musical Wars,“ and “Celebrating Debussy and the Arts du Spectacle.”

Pianist Jenny Lin’s orchestral engagements have included the American Symphony Orchestra, NDR and SWR German Radio orchestras, and Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI. Her concerts have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, MoMA, Stanford LIVE, and National Gallery of Art, appearing at Festivals such as Mostly Mozart, BAM’s Next Wave, Spoleto/USA, Kings Place London, Chopin Festival Austria, and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Germany. She is a graduate of Vienna's Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

Gini Wilson, known as The Duchess, is legendary in the Bay Area as a jazz pianist and entertainer — her recent one woman show is titled Bach to Bebop. She is co-founder of the San Francisco ChamberJazz Quartet (SFCJQ). Gini is a recipient of a 2017 Milley award recognizing her contribution to artistic life in Mill Valley. Trained as a classical pianist her teachers have included Carlo Bussotti, Bruno Eisner and Paul Parmelee.

Pianist Allegra Chapman is the founder of San Francisco’s Bard Music West. She studied with Peter Serkin at the Bard College Conservatory of Music before taking a Masters Degree at Juilliard. Violist Jessica Chang has performed at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Festival and Canada’s National Arts Centre. She holds an artist diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music. Cellist Laura Gaynon performs with the American Bach Soloists, the Pacific Crest Chamber Players, the Magik*Magik Orchestra, and Musa. Laura is Co-founder and Co-artistic Director of Bard Music West.

Monica Chew, pianist, after undergraduate studies the University of North Carolina in piano and mathematics received her Masters in piano performance at SF Conservatory and her doctorate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. In recent years she has worked for Google and Mozilla while in piano performance she created Fugue This!, a fugue tour from Bach to Shostakovich, and Schumann Storytime looking at Clara, Robert with Johannes Brahms in the years 1853-54. She frequently partners with violinist Nathanael Bartley (Nato) as the Minsky Duo.

Since its debut in 1997 the San Francisco Guitar Quartet toured across the United States and travelled internationally to Germany, Taiwan, and Guam. Past performances include San Francisco’s Omni Series, La Guitarra California Festival, Pasadena’s Guitarra del Mar series, the Hot Air Music Festival, and Dresdner Gitarrenfest in Dresden, Germany. The group has also performed at universities throughout the United States and has appeared on both NPR and the syndicated radio shows West Coast Live and Classical Guitar Alive!

Ellen Milenski studied with German pianist Bruno Eisner at University of Colorado, Italian pianist Carlo Bussotti at San Francisco State, and with Berkeley pianist Julian White. Flutist Bethanne Walker, a winner of Boston’s Pappoutsakis Memorial Flute Competition, has performed locally with Napa Valley Symphony, SFCMP, Wild Rumpus, Curious Flights and the Elevate Ensemble.

Fall 2017

Friday, Oct 6, 7 PM. Champagne Flows The New Leaf Ensemble opens the fall season with the Debussy Piano Trio in G major and the Brahms Piano Trio in C minor. Sue Mi Shin, violin; Michelle Kwon, cello; Tu-Ting Chen, piano.

Friday, Oct 13, 7 PM and Saturday, Oct 14, 7 PM Red or White The Vinifera Trio (violin, clarinet, piano) in an evening of Viennese masterpieces — the Adagio from Berg’s Kammerkonzert plus his Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Webern’s Quartet (saxophone added) plus his Variations for Piano, etc.

Friday, Oct 20, 7 PM. Modernism Swiss violinist Jan Dobrzelewski and pianist Lino Rivera perform Ravel’s jazz and blues inspired violin sonata (1927) and Debussy’s last major composition, his sonata for violin and piano (1917), composed the year before his death.

Friday, Oct 27, 7 PM. Appassionata Pianist Jason Chiu plays the Beethoven Sonata in f minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata), C.T. Griffes' Three Fantasy Pieces, Op. 6 (1912), Lowell Liebermann’s famous Gargoyles (1989).

Friday, Nov 3, DARK.

Friday, Nov 10, 7 PM and Saturday, Nov 11, 7 PM Rachmaninoff Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi plays Rachmaninoff Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 36, Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise (a song-without-words from his Op. 34), and the Adagio from Rachmaninoff’s second symphony adapted by Keisuke for piano.

Friday, Nov 17, 7 PM. Hardball Violinist Monika Gruber and pianist Irene Behrendt are joined by clarinetist Leslie Tagorda to perform Bartok’s Contrasts for these instruments, and the Galina Ustvolskaya clarinet trio (1949).

Friday, Nov 24, DARK (Thanksgiving).

Friday, Dec 1, 7 PM. Dreams The RossoRose Duo, Alisa Rose and Amy Zanrosso perform an evening of nocturnes for violin and piano — nocturnal meditations by Szymanowski, A. Copland, J. Cage, G. Crumb, A. Schnittke, etc.

Sunday, Dec 3, 7 PM. Berlin Stage director Roy Rallo creates a theater piece with music.

Friday, Dec 8, 7 PM. Ecstacy Pianist Ian Scarfe performs eight of Olivier Messiaen’s epic Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus — meditations on God the Father, the impact of grace, its rays of light and the reflection of joy, the mystery of the fullness of time, the bells of Christmas, and again the theme of God. This Messiaen masterpiece was composed during the same period Marcel Carné filmed his Les Enfants du Paradis.

Next Concerts Apr/May/Jun 2018

Artists of the Fall 2017 Season

The Leaf Ensemble was formed by violinist Sue-Mi Shin, cellist Michelle Kwon, and pianist. Yu-Ting Chen with the purpose of preserving the earth’s forests and oceans. These three Bay Area musicians have studied at Yale University, Manhattan School of Music, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The trio will perform an Earth Day concert at Old First in April.

The Vinifera Trio is comprised of clarinetist Matthew Boyles who has played in the Philadelphia, New Haven and Louisville symphony orchestras, Ian Scarfe of the Trinity Alps Chamber Players, and violinist Rachel Patrick who has served as concertmaster of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra (Germany) and the Bloomington and Birmingham symphony orchestras.

Swiss violinist and conductor Jan Dobrzelewski has given master classes in violin at St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, and at music schools and universities throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. He has conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romaine, the Bern and Lausanne Chamber Orchestras, the Orchestra Cannes PACA among many worldwide. Pianist Lino Riverad has performed with the Manila Symphony Orchestra and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. His solo recitals have taken him internationally to Nuremberg and Zurich and nationally to Kent University, Corpus Christi, Savannah, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Anchorage.

Jason Chiu is a 2004 Masters Degree graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he was a finalist in the Viardo International Piano Competition. In spring 2014 he won 2nd place in the American Protege Competition, and as well was a prize winner in the professional division of the American Prize Competition for his recording of Chopin’s Four Ballades, a program he has performed at 405 Shrader.

Irina Behrendt studied at the Petrozavodsk State Conservatory (NW Russia) and at the Rachmaninoff State Institute of Music in Tambov (SE of Moscow). In the U.S. she earned a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory. Monika Gruber studied at the Hochschule for Music in Weimar, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Hawaii born Leslie Tagorda attended the Eastman School of Music. She has performed with the Royal Hawaiian Band, Hawaii Opera Theater, and the Honolulu Symphony.

Metteur en scène Roy Rallo is a stage director at San Francisco Opera (most recently The Barber of Seville). At 405 Shrader he produced the Day of the Dead Trilogy — Apparitions, Kindertotenlieder, and Three Empty Spaces. He is known as well for the so-called “Fire Operas” at Oakland’s The Crucile. In Europe he has staged Ariadne auf Naxos for the Opéra National de Bordeaux and Don Pasquale at the Staatskapelle Weimar. www.roy-rallo.com

Spring 2017

Friday, Apr 7, 7 PM. Viennese Gala Champagne flows — it's our festive season opener. The popular Vinifera Trio (violin, clarinet, piano) presents a Viennese evening for the cultural elite (that's you by-the-way)— original works for these instruments by Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

Friday, Apr 14, 7 PM. One Found Sound The wind quintet core of this prestigious local orchestra exploits the colors of flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn in music by Rameau and Ravel, and in works like Lalo Schifrin's La Nouvelle Orleans.

Sunday, Apr 23, 5 PM. Fellowship 405 Shrader itself hosts an open bar for this late afternoon jazz aperitif, a thank you to our Fellows. It's the Panhandle Trio! — Larry Dunlap piano, Ken Miller bass, Jeff Marrs drums

Friday, Apr 28, 7 PM. Altered States Pianist Lino Rivera performs the Copland Variations, the Beethoven Eroica Variations, and the variations on the Yiddish song Mayn Yingele by American composer Frederic Rzewski [b. 1938 and very in-vogue just now].

Friday, May 5, 7 PM. Scriabin (debut) at Last Pianist Monica Chew performs Russian symbolist composer Alexander Scriabin's fiery fourth Sonata, plus the fiery Bartok Études Op. 18, plus serene works by Messiaen and Janacek.

Sunday, May 14, 5 PM. Moscow Trained San Francisco Symphony violinist Victor Romasevich creates an all Russian composer string quartet program for Berkeley's long established Jupiter Chamber Ensemble. Works by Tchaikovsky, Taneyev and Andriasov.

Friday, May 19, 7 PM. Bow Shock The Irrera Brothers Duo (John and Joseph, violin and piano) perform this spectacular play on aerodynamics as well as the bow shock of Cesar Franck's beautiful Sonata in A and Olivier Messiaen's richly sonorous Theme and Variations.

Friday, May 26, 7 PM. Partita Fever Percussionist Tim Dent performs J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 for solo violin transcribed for marimba [!] and Peter Klatzow's The Jugler. Cellist Saul Richmond-Rakerd joins him for Osvaldo Golijov's Mariel for marimba and cello.

Saturday, June 3, 7 PM. Shrimp Boats 405 Shrader travels to San Rafael's China Camp where Venice’s prodigal musical son Antonio Vivaldi provides three cello sonatas, Antonio Frescobaldi, organist at Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica offers 100 brilliant variations for harpsichord on a Spanish dance.

