Playbill Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011

mondavi center

2o11–12

Ballet Preljocaj: Blanche Neige Photo by Jean-Claude Carbonne

program Issue 1: sept-Oct 2011 5

Return To Forever IV with Zappa Plays Zappa

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Ricky skaggs and kentucky thunder

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wayne shorter quartet

19

alexander string quartet

27

yamato

30

Jonathan Franzen

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San francisco symphony

ellor

from the chanc

Linda P.B. Katehi UC Davis Chancellor

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t is my pleasure to welcome you to the 10th season of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis.

Since it opened its doors in 2002, the Mondavi Center has presented a remarkable range of artists and thinkers enriching the cultural life of our campus, community and the entire Sacramento region.

Indeed, before the Mondavi Center, great performers like the New York Philharmonic and cultural landmarks like Ballet Preljocaj’s Blanche Neige passed our region by. Today, those same performers seek out an opportunity to appear here on the UC Davis campus.

But presenting great performances is only a part of the Mondavi Center’s mission.

In fact, much of its important work takes place outside the venue, by bringing artists into the community, work that is closely aligned with the UC Davis Philosophy of Purpose: “the generation, advancement, dissemination and application of knowledge.” Whether it is Yo-Yo Ma leading a

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master class, Delfeayo Marsalis mentoring young jazz musicians or the Mark Morris Dance Company launching its Dance for PD program (which offers dance classes to those with Parkinson’s disease), the impact of the Mondavi Center reaches far beyond the artistry found on its stages.

I am happy to share that the Center has been recognized for this engagement work with a substantial three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

While this grant focuses on classical music, the Mondavi Center is working continually to find new ways of engaging audiences of all ages with the entire range of the performing arts.

It is wonderful that UC Davis’s Mondavi Center is able to share the arts with our community in so many meaningful ways.

Enjoy the season!

MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Photo: Lynn Goldsmith

Before the Curtain Rises, Please Play Your Part • As a courtesy to others, please turn off all electronic devices.

• If you have any hard candy, please unwrap it before the lights dim.

• Please remember that the taking of photographs or the use of any type of audio or video recording equipment is strictly prohibited.

• Please look around and locate the exit nearest you.

That exit may be behind you, to the side or in front of you. In the unlikely event of a fire alarm or other emergency please leave the building through that exit.

• As a courtesy to all our patrons and for your safety, anyone leaving his or her seat during the performance may not be re-admitted to his/her ticketed seat while the performance is in progress.

info

Donors 530.754.5438 Donor contributions to the Mondavi Center presenting program help to offset the costs of the annual season of performances and lectures and provide a variety of arts education and outreach programs to the community.

Friends of Mondavi Center 530.754.5000 Contributors to the Mondavi Center are eligible to join the Friends of Mondavi Center, a volunteer support group that assists with educational programs and audience development.

Volunteers 530.754.1000 Mondavi Center volunteers assist with numerous functions, including house ushering and the activities of the Friends of Mondavi Center and the Arts and Lectures Administrative Advisory Committee.

Tours 530.754.5399 One-hour guided tours of the Mondavi Center’s Jackson Hall, Vanderhoef Studio Theatre and Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby are given regularly by the Friends of Mondavi Center.

Reservations are required.

elcome to the 10th season of performances at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis.

Every season is special, but 2011-12 marks some particularly important milestones for the Mondavi Center. Perhaps none is more distinctive than the U.S. premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s masterful story ballet Blanche Neige on March 17, 2012. While the beauty and passion of this performance will be unparalleled—and you will certainly hear more about it as the season goes on—what is particularly exciting for me is the knowledge that, 10 years ago, in the days before the Mondavi Center, we would not have been able to bring a production of this size to our region, let alone hope to present the U.S. premiere! Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors (listed on page 48), audience members from around Northern California will have a chance to share in two performances that combine extraordinary dancing, visual art and music.