Friday, Jun 9, 7 PM. Chaconne Two Ways Benefit Concert. Violinist Alisa Rose perform's J.S. Bach's famed Chaconne in D for solo violin, pianist Ellen Milenski plays J.S. Bach's famed Chaconne in D as amplified in titanic terms by late-Romantic composer Ferruccio Busoni,

Artists of the Spring 2017 Season

One Found Sound Quintet — Sasha Launer, flute; Jesse Barrett, oboe; Sarah Bonomo, clarinet, Georgeanne Banker, bassoon; Mike Shuldes, horn — are the woodwind quintet seated at the heart of the conductorless One Found Sound Orchestra. The OFS Quintet has performed at Old First Concerts, Mercury Soul, Seventh Avenue Performances, Tahoe Chamber Music Festival, and the One Found Sound Chamber Series.

Pianist Larry Dunlap has worked with Cleo Laine and John Dankworth among other jazz greats. The NEA funded his composition Immersion: A Water Suite for jazz quartet and chamber orchestra. New England Conservatory graduate, drummer Jeff Marrs has performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival, Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club in New York, the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, Yoshi’s, the SF Jazz Center with the notable jazz artists of our time. Dolphin Club member bass player Ken Miller plays with the San Francisco Symphony and other local orchestras in addition to playing jazz with major bay area and visiting jazz artists.

Monica Chew, pianist, after undergraduate studies the University of North Carolina in piano and mathematics received her Masters in piano performance at SF Conservatory and her doctorate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. In recent years she has worked for Google and Mozilla while in piano performance she created Fugue This!, a fugue tour from Bach to Shostakovich, and Schumann Storytime looking at Clara, Robert with Johannes Brahms in the years 1853-54. She frequently partners with violinist Nathanael Bartley (Nato) as the Minsky Duo.

Jupiter Chamber Ensemble is a string quartet founded in 1997 by violinist Michael Jones (second from right) and violist Steve Levintow (far right) et al to became the quartet in residence at the Berkeley Art Center where it remained until 2007. Over the years Carmel Bach Festival soloist, cellist Paul Rhodes (second from left) and San Francisco Symphony violinist Victor Romasevich (far left) replaced the other founding members. First violinist, Moscow trained Romasevich has brought a distinctly Russian focus to the quartet championing works by lesser known Russian composers.

Joseph Irrera, pianist and John Irrera, violinist simultaneously became Doctors of Music Arts at the Eastman School of Music in 2014. The brothers had already become a well known duo with performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, at the Kennedy Center in Washington and in many cities in Europe and Central America. Pianist Joseph, a Steinway artist, has performed with the Rochester Philharmonic, as has violinist John. As concerto players each has appeared as soloist with many eastern U.S. regional orchestras.

Tim Dent earned his Masters at the SF Conservatory, and since has performed with most Bay Area orchestras and ensembles, notably often with the SF Symphony where in 2012 he was a part of the Symphony’s American Mavericks Festival. Tim performs frequently at the Carmel Bach Festival as well. Saul Richmond-Rakerd, once a student of physics and anthropology, recently gained a Masters degree in cello at SF Conservatory. He has won many cello competitions in the U.S. and in Italy, where he pursued a Biennio di Violoncello, and was principal cellist of the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana.

Erik Andersen graduated from CUNY’s Aaron Copland School of Music in both modern and historical cello studies. He performs Baroque cello and viola da gamba with San Francisco’s early music ensemble HIP Forum. Derek Tam is a specialist on historical keyboards. He performs with SF’s Ars Minerva and Elevate Ensemble and with the early music MUSA. He is the principal keyboardist of several northern California symphony orchestras as well as Director of Music at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church.

Alisa Rose is a fiddler and violinist who locally has performed with the Vocal String Quartet, 2008 Rockygrass winners 49 Special, and Quartet San Francisco. National credits include Carnegie Hall, NPR's Weekend Edition, the historic Carter Family Fold festival, TEDx Alcatraz and Song of the Mountains on PBS. Ellen Milenski studied with German pianist Bruno Eisner, Italian pianist Carlo Bussotti and Berkeley pianist Julian White and has been on the piano faculty at San Francisco State University.

Fall 2016

Friday, Sep 30, 7 PM. Beethoven’s Favorite Sonata Hillary Nordwell performs the elegant, 24th piano sonata, Op. 78 in F# Major (that’s six sharps!)! in this evening of piano and viola. Justin Ouellet performs Hindemith’s haunting first viola sonata, Op. 11, No. 4.

Friday, Oct 7, 7 PM. Once and For All Pianist Thomas Schultz plays the entire Arnold Schoenberg catalogue for solo piano! Not to worry — it fits easily and appropriately into 405 Shrader’s aperitif concert format i.e. you may need a drink or two.

Friday, Oct 14, 7 PM. Brahms' Favorite Instrument Violist Don Ehrlich performs Brahm’s Opus 91 songs with mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich and pianist Lois Brandwynne, and other works that explore the warm colors of the mezzo voice and the mezzo viol.

Friday, Oct 21, 7 PM. Ustvolskaya Debut [finally] Monika Gruber performs Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya’s 1952 violin sonata with pianist Irina Behrendt. The program includes works by Soviet composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke.

Friday, Oct 28, 7 PM. Day of the Dead [as close as we can come]. Stage director Roy Rallo creates this annual ascent to the netherworld of theater art, this year with San Francisco Opera baritone Philippe Sly in a terrifying Winterreise.

Friday, Nov 4 and Saturday, Nov 5, 7 PM. Ravel’s Ravishing String Quartet headlines Friction Quartet’s return to our stage, together with the house debut of Philip Glass in a performance of his famed third String Quartet that was originally soundtrack for the 1985 film Mishima.

Friday, Nov 11, 7 PM. Jewels Pianist Robert Schwarz plays a program of Bach, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and Liszt — seven miniature pieces (some not so miniature) that are gems of the salon repertoire.

Friday, Nov 18, 7 PM. Vintage Vinifera This unique trio combination — clarinet, violin and piano known as the Vinifera Trio — takes on (and makes its own) Stravinsky’s miniature drama, A Soldier's Tale (1918) and Gershwin’s grandiose tone poem An American in Paris (1928).

Friday, Dec 2 and Saturday, Dec 3, 7 PM. Op. 1 and No. 1 The dynamic young, oft-recorded Neave Trio performs the sweeping melodies of Korngold’s Piano Trio Op. 1 and the exuberant Brahms B Major Piano Trio No. 1 (you will swear you heard the Star Spangled Banner).

Artists of the Fall 2016 Season

Justin Ouellet holds a BA in Viola from Bard College. He has held performing residencies at Longy School of Music and Providence College and has performed with the PARMA New Music Festival and the Philadelphia Music Festival. Locally he a member of the new music group CMASH. Hillary Nordwell is one of San Francisco’s most active chamber players. She earned her masters degree in Chamber Music Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory in 2005 where with violinist Monika Gruber she founded the Eusebius Duo.

Thomas Schultz has performed at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna, the Piano Spheres series in Los Angeles, and with the St. Lawrence String Quartet among other prestigious engagements. For the 2012 John Cage centennial Schultz played Cage’s solo piano music at the Crown Point Press in San Francisco, at NYC’s Bargemusic and at Stanford University. He has been a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University since 1994 and as well has given master classes at Second Viennese School at the Schoenberg Center in Vienna.

Kindra Scharich locally has performed with with Lieder Alive, the Wagner Society, and the Yehudi Menuhin Seminar. Her musical studies were at Eastman School of Music, the University of Michigan, and at the San Francisco Conservatory. Lois Brandwynne studied composition at Mills College with Darius Milhaud, and piano with Alfred Brendel in Vienna on a travel fellowship from UC Berkeley. Don Ehrlich retired as Assistant Principal Violist of the San Francisco Symphony in 2006. He has been on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory and at UC Berkeley for special programs.

On the East Coast the Neave Trio has appeared at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at Boston’s Jordan Hall. In Southern California the Trio has performed for the La Jolla Music Society, the Los Angeles Music Guild, UCLA Chamber Music at the Clark Series, and the Norton Building Concert Series. The Trio has held residencies at Providence College and at Brown University. Its members are graduates of the Yale, Manhattan, Mannes and Longy Schools of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Chopin Academy in Moscow.

Spring 2016

Friday, Apr 1 and Saturday, Apr 2, 7 PM. Boeuf sur la Toit The famous, elegant (sometimes outrageous) piano duo opens the 2016 spring season with Darius Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit, et al.

Saturday, Apr 9, 7 PM. Wanderlust Baritone Ben Kazez sings Schubert songs of wandering, pianist Peter Grunberg punctuates with Schubert's formidable Wanderer Fantasy.

Friday, Apr 15, 7 PM. Challenges Chopin connaisseur Jason Chiu performs the elusive third sonata and then evokes the end of western civilization with Ravel's La Valse.

Friday, Apr 22, 7 PM. Late Beethoven Masterpieces Trinity Alps Chamber Players perform the Beethoven Violin Sonata in G, Op. 96 and his Cello Sonata in C, Op. 102, No. 1.

Friday, Apr 29, 7 PM A Ligeti encore Pianist Allegra Chapman performs the complete Ligeti Musica Ricercata for solo piano — last fall you heard six of them transcribed for winds.

Friday, May 6, 7 PM. Stand-up Violin Louisville Orchestra violinist Robert Simonds performs Baroque, contemporary classical and Americana works for solo violin.

Friday, May 13 and Saturday May 14, 7 PM The Telegraph Quartet "Poignantly resonant" and "intensely urgent," this prize winning string quartet discovers and re-discovers surprising repertory in surprising style.

Friday, May 27, 7 PM RossoRose Duo Pianist Amy Zanrosso and violinist Alisa Rose perform four brief Shostakovich preludes then cut loose with Prokofiev's passionate sonata and Janacek's steely sonata.

Friday, June 3, 7 PM Romanticism Pianist Ellen Milenski performs the hyper-Romantic Schumann Fantasy to conclude our Spring 2016 musical banquet. This concert is a benefit for our resident Grotrian concert piano.

Artists of the Spring 2016 Season

Swiss born and Geneva Conservatory trained pianist Evamaria Zimmermann received a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship to the U.S. where she has become a San Francisco resident. She currently teaches at the Nueva School in Hillsborough. Japan born pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi earned a Bachelors degree in Composition and a Masters degree in Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he is currently Pianist-in-Residence. Both artists have independent careers as chamber and concerto performers. www.zofoduet.com

Baritone Ben Kazez has been a soloist at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Festival, American Bach Soloists Festival and Cal Poly Bach Week among many festivals. Upcoming he joins the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (Aldeburgh, England) and returns to be Basilio in West Edge Opera's Barber of Seville. Peter Grunberg is Musical Assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas at SF Symphony. He served as head of music staff at San Francisco Opera 1992-1999. www.benkazez.com

The Trinity Alps Chamber Players is a group of instrumentalists who come together in various combinations to perform programs in the Bay Area and northern California throughout the year. For this concert the group's founder and artistic director, pianist Ian Scarfe is joined by violinist Luke Fatora and cellist James Jaffe. www.trinityalpscmf.org

Pianist Allegra Chapman studied with Peter Serkin at the Bard College Conservatory of Music before taking a Masters Degree at Juilliard, and since has done post-graduate studies at San Francisco Conservatory. She is on the faculty of the Xi’an International Music Festival. Allegra is the aspiring founder of Bard Music West to be a branch of the Bard Music Festival, projected inauguration 2017. www.allegrachapman.com

Robert Simonds is principal second Violin of the Louisville Orchestra and a member of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz. He has been a member of symphonies of Richmond (VA) and Phoenix where he often returns to perform in the Downtown Chamber Series and at the Musical Instrument Museum. Robert is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. www.roberthuntsimonds.com

The San Francisco based Telegraph Quartet received the grand prize of the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Competition (South Bend, Indiana) and has since toured California and the mid-West as well as debuting at the Carnegie Recital Hall (NYC). The quartet has performed in the major Bay Area chamber music halls and has been artists-in-residence at the San Francisco Conservatory. They soon travel to the M-Prize chamber music competition (Ann Arbor, Michigan). www.telegraphquartet.com

Fall 2015

Friday, Oct 2, 7 PM. Steinway Artist Lara Downes opens the 2015 fall season with an All Bach Program performed on 405 Shrader’s Grotrian Steinweg. This unique artist is famed for her unique blend of musicianship and showmanship.

Friday, Oct 9, 7 PM. Mirror Visions Mirror Visions Ensemble performs a program called Journeys — songs from Hugo Wolf to Cole Porter, from Hector Berlioz to Samuel Barber. The program is is a poetic highway through time and place.

Friday, Oct 23, 7 PM. Love Story Clara Schumann composed her Soirées Musicales in 1836, the second Mazurka of which is the basis of Robert Schumann’s Davidbündlertänze, composed in 1837, now considered one of the greatest works of the Romantic era. The couple married in 1840.

Friday, Oct 30, 7 PM. Salome Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss and Roy Rallo in an here-to-never-before dreamed of or even possible encounter of wit, art and virtuoso performance.

Friday, Nov 6, 7 PM and Saturday, Nov 7, 7 PM Prokofiev and Chopin Pianist Laura Magnani evokes the paradoxical and carnival atmospheres of Prokofiev’s second piano sonata and finishes with Chopin’s most powerful and intense composition — the fourth Ballade.

Friday, Nov 13, 7 PM. Water Music Harpist Jieyin Wu performs two compositions based on Chinese rivers! Plus works by famed (who knew?) French harp composer Marcel Tournier not to forget mention of the brief and masterful Hindemith Sonata for Harp.

Friday, Nov 20, 7 PM and Saturday, Nov 21, 7 PM “…a musical genius who can play anything and make it sound interesting,” pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi plays the Barber Sonata Op. 26, George Crumb's A little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979 and a piano transcription of Ravel's String Quartet by Ravel's good friend Lucien Garban.

Friday, Dec 4, 7 PM. Goulash The Vinifera Trio — violin, clarinet and piano! Repertoire includes 405 Shrader composer debuts of Hungarians György Ligeti and György Kurtág, plus some rare Robert Schumann.

Artists of the Fall 2015 Season

Pianist Lara Downes, born in San Francisco of Caribbean and Russian heritage, spent a good part of her childhood performing with her sisters in the major halls of European capitals. As a mature artist in the U.S. she has performed in major American venues from Carnegie Hall to Greenwich Village’s Le Poisson Rouge, and from the Kennedy Center to SF’s 405 Shrader. She is artist-in-residence and artistic director of the National Young Artists program at UC Davis’ Mondavi Center. Lara’s CD’s frequently make Billboard’s Top 10 and she is a frequent guest on NPR Music. www.lauradownes.com

Mirror Visions Ensemble is a New York based vocal ensemble that explores the lieder repertory from a literary perspective. Currently the ensemble is touring the West Coast with a farm-to-table program called À la carte as well as Journeys. Journeys will be performed in an upcoming Northeastern US tour and at Lincoln Center’s Library of Performing Art. Mirror Visions frequently performs in France, notably concerts at Paris’ Musée Carnavalet based on the letters of Madame de Sévigné as well as concerts in the Salle des Boiseries at the Louvre. www.mirrorvisions.org

Pictured are the three singers of the ensemble, soprano Vira Slywotzky, tenor Scott Murphree, and baritone Jesse Blumberg.

Hillary Nordwell is one of San Francisco’s most active pianists. As a soloist, Hillary has made concerto appearances with orchestras including the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Port Townsend Community Orchestra. Hillary earned her masters degree in Chamber Music Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory in 2005 where with violinist Monika Gruber she founded the Eusebius Duo. Eusebius is the name Robert Schumann gave his lyrical musical self in contrast to the name Florestan, his impetuous personality.

Italian pianist Laura Magnani has performed at the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, both in Spoleto, Italy (her home town) and in Charleston, this famous festival’s American location. She is a graduate of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with further studies at the Conservatory of Perugia. A newcomer to the Bay Area she has performed at the Noontime Concerts at Old St. Mary’s and at the Italian Cultural Institute.

Jieyin Wu studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, at Tel Aviv’s Academy of Music and and earned a masters degree at the San Francisco Conservatory. She became principal harpist of the Napa Symphony in 2004 and was invited in 2006 to perform for the American Harp Society. Since she has participated in the national and international tours of the San Francisco Symphony with which she performed the pivotal harp part in Meredith Monk’s “Realm Variations” at Carnegie Hall. In 2011 she toured China with the Stanford New Music Ensemble. www.jieyinwu.com

Spring 2015

Friday, Apr 3, 7 PM. Johannas Brahms Pianist Robert Schwartz plays Brahm’s massive Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 5 (Clara Schumann gave its premiere in 1854), and adds several of Mendelssohn’s beautiful Songs Without Words.

Friday, Apr 10, 7 PM. High Octane The Friction Quartet! Our first ever string quartet concert. The program includes Beethoven’s Op. 95 (Beethoven said it should only be performed for connoisseurs!) plus a new work by Eric Tran.

Friday, Apr 17, 7 PM. The Devil Cares Pianist Jason Chiu plays Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse, Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata (Op 31, No. 2) and Liszt’s daunting Mephisto Waltz No. 1.

Friday, Apr 24, 7 PM. Eusebius Goes All-American Pianist Hillary Nordwell and violinist Monika Gruber are The Eusebius Duo. They perform works by Copland, Ives, and SFCM's Allan Crossman.

Friday, May 1, 7 PM. The Delphi Trio This prestigious ensemble performs Saint-Saens second piano trio, plus Max Stoffregen's Coyote Plan.

Friday, May 8, 7 PM. Trinity Alps Chamber Players Mozart's "Kegelstatt" Trio for piano, clarinet and cello plus Poulenc's Sonata for clarinet and Kodaly's Sonata for cello.

Friday, May 15, 7 PM. On the Cusp Pianist Allegra Chapman performs Luigi Dallapiccola's Quaderno di Annalibera for piano solo and then is joined by Laura Gaynon for the Debussy Cello Sonata and by Bethanne Walker for Boulez' Sonatine for flute.

Friday, May 22, 7 PM. SF Munich Trio This unique ensemble performs a Trio by Loeillet for cello, bassoon and piano plus works by Rachmaninoff, Arensky, Ravel, de Falla and Louis Spohr.

Friday, May 29, 7 PM. Maurice Ravel His astonishing Gaspard de la Nuit and his charming Valses Sentimentales are played by pianist Ellen Milenski. This final concert of the spring season is a benefit for 405 Shrader.

Artists of the Spring 2015 Season

The Friction Quartet’s high octane music making has been called terribly beautiful and chillingly effective. The quartet was founded in 2011 by students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and since has established itself as a purveyor of new music for string quartet. The quartet has worked with dancers in Garrett-Moulton’s A Show of Hands for six dancers, and this summer appears with West Edge Opera in Laura Kaminsky’s As One. www.frictionquartet.com

A native of Germany, Monika Gruber studied at the Hochschule for music in Weimar, the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique’ in Lyon and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Born in Washington state Hillary Nordwell is a graduate of Lawrence (Wisconson) Conservatory after which she earned a masters degree in chamber music and piano at SF Conservatory. www.eusebiusduo.org

Delphi Trio, violinist Liana Bérubé, cellist Michele Kwon and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, recently performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. The trio has appeared at festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada, and at all local chamber music venues, including a recent appearance at the Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music. Their new CD of works by Haydn and Arensky will be available. www.delphitrio.com

The Trinity Alps Chamber Players is a group of instrumentalists who come together in various combinations to perform programs in the Bay Area and northern California throughout the year. For this concert the group's founder and artistic direct pianist Ian Scarfe is joined by clarinetist Brenden Guy and cellist Hannah Addario-Berry. www.trinityalpscmf.org

Rebecca Rust, a Bay Area native, has studied with many of the great names in cello and chamber music, and has been a soloist with the Basel (CH) Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. As principal bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from 1977 to 2004 Friedrich Edelmann has played under most of the world’s great conductors. Pianist Christopher Salocks is well known in the Bay Area for his solo concerts and his collaborations with instrumentalists. www.edelmann-rust.com

Fall 2014

Friday, Oct 3, 7 PM. The Grand Polonaise Brillante. Piano virtuoso Daniel Glover plays the famous Chopin polonaise, Schubert-Liszt Wanderer Fantasy, and the Tchaikovsky Scenes from a Russian Village.