We will mark this special occasion with our first fundraising event in five years, the Mondavi Gala, which we present in partnership with our campus neighbor, the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. With RMI’s help, we will be complementing Ballet Preljocaj’s extraordinary dance performance with a dinner highlighting great wine and food from our region and our state. The event will also serve to launch our 10th anniversary celebration—more about that later, but be assured, Associate Executive Director Jeremy Ganter and I are well down the road planning a 10th anniversary season for 2012-13 that will truly honor this major milestone.

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Accommodations for Patrons with Disabilities 530.754.2787 • TDD: 530.754.5402 In the event of an emergency, patrons requiring physical assistance on the Orchestra Terrace, Grand Tier and Upper Tier levels please proceed to the elevator alcove refuge where this sign appears. Please let us know ahead of time for any special seating requests or accommodations.

See page 51 for more information.

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from the directo

before the show

Of course, there is no shortage of great performances ahead this season!

This playbill alone covers two jazz supergroups, Return to Forever IV and the Wayne Shorter Quartet; the instrumental wizardry of Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder; the return of two treasured Bay Area-based partners, the San Francisco Symphony and the Alexander String Quartet; National Book Award-winner and author of The Corrections and Freedom, Jonathan Franzen; and a spectacular celebration of Japanese Taiko drumming, Yamato—a great show, incidentally, to give kids their first taste of the Mondavi Center experience.

These opening weeks provide just a glimpse at the fantastic season ahead. If you are a subscriber or donor, we thank you for taking this journey with us. For all our friends coming to their first Mondavi Center show during these opening weeks, we hope your experience inspires you to come back many more times this year.

Lost and Found Hotline 530.752.8580 Recycle We reuse our playbills! Thank you for returning your recycled playbill in the bin located by the main exit on your way out.

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Don Roth, Ph.D. Executive Director Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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AETNA ANTHEM BLUE CROSS PRUDENT BUYER BEECH STREET BLUE CROSS LUMENOS BLUE SHIELD CHAMPUS TRI WEST CIGNA FIRST HEALTH COVENTRY GREAT WEST HEALTH PLAN HEALTH NET HEALTH NET ELECT & SELECT INTERPLAN MULTIPLAN PACIFICARE PACIFIC FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL CARE UNITED HEALTH CARE WESTERN HEALTH ADVANTAGE AETNA ANTHEM BLUE CROSS PRUDENT BUYER BEECH STREET BLUE CROSS LUMENOS BLUE SHIELD CHAMPUS TRI WEST CIGNA FIRST HEALTH COVENTRY GREAT WEST HEALTH PLAN HEALTH NET HEALTH NET ELECT & SELECT Copyright © UC Regents, Davis campus, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

MULTIPLAN PACIFICARE PACIFIC INTERPLAN FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL CARE UNITED HEALTH CARE WESTERN HEALTH ADVANTAGE AETNA BEECH ANTHEM BLUE CROSS PRUDENT BUYER WHAT DO YOU SEE?

We see patients from most major health plans.

You see access to world-class health care.

UC Davis Health System accepts most major health plans, including the ones above.

To select your personal UC Davis doctor, make sure your health insurance plan includes UC Davis Medical Group. Next, choose us as your preferred medical group. You’ll be welcomed by an entire team of expert doctors, nurses and specialists who recognize what makes you one-of-a-kind. We’ll even help match you to a primary care doctor in any of our 16 convenient locations throughout the area.

To see the full story and more, visit YouSeeTheFuture.UCDavis.edu.

To choose a UC Davis physician, call 800-2-UC DAVIS.

YOU SEE A HEALTHY LIFE

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| mondaviarts.org

Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Presents

MC

Debut

Return to Forever IV With Zappa Plays Zappa A Mondavi Center Just Added Event Wednesday, September 21, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Free wiTh MuseuM adMissiOn

Art Mix Thursday • October 13 • 5–9 PM Get ready to mix it up at the Crocker. Celebrate 126 years of the Crocker Art Museum and the one-year anniversary of the Teel Family Pavilion during this special edition of Art Mix. Blowout musical performances, multi-media light show, Pecha Kucha presentations, talks on what’s new in the collection, tours of the Museum’s iconic architecture and more.

crockerartmuseum.org

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return to forever IV with zappa plays zappa

with Zappa Plays Zappa Chick Corea, Keyboard Stanley Clarke, Bass Lenny White, Drums Jean-Luc Ponty, Violin Frank Gambale, Guitar The program will be announced from the stage.