Friday, Oct 10, 7 PM. Hair of the Thing that Bit You, a new work composed by Anthony Porter played by Italian guitarist Giacomo Fiore, plus Lou Harrison’s Scenes from Nek Chand for resophonic guitar in just intonation, and works for classical, electric and prepared guitars.

Friday, Oct 17, 7 PM. Trinity Alps Chamber Players. Violinist Roy Malan, cellist Stephen Harrison and pianist Ian Scarfe perform the Shostakovich Trio No. 2.

Friday, Oct 24, 7 PM. The Eusebius Duo. Pianist Hillary Nordwell and violinist Monika Gruber perform an all Czech program — works by Dvorak, Smetana and Josef Suk.

Saturday, Nov 1, 7 PM. Three Empty Spaces Filled with Sound. Metteur en scène Roy Rallo creates a Day-of-the-Dead musical installation for 405 Shrader with pianist Ellen Milenski (the Prokofiev War Sonata), tenor Alek Shrader [sic] and baritone Philippe Sly (madrigals by Johannes Ciconia).

Friday, Nov 7, 7 PM. The Beethoven Pathétique. Pianist Laura Magnani plays this famous sonata and works by Chopin and Debussy.

Friday, Nov 14, 7 PM. Zemlinsky, Hindemith and Dallapiccola. Works for cello solo, cello and piano, and piano and voice performed by cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somers, pianist Dale Tsang and soprano Nanette McGuinness.

Friday, Nov 21, 7 PM. Trio Céleste performs the Dvorak Dumky Trio and the Beethoven Archduke Trio.

Friday, Nov 28, 7 PM. ZOFO Duet Gala, a benefit performance for 405 Shrader! Selections from Zofo's new Sono Luminus Records album ZOFORBIT.

Artists of the Fall 2014 Season

Italian guitarist Giacomo Fiore has performed at Microfest LA, Thingamajigs 2012, and the Cervo Guitar Festival. His recently released fourth recording, “iv: contemporary electric guitars,” was funded by New Music USA’s Project Grant Program. Giacomo holds a PhD from UC Santa Cruz, his dissertation is on the just intonation guitar works of Lou Harrison, James Tenney, and Larry Polansky. He is on the faculties of the SFCM, UC Santa Cruz, and the University of San Francisco. www.giacomofiore.com

The Trinity Alps Chamber Players is a group of instrumentalists who come together in various combinations to perform programs in the Bay Area and northern California throughout the year. Pianist Ian Scarfe is the Trinity Alps Chamber Players founder and director. He has participated in the Astoria Music Festival in Oregon, the Telluride Chamber Music Festival in Colorado, and currently is on the staff of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Violinist Roy Malan recently retired as concertmaster of the SF Ballet orchestra. He teaches at UC Santa Cruz. Cellist Stephen Harrison is a member of the Ives quartet and teaches at Stanford. www.trinityalpscmf.org

Violinist Monika Gruber and pianist Hillary Nordwell formed the Eusebius Duo in 2005 (Eusebius is Schumann’s lyrical pseudonym, his opposite is Florestan). A native of Germany, Monika Gruber studied at the Hochschule for music in Weimar, the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique’ in Lyon and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. Born in Washington state Hillary Nordwell is a graduate of Lawrence (Wisconson) Conservatory and earned a masters degree in chamber music and piano at SF Conservatory. www.eusebiusduo.org

Metteur en scène Roy Rallo is a stage director at San Francisco Opera (most recently The Barber of Seville). He is also known for the so-called “Fire Operas” at Oakland’s The Crucile. In Europe he has staged Ariadne auf Naxos for the Opéra National de Bordeaux and Don Pasquale at the Staatskapelle Weimar. www.roy-rallo.com

Cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somers holds a Master of Music in Chamber Music Studies and a Professional Studies Diploma from the SFCM. She has performed with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Oregon’s Astoria Music Festival. Dale Tsang, pianist, was a competitor in the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition, a semi-finalist in the 1999 Washington International Competition and the winner of the 2001 Carmel Music Society Competition. Soprano Nanette McGuinness, a Berkeley PhD, has performed roles with West Bay Opera, Opera San Luis Obispo and Pocket Opera. In concert she has performed with the San Jose Symphony and the Palo Alto Philharmonic.

Trio Céleste is currently Ensemble-in-Residence at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. Ukraine born violinist Iryna Krechkovsky is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a PhD at SUNY Stony Brook. Cellist Ross Gasworth has a masters degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has played in the symphonies of San Diego and Houston, and was principal cellist of the Waco Symphony and the YouTube Symphony. Korean born pianist Keven Kwan Loucks is a graduate of the Juilliard School, and a PhD at SUNY Stony Brook. www.trioceleste.com

Spring 2014

Friday, April 4, 7 PM is ZOFO, a one-piano-four hand team, Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi. The team has had two Grammy Award nominations and have the distinction of being Steinway artists. Their program includes Gustav Holst’s Jupiter, Urmas Sisask’s The Milky Way and Francesco Di Fiore’ The West Coast Point of View.

Friday, April 18, 7 PM is by One Art Ensemble, three artists who explore the rather limited repertory for soprano, viola and piano. The center of their program are songs by William Bolcom that were composed for soprano Benita Valente and mezzo soprano Tatiana Troyanos, though before they were finished Troyanos had died of cancer thus Bolcom replaced her voice with viola.

Friday, April 25, 7 PM The Trinity Alps Chamber Players in the configuration of clarinet, violin, cello and piano for a program of Brahms, Bartok and Mason Bates’ Red River.

Friday, May 9, 7 PM mezzo-soprano Betany Coffland sings a concert of mostly Spanish songs with her friend Aaron Caplan-Larget, a guitarist from Boston.

Friday, May 16, 7 PM The New Generation Ensemble, flute, cello and piano, follow on May 16 to perform George Crumb’s Voice of the Whale.

Friday, May 23, 7 PM viola da gambist Amy Brodo and harpsichordist Katherine Heater perform works from the French and German Baroques.

Friday, May 30, 7 PM the Eusebius Duo play the Strauss and Schumann violin sonatas (Eusebius was Schumann’s name for the lyric side of his musical personality).

Fall 2013

Friday, October 11, 7 PM violist Don Ehrlich performs the powerful viola sonata (1919) by English composer and violist Rebecca Clarke, plus mezzo soprano Betany Coffland sings five songs by Rebecca Clarke including The Seal Man (1922), a celtic legend about a seal who becomes man to lure women to a watery death.

Friday, October 25, 7 PM cellist Hannah Sloane and pianist Allegra Chapman perform the Richard Strauss Sonata in F major for cello and piano (1882, i.e. early) and the Alexander Zemlinsky Sonata in A minor for cello and piano (1894), both works are in rich, post-romantic musical terms.

Friday, November 1, 7 PM metteur en scène Roy Rallo creates an All Saint’s Day installation of Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. These famous Songs on the Death of Children will be sung by bass baritone Hadleigh Adams, tenor Phillipe Sly, and mezzo soprano Erin Johnson, all Adler Fellows well known to San Francisco Opera audiences.

Friday, November 8, 7 PM piano virtuoso Daniel Glover plays massive Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and 12 Etudes, Opus 33 (1916) by polish composer Karol Szymanowski, dedicated to pianist Alfred Cortot. The composer says his Etudes are technically difficult.

Friday, November 15, 7 PM pianist Ellen Milenski plays Rameau suite for harpsichord in A minor, the Camille Saint-Saens edition for piano, plus preludes for piano by Olivier Messiaen.

Friday, November 22, 7 PM the duoW, violinist Arianna Warsaw-Fan and cellist Meta Weiss performs works from this rare duo repertory, including the the spectacular Kodaly duet for violin and cello, Op. 7.

Friday, November 29, 7 PM Olivier Messiaen’s monumental Quartet for the End of Time played by Ian Scarfe, piano, Sasha Rattle, clarinet, Charly Akert, cello and Edwin Huizinga, violin. This highly emotional work, composed in a WWII prisoner of war camp, is recognized as one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.

Spring 2013

Friday, April 12, 7 PM pianist Ellen Milenski plays the Copland Fantasy and the Samuel Barber Excursions, a repeat of the concert she performed in November 2012. The Piano Fantasy is not for the faint of heart as it exploits Aaron Copland’s mastery of the most hermetic techniques of the mid-twentieth century. Samuel Barber’s Excursions is a pianistic tour de force composed for pianist Vladimer Horowitz.

Friday, April 19, 7 PM mezzo soprano Betany Coffland and pianist Christine McLeavey Payne perform songs by Reynaldo Hahn (lover of Marcel Proust), Hugo Wolf (from the Morike lieder), Anton Dvorak (from Pisne Milostne), and John Duke (from Poems based on Alice in Wonderland).

Friday, April 26, 7 PM violist Don Ehrlich, former assistant principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony, plays Bach Cello Suites Nos. 4, 5 and 6. This completes the Bach Cello Suite cycle he began last fall at 405 Shrader (the full cycle is available on CD at the SF Symphony store).

Friday, May 3, 7 PM pianist Daniel Glover performs Chopin's Piano Sonata in B minor (No. 3), Granados' Love and Death from "Goyescas," and the Magic Fire Scene, Siegmund's Love Song and The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre [it's the Wagner anniversary, folks!]

Friday, May 10, 7 PM pianist Ian Scarfe and friends perform Dvorak's Dumky Trio, Ravel's "Tzigane," Piazzolla's "Four Seasons of Buenos Aires" (selections), Gershwin's Three Preludes (arr. Heifetz).

Friday, May 31, 7 PM the Eusebius Duo, violinist Monika Gruber and pianist Hillary Nordwell perform the Janacek Sonata, the Grieg Sonata No.3 in C minor, op. 45 and the Ravel Sonata in G major.

Fall 2012

Monday, October 22, at 7 PM the Delphi Trio performs three American piano trios, Pierre Jalbert’s 1998 two movement piano trio (Life Cycle and Agnus Dei), Henry Cowell’s 1965 Piano Trio in Nine Short Movements, and Charles Ives 1911 Piano Trio.

Friday, October 26, at 7 PM violist Don Erlich plays the Bach unaccompanied Cello Suites nos. 1, 2 and 3. Recent scholarship suggests that these pieces were written for viola da spalla (rather than viola da gamba), thus an instrument more akin to the viola.

Friday, November 2, at 7 PM soprano Greta Feeney-Samuels and pianist Robert Mollicone perform George Crumb’s Apparition based on “Death Carol” from Walt Whitman’s "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." This performance is an All Saints Day installation by stage director Roy Rallo, llight sculptor Heather Carson and Butoh dancer Michael Curran.

Friday, November 9, at 7 PM violinist Petr Masek and pianist Ian Scarfe play the Copland Violin Sonata (1944), plus Gypsy music for the violin — Dvorak’s Sonatina, Vittorio Monti’s Czàrdàs and Fritz Kreisler’s La gitana.

Friday, November 23, at 7 PM pianist Ellen Milenski plays the Copland Piano Fantasy (1957) and the Samuel Barber Excursions of which movements I, II and IV premiered in 1945 (by Horowitz), and movement III not until 1948 (by Barber’s friend Jeanna Behrend).

Artists of the Fall 2012 Season

Haight resident Don Erhlich has recorded all six Bach cello suites on the viola [!] and has performed them at SF Conservatory of Music. Now he performs them at 405 Shrader! Mo. Ehrlich served as assistant principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years, and has been a member of the Aurora and Stanford string quartets and principal viola of the Mendocino Music Festival. He plays an ergonomically corrected Pellegrina model viola designed and made by David Rivinus of Portland, Oregon.

Violinist Petr Masek was a winner in the National Violin Competition of the Czech Republic, and performed as a soloist with the Prague Chamber Symphony Orchestra and the Pilsen Symphony Orchestra. In the U.S. he has performed with the New World Symphony in Miami, with the Fresno, Stockton, Monterey symphony orchestras, and with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. Pianist Ian Scarfe is on the staff at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is the founder of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival and performs extensively as a collaborative artist in the Bay Area.

Soprano Greta Feeney-Samuels was an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera where she performed Marzelline in Fidelio and Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, and at the San Francisco Opera Center she was a Schwabacher Debut Recitalist. She has appeared with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in the Bay Area, and with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. Pianist Robert Mollicone is an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera, having previously been a part of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera. He has worked as a coach accompanist at Boston Lyric Opera and at the Baltimore Symphony.

This past summer Roy Rallo staged The Barber of Seville at the San Francisco Opera Center. In previous seasons he is known for the so-called “Fire Operas” at Oakland’s The Crucile. In Europe he recently staged Ariadne auf Naxos for the Opéra National de Bordeaux and Don Pasquale at the Staatskapelle Weimar. Sculptor Heather Carson investigates the formal and conceptual properties of light, drawing together the historic strands of East Coast Minimalism and West Coast Light and Space. She is represented by the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles.

The Delphi Trio makes its Haight debut! The trio, violinist Liana Bérubé, cellist Michele Kwon and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur was founded in 2010. Past and upcoming concerts include performances for Chamber Music in Marin, the Old First Concerts (where they are currently in residency), Noe Valley Chamber Music (in early November) and farther away at the Dakota Sky International Piano Festival. Next spring it performs the Bach Triple Concerto with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra.

Michael Curran seeks movement in stillness and stillness in movement. He started as an improviser, and then began working with Antero Alli in Paratheatrical Laboratories, where he gained insight into the nature of spontaneous gesture, voice and movement as a task of sourcing energy. His current studies include Somatic Psychotherapy, Non-Dualism, and Hand-balancing Contortionism with Master Lu Yi.

Pianist Robert Mollicone is an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera, having been last year a part of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera. He was a Spectrum Resident Artist at Virginia Opera in 2009 and a participant in the Merola Opera Program in 2010. As well Mollicone has worked at Boston Lyric Opera, the Baltimore Symphony, and Opera North in Leeds.

Spring 2012

Friday, March 23, 7 PM. Ellen Milenski, piano. Beethoven Sonata No. 12 in A-flat, opus 26, Beethoven Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, opus 110.

Friday, March 30, 7 PM. Greta Feeney, soprano; Theodora Carson, piano. Schubert Delphine Opus 124, No. 1, Messaien Trois Melodies, Verdi Ave Maria.

Friday, May 18, 7 PM. Don Ehrlich, viola; Theodora Carson, piano. Shostakovitch, Sonata for viola, opus 147, Telemann, Sonata.

Friday, June 1, 7 PM. John Duykers, tenor; Ellen Milenski, piano. Schoenberg, Three Piano Pieces, opus 11, Schoenberg, Cabaret Songs.

Fall 2011

Friday, October 28, 7 PM. Ellen Milenski, piano. From Franz Liszt's Année de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgramage), Book II, Italy, Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa, Sonetto 47, Sonetto 104, Sonetto 123 del Petrarca, Sposalizio di Raffaello.

Friday, November 12, 7 PM. Christina Knudson, violin and Theodora Carson, piano. Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24 (the Spring), Beethoven Violin Romances Op. 40 and Op. 50, and the Brahms Scherzo from the F-A-E Sonata for Violin (1853).

Michael Milenski - Cap Sur Opera

Storage

From time to time professional music critics ask for press seats to 405 Shrader concerts. We respond that there are no press seats, and that writing reviews and reading reviews is not what 405 Shrader is about.

However Haight resident and intrepid chronicler Jack Smith had heard about 405 Shrader concerts. So he became a Fellow and attended the entire Spring 2017 season. He never asked about the appropriateness of writing about our concerts. Here are his impressions.

A Neighborhood Concert

by Jack Smith

I went to a neighborhood concert.

It was held inside a small, and by appearance, deserted storefront with blinds drawn.

First Impressions

I met someone at the front door (Michael Milenski) who asked my name. I said, “Jack” and he said, “You’re Jack Smith!” I thought, “How could he possibly know my name?” (I had made a reservation but hadn’t everyone?)

Inside about fifty people were crammed into a small space and sitting on folding chairs.

Loretta was there. She was wearing makeup and a nice scarf. This was no ordinary social event. It was something more important.

Catholic Guilt

A person recognized me. It was a woman from the Saint Agnes book club. She immediately started apologizing (to me!) for not reading last month’s book. The book had the unexciting title ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ and was written in 1936!

I told her I didn’t think anyone read that book, except myself, and that I only read it because I was stuck on a commuter train with it for five hours.

She mentioned another woman who said she did.

I said I don’t think she read it. The woman returned a wise smile.

When I had mentioned the ending of the book at the book club, no one seemed to remember it, including the woman who said she read the book.

The woman said she wants to watch the movie based on the book that I had loaned out. I paid 60 dollars for that hard-to-find DVD because I didn’t think I was going to read the book!

I said, “Watching the (1951 black-and-white and subtitled) movie will make up for not reading the book!” (I was thinking in terms of doing penance.)

The Music

The music was introduced by the piano player as one of the greatest pieces of music of the 20th Century (‘Quartet for the End of Time’ by Olivier Messiaen).

He said it was written and first performed in a German prisoner-of-war camp during WWII!

I asked, “Was it a concentration camp?”

It was not a concentration camp and the composer was not Jewish, or we probably wouldn’t have this ‘greatest piece of music’ like we probably wouldn’t have ‘the theory of relativity’ if Einstein had been captured under similar circumstances.

The composer survived the war and lived a good life afterwards.

The Performance

The performance took place in a small crowded setting with blinds drawn. It was so crowded, people could have reached out and touched the performers.

The closed blinds, the crowding, and the starkness of the room made it seem like this was something illegal.

I could easily believe the music was composed in a prison because it was mournful.

The piano player seemed to be the leader of the band (Trinity Alps Chamber Players) because the other musicians would occasionally look in his direction for their cues.

Refreshments

After the concert, in what seemed like no time at all, the folding chairs were all stacked against the walls and a long rectangular table set up in the center of the room with enough food to feed four times as many people as were present, and there was just as much wine and champagne at another smaller table (which I will christen the bar).

This happened with such speed that it was probably a ritual that had been performed many times before. I believe these concerts have been going on for seven years.

Even with all the chairs folded and leaning against the walls, there was standing room only – probably because the food table took up extra space.

The fire department would likely be interested in this, but fortunately the fire department can’t be everywhere.

The Social Hour

People started socializing. Everyone seemed to know each other.

A woman (Ellen Milenski) came over to me and said, “Hi Jack.’

I asked how she knew my name! She said her husband mouthed it to her silently when I came in while pointing to me. He must have been the one I met at the door.

I guess it’s unusual for a new person to come to these concerts. I had also become a ‘fellow,’ paying 50 dollars in yearly dues for the privilege – I thought you had to be a fellow in order to make a reservation.

The woman said the concerts attract exceptional musical talent because musicians like to play in small places to an appreciative audience. She said that some musicians especially want to play the piano that’s here because it is an exceptionally good one. I looked at the piano.

She said that you can seem to hear a familiar piece of music ‘as if for the first time’ when performed in a small setting.

The Location of the Concert

Now that I knew about the concert venue, I wondered if I would be able to find it again (405 Shrader Street). It seems pretty unlikely that something like this should even exist. I was thinking about ‘The Magic Theatre’ in Hermann Hesse’s novel ‘The Steppenwolf’ because there seemed to be similarities.

I thought about how the night had begun with strangeness. How a stranger knew my name and a woman apologized to me for not reading a book!

In ‘The Steppenwolf’ Harry Haller notices ‘The Magic Theatre’ on a side street in his home town on a strange night, but he doesn’t go in. He wonders how he could not have noticed it before and resolves go back another time. (I hadn’t noticed this place before and it’s been here seven years!) Over the next several days and months he looks for it again but he can’t find it. Then on another strange night it just appears again!

In the Magic Theatre Harry Haller discovers what he had not learned about himself. At this concert, I discovered what I had not learned about music, probably what Stravinsky was trying to get across in ‘Rite of Spring.’ I heard ‘Rite of Spring’ in my head differently for the first time.

The Audience

During the social hour, I looked around and only recognized two people. I looked at each person present. The person who told me about the concert (Loretta, no surprise here) was there, and the person I knew from the Saint Agnes book club was also there.

Everyone seemed to be from the neighborhood, yet I recognized only two people!

A man told me he had lived in the neighborhood for years and had only met his neighbor, who lived across the street from him also for years, for the first time at these concerts!

Is attending these concerts (like going to The Magic Theatre) a ‘rite of passage’?

The Price of Admission

During the social hour, the man I had met at the door said, “Now it’s time for the important thing!”

He pulled on a string and an empty paint can fell off a ledge above the door and hung suspended from the ceiling.

People started putting money in the can.

The advertised price of admission was ‘a voluntary only’ 20 dollars, but I can’t believe everyone didn’t make the voluntary contribution, due to the composition of the audience. You can tell by looking at someone if they are going to pay.

If fifty people put twenty dollars in the can, that is only one thousand dollars. There were four musicians and rent has to be paid. The musicians were basically playing for free. I thought about all that time practicing.

The Next Concert

This concert venue is one of San Francisco’s best kept secrets, and hopefully not something like Hermann Hesse’s ‘Magic Theatre,’ because I would like to be able to find it again next week.

The Second Concert

405 Shrader Street may be more like the Magic Theatre than I realized. Apparently, going there can also result in an altered state of consciousness!

The concert venue this time seemed completely different, yet I suspect nothing had changed.

I remembered it being stark with no decorations and fifty people in the audience, packed so closely together that people in the front row could reach out and touch the performers.

I remembered it was dark.

I remembered wishing I was in a tee shirt because it was so warm.

This time I noticed there was a four-foot empty space between the performers and the audience.

I counted only 35 people in the audience and no empty chairs, probably the same number of chairs (and by inference people) that were there the last time.

There were also four modern art paintings hanging on the walls. The place wasn’t stark.

And the lights were on for the entire performance.

It wasn’t too warm and almost everyone was wearing a coat.

I looked around.

I had balcony seating this time (eight inches above floor level on a platform by the window).

I noticed a message printed in large letters on the wall, “Here begins a treatise, how death comes to summon everyone . . .”

Most people in the audience were between 75 and 85. I am only 69 and hopefully too young to be summoned.

The age of people in the audience contrasted with the age of the performers (‘One Found Sound Wind Quintet’) who were in their late twenties or early thirties. Because of their youth, they probably laughed at the message on the wall.

I noticed there were a lot of couples. Women outlive men by this age, but that did not seem to be the case here – people here had found a way to cheat death.

There was another strange thing about this group. Wives tended to be sitting to the left of their husbands in almost every instance, like the convention of queens sitting to the left of kings on the throne.

I wondered if I was being too observant, or if the devil is in the details.

Attending just two of these concerts is not going to be enough to figure out what’s going on here.

The Third Concert

[Jack did not attend the third concert.]

The Fourth Concert

I can usually tell by the way things begin if something strange is about to happen. There is usually a warning.

The Wine Glasses

I poured myself a glass of wine.

The wine glass resembled the little glasses used in Catholic churches to hold prayer candles.

I wondered if the glasses were carefully selected, and a symbol to the initiated.

I wondered if 405 Shrader is like a church, a temple to music.

Preliminaries

Michael was impatient for the concert to begin. It seemed he needed it to start immediately.

He kept asking what time it was. Someone said it was two minutes till seven. I looked at my i-phone (more accurate). I said it was four minutes till seven and showed Michael the i-phone display. This disappointed him. It was obvious he preferred it to be two minutes till seven.

One minute before seven, Michael locked the front door and began his introduction to the concert.

He was immediately interrupted by someone pounding on the door.

Michael let the person in because it wasn’t seven yet. He pointed to an empty chair for him to sit in which was in the corner of the room.

I said out loud, “You have to sit in the corner because you’re late!” (He wasn’t actually late). Someone laughed.

The First Musical Piece

(Or Sermon)

In his last correspondence to me Michael said, “Now next you’ve got to write about the music itself, only the music.”

Michael introduced the first musical piece (‘Piano Variations’ by Aaron Copland) as being as hard as nails to perform. He said when Leonard Bernstein used to play it, he would give people two minutes to leave before he started because it is usually performed badly.

I’m not sure what ‘as hard as nails’ means, but you could describe listening to the piece as like listening to nails being driven in with a hammer, because the pianist hammered the music out on the keyboard. I was surprised he didn’t break out into a sweat (and he was wearing long sleeves).

I didn’t realize a piano could sound so loud.

The piece seemed to indicate something bad was about to happen.

I overheard a woman telling the pianist afterwards that listening to the piece was like visiting a murder scene for her.

The man who came ‘late’ was probably also feeling a sense of dread from the music because he said later he remembered he had forgotten to lock his car in his haste to be on time. He probably felt the music was directed at him, the way people sometimes think sermons in a church are directed at them.

The Second Piece

The second piece was by Ludwig van Beethoven (‘Eroica Variations’).

I thought it was the best piece of the night, maybe because it seemed mathematical. I felt I could predict where it was going.

I noticed the pianist (Lino Rivera) was playing the piece without looking at a score. He wasn’t turning pages with his hand.

Because of the complexity of the piece, and the length of the piece, I began to wonder if the pianist was a genius savant with an uncanny memory, or if he was simply working out the piece in his head as he played it, the way I’ve seen scientists fill blackboards with equations that follow logically from a first equation.

As in a dream, I was back in in an upper division physics class at UC Berkeley, where a professor was doing just that with an equation before a room full of astonished students, myself among them. It was 1970 . . . .

An Interruption

At the conclusion of the second piece, the man who came in ‘late’ asked Michael to let him out because he wanted to check on his car. Michael opened the front door and another man waiting outside shot in like an escaping cat. All Michael had to do was open the door a crack for the man to shot in.

Are people that enthusiastic to hear these concerts?

Michael pointed to a chair for the man to sit in.

It seemed there was going to be a pause while the man who left checked on his car.

The pianist asked if he was coming back.

Michael said yes, but to start playing anyway because the man could listen outside the door. The empty chair Michael directed the new person to was the man’s seat who left, so there was no place for him to sit anyway if he did come back inside.

The Last Piece

The final piece (‘Variations on “Mayn Yingele” My Little Son’ by Frederic Rzewski) was the one most talked about by everyone afterwards.

The pianist played the piano in a way I have never heard a piano played before.

The piano sounded like an electronically amplified beehive.

It seemed the piano was in danger of melting from vibration.

After the concert, I asked Ellen, Michael’s wife, if she was worried the piano might catch on fire – she said she was only worried a string might break.

I touched the body of the piano and the strings after the concert, to see how warm they were. They were cold.

Loretta wondered if this piece is available on CD. I said probably not because I don’t think anyone else could play it.

Ellen asked the pianist how he did it (she is herself a great pianist according to Loretta). He tried to explain with his hands.

Donations

After the concert, Michael unlocked the front door and the man who left to check on his car came inside. He had been listening to the last piece from outside the door, just as Michael had said he would.

Michael pulled on a string and the empty paint can for donations fell off the ledge over the front door, missing Ellen’s head by inches.

Someone said to her, “That was close. Weren’t you scared?” She said, “I’m used to it.” Michael and Ellen sit at the same place every concert, near the front door.

Michael is taking a chance with the can, because behind every great man is a great woman.

Refreshments

At refreshment time, I was once again amazed at the quality of the hors d’oeuvres. There were even truffles.

A Conversation with the Pianist

I asked the pianist how he was able to play the Beethoven piece, which went on for almost a half hour, without using a score.

He said it just takes practice.

I asked how much practice.

He said about 30 hours.

I would have thought much, much more (if it were even possible).

Loretta said it’s like remembering lines in a play. She said, when acting in a play, if you don’t remember the lines, you improvise.

The pianist said that’s what he does, and that no two live performances are the same.

I suspected something like this.

I even tried to check my suspicions out during the performance at great personal risk (Michael was sitting nearby).

I got out my i-phone and used the ‘Shazam’ app to see if it could identify the piece.

I did this only once, because I thought that by looking at my i-phone during the performance, it might seem like I was bored, and I wasn’t.

The app should have identified the piece (because it’s a Beethoven piece), but it didn’t.

This is what you would expect if there were improvisations.

Summing Up

And so ends another concert at 405 Shrader, San Francisco’s own version of Hermann Hesse’s ‘The Magic Theatre.’

The Fifth Concert

The concerts at 405 Shrader Street are so strange that it seems I should record the account of the fifth concert backwards - beginning at the end.

At the End

At the end of the concert, people brought out refreshments, and they began to lay them on a table.

Since the refreshment table at the last few concerts was something to behold, I decided to wait a few minutes before leaving, although I wasn’t planning on eating anything.

A woman placed a bowl filled with round food items on the table.

They looked like date balls.

The woman laid a note in the bowl which said, “Shark Meatballs”!

I had to try one of these.

I stuck a toothpick in one. It was ‘gamey’ the way people describe the difference of buffalo from beef.

Another person tried a meatball and the woman said, “Put some sauce on it! There’s nothing wrong with the sauce!”

“Nothing wrong with the sauce”? Why did she say that? I’ve come to expect the unusual at these concerts and to pay close attention to details.

I tried one with sauce. It was delicious both ways.

The Piano

I never noticed before how large the grand piano is, but that is probably because I lacked the proper perspective. The pianist provided the proper perspective, because she was petite.

Sitting at the piano, she gave the appearance of being on a behemoth, and by her playing, in full control of it. At the end of the concert, she received a standing ovation.

I wondered if she felt a sense of power playing (and in full control of) such a large piano.

The Pianist

The pianist (Monica Chew) is a beautiful woman. You would want to be seated in front for this performance (if you were a young man).

I noticed several older men (seated in front) closed their eyes during the performance to better concentrate on the music.

This is in keeping with what Michael had told me to do when writing about the concerts. He said, “Write about the music itself, only the music.”

I couldn’t see whether Michael (sitting in front) closed his eyes during the concert, but I didn’t. (Sorry Michael, I’m still a young man - I’m only 69.)

The Music

The high point of the concert came at the beginning when the pianist played the Andante of Five Preludes, Op. 18 by Alexander Scriabin. There would be several other andantes that night, even an andante cantabile!

The Andante of Five Preludes was so good that I lost no time in listening to it again on YouTube when I got home.

The End at the Beginning

And so ends this piece at the beginning, with the Andante of Five Preludes!

The Sixth Concert

I looked at my watch. I was six minutes early.

Michael said I was the last person on the list of attendees who hadn’t already arrived.

I happen to know how important that is to Michael.

It means he can start the concert early, if only by a few minutes, and start listening to the music!

My Fate

There was just one spot left to sit in. Had I come earlier, I would have had to decide where to sit, exercising freewill. By arriving last, fate decided that for me.

The guy next to me said we had the best seats in the house. It was front row, within touching distance of the musicians, facing the violinists.

The guy said he had determined where the best seats were by attending the concert earlier in the day, and that he wanted to sit in the best seats for the second performance.

These were the best seats for several reasons.

They were so close to the performers that you could hear the music as the musicians heard it, which is different than how the audience hears it. I could hear the hollow wooden boxes of the violins, viola, and cello vibrating separately from the strings.

There was also another dimension to the performance that you could only fully experience from our seats, which was a shadow concert being played out on the floor. Three bright lights on the ceiling, pointed directly at the performers, cast shadows of their movements on the floor. It was like watching a Walt Disney animation of the music.

The Performers

(Working Men)

The four performers (‘The Jupiter Ensemble’) were middle-aged men. All previous performers at 405 Shrader had been very young.

In appearance, the musicians seemed like construction workers to me (three of the four) and played music as a hobby (but they could really play).

If they were construction workers, and if I were to try to guess each one’s specialty, I would guess the stocky built one to be a plumber (he was Russian, played the violin, and wore a Losif Andriasov tee shirt). He appeared to have twice the strength of the other musicians, and his musical notes were the loudest and most purposefully played.

The skinny musician with a trimmed mustache and beard looked like an electrician to me. He played second string violin.

The musician with a thoughtful demur resembled a college professor and played the viola - I would guess he was a general contractor.

The fourth musician looked like a professional musician and played the cello. He had the same kind of hair that Paderewski had of which Edward McDowell said, “Some call it hair. I call it pianism.”

The Music

To me this was a Tchaikovsky concert because of the longest and best piece.

But I suspect several people present would nominate the encore, a score by Josif Andriasov, as the best piece. One woman (Denise) said that she was going straight home after the concert (two blocks) to get money to buy a CD from the musicians with that piece on it.

The Tchaikovsky piece (String Quartet #2 in F, Op. 22) was written at the height of his powers, shortly after ‘Swan Lake,’ and a musician said it was one of Tchaikovsky’s own favorite pieces.

The beautiful melodies in the first movement of String Quartet #2, carried by the violins, clearly identify the piece as by Tchaikovsky.

After the Concert

After the concert, the woman who was leaving to get money for a CD, said it was stifling warm during the concert, and asked why I didn’t wear just a tee shirt, as I had said I was going to.

I said it was my fate (not a bad thing this time) to sit next to the best dressed man present, and that it would have been inappropriate to take off my long sleeved shirt there.

To indicate the well-dressed man, I said, “He’s the one wearing the two colored shoes.” She said she noticed the shoes when she came in.

I said he probably comes all the way from Marin County for the concerts, and she laughed. (I have heard that someone actually does come all the way from Marin County.)

The Seventh Concert

It's a Strange, Strange World

Michael asked why it took so long for me to discover 405 Shrader Street, since I lived only a few blocks away. I thought I had made that very clear in my first piece about the concerts, or did he think I was kidding with the comparison of 405 Shrader Street to ‘The Magic Theater’?

I asked Michael if he believed in karma, and he stopped asking why it took so long for me to discover 405 Shrader Street. It’s a strange world we live in.

It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack. What prophetic lyrics from 1968. This is song that actually charted in the USA has a poignant message about . . .. (See Attachments)

Two People I Attended the Concert With

A man was seated to my right, and I said to him, “There are a lot of young people here tonight.”

A woman to my left overheard this and said, “What do you mean by young?”

I looked at her and said, “You.”

She took this as a complement. Sometimes the obvious needs stating.

The Woman

I asked the woman if she played a musical instrument.

She said she played the violin. (I believe her husband also played the trombone).

I have heard that the violin is the most difficult musical instrument to play of them all, and I have heard sad stories of children missing out on valuable playtime, because mothers would make them practice long hours.

I asked the woman if she learned to play the violin as a little girl.

She said she started playing at eleven.

I asked if it was torture, since she was eleven.

She said no, that she liked playing the violin.

So much for stereotypes.

Doctors of Music

Two brothers were this night’s performers (Irrera Brothers). They looked alike and had matching beards and matching eye glass frames.

The program notes referred to them as doctors of music. I took this to mean they had PhDs in music from a university. The program notes also stated that they had played at Carnegie Hall. It doesn’t get any better than this.

One brother played the violin and the other the piano. It seemed they could read each other’s mind because their playing meshed perfectly, particularly on the first piece, Chaconne in G minor by Tomaso Antonio Vitali (probably their signature piece and available on CD from them, along with the last piece they played).

The Best Seat in the House

Once again, I had the best seat in the house (probably due to karma). I could watch the pianist from two directions simultaneously, because the underside of the piano’s open cover had been polished so perfectly it was like a mirror, and using it as a mirror I could look straight down towards the keyboard, as well as straight ahead.

The Music

The pianist and the violinist played without restraint. Notes were pounded out on the piano and the violin’s strings were stroked with ferocity. You could probably hear the music from across the street, although the doors and windows were closed.

The final piece (Bow Shock by Russell Scarbrough) is worthy of special mention. It was written just for the ‘doctors of music,’ and they gave the world premiere of it at Carnegie Hall in 2013!

And so ended another evening at 405 Shrader Street.

Attachments

"Master Jack" 4 Jacks and a Jill at www.youtube.com

The Eighth Concert

I didn’t think there was a classical music concert Michael didn’t like, but at the beginning of this concert, Michael said he was bored by a concert the night before.

Michael saying this was the first thing that stood out at the concert.

I wondered if it was the evening’s leitmotif, which ‘would’ occur at the beginning.

The Marimba

An instrument I had never seen before (a marimba) was set up in the room. It was about the size of a piano and looked ‘experimental’ (risky). This reinforced my suspicions about the leitmotif.

It had large wooden bars across the top and hollow vertical tubes underneath. It sounded something like a pipe organ.

It is played similar to the way drums are played but with two mallets in each hand, not just one. This requires a fantastic degree of dexterity.

The First Set

The first set consisted of two short pieces on the marimba (‘The Juggler’ and ‘Play of Triads’ from ‘Six Etudes’ by Peter Klatzow). They were like warmup pieces because the best was yet to come.

The Second Set

In the second set the marimba was accompanied by the cello. The cello playing was fantastic (by Saul Richmnond-Rakerd). The marimba seemed like background music to the cello.

For some reason, the music (‘Mariel’ by Osvaldo Golijov) reminded me of the music played at FDR’s funeral (Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’).

As it would turn out, the music was written in memory of someone that had died unexpectedly in a car accident.

The Third Set

In the third set the music took off.

A Bach piece was played, modified for the marimba (‘Partita in D minor’ for solo violin).

Bach pieces can be very, very complex and it’s risky to play them from memory.

The musician (Tim Dent) played from memory!

About ten minutes into the piece, the musician shouted, “Aargh! Aargh!” as if in pain. He played a little longer and then shouted, “Aargh! Aargh!” again and stopped playing altogether.

The musician had lost his way. Perhaps he initially played just one note wrong and, a Bach piece being like the progression of logical steps in the solution of a mathematical equation, the note had a cascading effect.

(If it was a single note that did all this, I wonder what note it was.)

The musician stopped playing and referred to the score, thoroughly embarrassed (perhaps even a little suicidal).

It happened a second time, complete with “Aargh! Aargh!”

Getting lost (twice) made it seem I was right about the leitmotif.

The Completion of the Set

But after the second mistake, the musician recovered and finished strong.

He did so well (judging from the standing ovation at the end) that he will probably be invited back.

The third set was overall very, very satisfying, and not disaster.

It seemed fate had been cheated.

Cheating fate is going to be a hard act to follow.

A Similar Performance

I was reminded of Patti Smith’s performance of ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Going Fall’ at Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize ceremony, millions of people watching. She forgot the words to the song she was singing and had to start over. (She said she was overcome with emotion by living the song as she sang it.)

This should have been disastrous, but the performance made the song even more famous after going viral on the Internet.

(See Attachments for soloist Patti Smith performing a moving rendition of Bob Dylans 'A Hard Rain's A-Going Fall' — now if somebody would just do the same thing for Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row.’)

Afterwards

After the concert, a person in the audience asked the musician to play just one note on the marimba. He struck a wooden bar with a mallet one time. Someone shouted out “A3!” He struck a different wooden bar. Another person shouted “D2!” The audience at these concerts is very sophisticated! I suppose, if I knocked with my knuckles on the wooden table in front of me, someone in that audience would be able to tell me what note it was.

When the musician finished answering questions I came forward to touch the wooden bars of the marimba, because they were made of rosewood. Different wood has a different feel.

Someone else was also touching the rosewood bars, an older man.

He said he knows of people who save up their whole lives to buy a marimba.

I said, “Really?”

He said, “Well, their whole lives up to age thirty.”

I said, “If they bought one, how could they afford to get it tuned.”

The musician had said only two people in California know how to tune a marimba. He has to ship his to Arcadia to get it tuned. Tuning involves shaving off wood from the underside of the bars. I wondered, “What if you shave off too much?”

Final Remarks

I didn’t want to leave without saying something to the musician, if only to acknowledge his presence.

I said, in reference to his dexterity with the mallets, “I bet you’re good with chopsticks.”

He said, “I’m OK.”

I said, “You’re probably better than the Japanese.”

He said, “Yes!”

Attachments

Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall at the 2016 Nobel Prize Award Ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall. Copyright ...

The Ninth Concert

Before the concert, I was sure about one thing, there wouldn’t be a grand piano because it would fall through the floor.

The concert was to be held in a 150-year-old wooden shack (a shrimp drying room) over the ocean. The shack had a leaking tin roof and half-inch gaps between the outside wall board, with hundreds of knot holes in them, allowing the wind and the rain to blow through.

Michael said he had selected this spot because of its ‘perfect’ acoustics. He should know because for twenty years he was the director of the Long Beach Opera.

He said it had been a dream of his to hold a concert here ever since he saw the place years ago.

Is Michael crazy?

Someone (Ed) had made all this possible because he had become a fellow at 405 Shrader Street, and he just happened to be in charge of the site.

Ed said he lives nearby in San Rafael.

So, Ed and his wife are the ones rumored to come all the way from Marin County to attend the concerts at 405 Shrader Street in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure the rumor was true.

I said to Ed, “Do you come to every concert?”

Ed said, “Yes!”

The Grand Piano

There was a grand piano! Or, at least I thought there was.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I checked to make sure. Because of its shape, it was definitely a grand piano and not a lighter, rectangular one.

I walked over to it.

The ‘piano’ was a harpsichord. I had been fooled.

Once again I was completely disoriented by these concerts.

The musician that owned the harpsichord said it weighed only 135 pounds.

The Program

The program was mostly Vivaldi harpsichord music accompanied by the cello (Sonata for cello in G minor, Sonata for cello in A minor, and Sonata for cello in B-flat major).

Michael had decided, probably years ago when he first laid eyes on this place, that it would be perfect for 350-year-old Baroque chamber music (Vivaldi, etc.).

My introduction to Vivaldi occurred when I was a teenager and when classical music was referred to as ‘longhaired music’ (before the Beatles) – probably because several conductors had long hair.

In high school, I had the habit of listening to KPFK-FM late at night, and at 2 AM every night, KPFK signed off by playing the same music score every time. Listening to it over and over was addictive. Sometimes I would stay up late just to listen to it. It was Vivaldi’s ‘Concerto for Diverse Instruments.’ (See Attachments)

Vivaldi, known as "The Red Priest" because of the color of his hair. No wonder his music is so joyous--he was obliged to work as a music teacher at an all gi...

Besides Vivaldi, there were two other pieces of 350-year-old chamber music that were played only on the harpsichord (Toccata Settima by Michelangelo Rossi and Cento Partite sopra Passacagli by Girolamo Frescobaldi).

Listening to the music, I had the distinct impression I was 350 years in the past. Perhaps I had been hypnotized by the repetitious sound of the waves under the shack.

I felt I was in a small room with royalty, the way this music was probably originally intended to be performed.

The Musical Instruments

This concert can never be repeated.

It would have been symbolic of the musicians (Eric Anderson, Baroque cello and Derek Tam, harpsichord) to set their instruments on fire at the end of the concert (like Jimmy Hendrix did with his guitars).

The concert can’t be repeated because no two days are alike. The outside elements, the sound of the waves, the birds, and the wind infused themselves into the room as the music was played.

The cello is also one of a kind. No other cello like it exists. It was custom made to the musician’s specifications (so he could play both modern and classical music with it, and so it would also fit his hand perfectly).

The harpsichord was a ‘French’ harpsichord. There are also German and Italian harpsichords, and probably a lot more.

Vivaldi was Italian.

Someone asked, “Should Vivaldi only be played on an Italian harpsichord?”

The answer is no, because the French harpsichord was perfect for the concert.

China Camp

There were three aspects to the concert.

The music was just one aspect.

There was the aspect of China Camp itself.

I had seen pictures of nearby Sausalito when it was a whaling town, and yet I couldn’t imagine how it would have seemed in real life.

China Camp, with its cluster of old buildings, was like the pictures of Sausalito, but in real life.

After the concert, I told someone about China Camp and they said, “I didn’t think that world still existed anyway in the Bay Area.”

The surrounding area was picturesque. There were strange rock formations, pebble beaches with lots of sea shells, a San Francisco Bay island I had never seen before, and strange vegetation including trees near the water with what looked like petrified bark (made of stone) that were still alive (had green leaves).

The Food at the Concert

The third aspect of the concert was dinner

The food that people brought to this concert was stunning. This group tends to bring homemade dishes and not store-bought items. Dinner was a twenty course meal of main dishes.

Someone asked me (Doerte) if I was going to write about the dinner the way I had written about dinner at Michael’s. I said, “I can’t write about this dinner like that. There’s too much food here. It would wear me out!”

But I will mention some of the highlights. There was quiche made with spinach, kale, and artichoke hearts (kale was the secret ingredient, and why it was so good, according to the preparer), crab salad which didn’t skimp on crab meat, baked eggplant with a special sauce, perfectly cooked fava beans, roasted sweet potatoes, sautéed vegetables, and exotic cheeses.

Someone said, “It’s like a Roman banquet!”

I said, “I’m looking for someone to peal me a grape.”

Another person said, “Where’s the shrimp?”

I said, “Why would someone bring shrimp to a shrimp fishing site?”

There was even a bartender, a young woman, who said it was worth bartending just to have dinner here.

Final Thoughts

This concert was probably the grand final of the season (and Michael is not crazy).

I will attempt to imagine what comes next.

If these concerts are like a supper, there have been eight appetizers and the main course.

Left to go is dessert and an after dinner drink.

Attachments

Vivaldi Concerto for Diverse Instruments at www.youtube.com

The Tenth Concert

Ellen was missing! She had accompanied Michael to every single 405 Shrader Street concert, and for the first time she was missing.

My guest (Norm Goldblatt, a former PhD physics professor at a New York City university) said, “Maybe she sacrificed her seat for me.”

I had asked Michael if Norm could attend at the last minute, and Michael said he could because there had been a cancellation.

Maybe there wasn’t a cancellation.

Michael walked around the room pointing his finger here and there. To me, it seemed he was mentally trying to figure out if everyone had arrived.

But this was not so apparent to Norm.

When Michael got to Norm, Norm said, “Why is he pointing at me? Is it because his wife gave up her seat for me?”

Ellen showed up at the last minute.

A dramatic last-minute entry was probably planned because Ellen was going to be a performer at this concert.

The Program

We looked at the program.

Norm said, “It’s all Bach. It doesn’t get any better than that!”

Norm was right. The best music played this season would be played tonight.

Our Seats

We had arrived 20 minutes early, yet we were too late to get seats in front.

We sat in back behind the piano.

This allowed me to observe Eileen’s hands as she played the piano.

Her fingers were nimble and her hands young.

You could not tell her age from her hands, like you can with most women.

We were so close to the piano that I could see handwritten notes in pencil on the music score.

I asked Norm if he read music.

He said he did.

I said, “Then you can tell if Ellen makes a mistake!”

Norm

Norm has an uncanny ability to charm women.

When we sat down at our seats, I intentionally let him have the seat next to a French woman who collects art (Monique), and I sat on the end.

As expected, the woman took an immediate interest in Norm and started talking to him. She talked to him for a long time after the concert too.

Michael

Norm asked me if Michael played a musical instrument.

I said, “Of course he does. He can do anything. He was the director of the Long Beach Opera for twenty years.”

Ellen, just inches away from us at the piano, overheard this and said, “Michael doesn’t play a musical instrument, but he tinkers around.”

The First Piece

The first piece was a Bach piano solo played by Ellen (‘Prelude and Fugue in E minor, No. 12 from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered-Clavier').

When I heard Ellen play the piece, I thought, “She can really play.” This was an understatement.

In Michael’s introductory remarks, he said there are 24 preludes and fugues to the Bach piece Ellen was going to play.

Ellen said there are 48.

Michael said the last 24 don’t count because they were composed twenty years later and belong to Book 2!

Norm said, “I can tell they are married.”

(After the concert, in his closing remarks, Michael said he is accepting donations for hanging the piano – i.e., tuning it. Ellen said, “It’s hanging the hammers, not hanging the piano!”)

The Second Piece

The second piece was a Bach violin solo (‘Chaconne in D minor for solo violin’) played by Alisa Rose.

Michael introduced the piece as a pillar of violin music. Then he said it’s a pillar of Western Civilization.

The Third Piece

After the violin solo, Ellen sat down again at the piano.

She played the same violin piece transcribed for solo piano.

This may have been the best live piano performance I have ever heard.

She played the piece from memory.

Norm said, “I can’t even remember where my car keys are anymore.”

Encores

There were two encore performances.

Ellen played Bach’s ‘Awake, the Voice is Calling Us’ (Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme). It had nice melodies.

Alisa played an original piece ‘she herself’ had composed.

Risky Behavior

During the violin piece, I noticed Norm looking at his cell phone.

I thought, “If Michael sees that . . . .”

Norm said later he was taking a picture of the violin’s shadow on the floor.

Norm notices little details like I do.

Norm and Ellen

After the concert, Norm and Ellen talked about the music. Their conversation was out of my depth. Norm was once a classical music disk jockey (on an FM radio station in New Your City).

I overheard Norm tell Ellen that it was incredible she was able to perform the ‘Chaconne’ solo on one piano. He said Eugene Ormandy used an entire orchestra to do it.

I Shouldn't Have Been Surprised

Outside 405 Shrader, someone pulled up in a car and rolled down their window.

They said, “Hi Jack. Hi Norm.”

It was someone we knew from work!

Work is fifty miles away in Santa Clara!

I thought, “What are the odds of a meeting like this occurring by chance?”

I am used to strange things happening at Michael’s concerts, but I was still caught by surprise.

The first time I attended a concert at 405 Shrader Street, the experience was so strange that I saw similarities between it and Hermann Hesse’s ‘Magic Theater’ (described in ‘The Steppenwolf’)

A Life Changing Event

The seventh season is now over and there should be a return to normal reality, but maybe not. Now that I think about it, meeting the person from work occurred ‘after’ the concert was over and ‘outside.’

Perhaps I have attended one too many concerts at 405 Shrader Street.

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Aperitif Concerts for the Neighborhood

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An Account of Spring 2017

A Neighborhood Concert by Jack Smith

The Second Concert

The Third Concert

The Fourth Concert

The Fifth Concert

The Sixth Concert

The Seventh Concert

The Eighth Concert

The Ninth Concert

The Tenth Concert

Aperitif Concerts
for the Neighborhood

A Neighborhood Concert

by Jack Smith