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eturn to Forever IV, the latest installment of the definitive jazz-rock fusion ensemble, brings together a union of jazz-rock’s founding fathers: from RTF, core members Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White; and from Mahavishnu Orchestra, virtuoso electric violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. Then add fiery-fingered guitarist Frank Gambale. Toss in a torrent of RTF’s classic songbook, highlights from each member’s solo career, new heavyweight material and turn them loose.

Return to Forever, whose mind-blowing experimentation in jazz and rock transformed the music world, debuts a historic new lineup this summer on a massive tour of 32 U.S. cities. The tour brings a re-imagined musical dimension to both the wildly influential group and its repertoire.

Working together with complete creative compatibility and steeped in the tradition of extreme freedom of expression, these five pillars of jazz and rock have prepared a must-see performance that will please fans new and old.

Chick Corea (keyboard) An NEA Jazz Master, 16-time Grammy winner, prolific composer, keyboard virtuoso and 2010 Artist of the Year in DownBeat’s Readers Poll, Chick Corea has attained living legend status after four decades of unparalleled creativity and an artistic output that is simply staggering.

From straight ahead to avant-garde, bebop to fusion, children’s songs to chamber music, along with some far-reaching forays into symphonic works, Chick has touched an astonishing number of musical bases in his illustrious career while maintaining a standard of excellence that is awe-inspiring. A tirelessly creative spirit, Chick continues to forge ahead, continually reinventing himself in the process.

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Since embarking on a solo career in 1966, Chick has been at the forefront of jazz, both as a renowned pianist forging new ground with his acoustic jazz bands and as an innovative electric keyboardist with Return to Forever and the Elektric Band. His extensive discography boasts numerous essential albums, beginning with his 1968 classic, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs.

Stanley Clarke (bass) is nothing short of a living legend, having liberated the bass in much the same way that Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker liberated their instruments decades earlier.

Born in Philadelphia, Clarke headed to New York City right after college as a classically trained bass virtuoso. He quickly made his mark on the New York jazz scene by gigging with Stan Getz, Joe Henderson and Horace Silver before joining Getz pianist Chick Corea to form the seminal Grammy-winning fusion outfit Return to Forever in 1972. As the band took more of an electric focus (with Bill Connors and Lenny White, and later Al Di Meola), Clarke not only split his time between upright and electric bass, but also launched the high-end boutique bass guitar market via his use of custom-made Alembic basses.

Taking issue with the narrow perception of the bass as a support rather than solo instrument, Clarke released a string of solo albums, including the watershed recording School Days, with a title track that served as the first bona fide bass anthem. Clarke also has a number of acclaimed pairings, including the Clarke/ Duke Project and appearances on two Paul McCartney albums.

Clarke branched into film and TV scores in the late 1980s, when he scored the TV series Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. His credits also include the films Boyz n the Hood, Passenger 57, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Poetic Justice and The Transporter.

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Featured wineries

an exclusive wine tasting experience of featured wineries for inner circle donors Complimentary wine pours for Inner Circle donors at 7-8PM and during intermission in the Bartholomew Room September 30 Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder • J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines October 21

Rising Stars of Opera • David Girard Vineyards

December 8 Mariachi Sol de México de Jóse Hernàndez • Ceja Vineyards 15 Blind Boys of Alabama Holiday Show • Boeger Winery January 19 27

Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca • Truchard Vineyards Royal Philharmonic Orchestra • Robert Mondavi Winery

February 9 17

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo • Hoing Winery Eric Owens • Silverado Vineyards

March 2 24

Angelique Kidjo • Fiddlehead Cellars Circus Oz • Silver Oak Cellars

April 17 28

Anoushka Shankar • Roessler Maya Beiser • Corison Winery

May 2 12

San Francisco Symphony Chamber Ensemble • Traverso Wines New York Philharmonic • D’Argenzio Winery

For information about becoming a donor, please call 530.754.5438 or visit us online Sponsored by

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White was still a teenager in 1967 when Jackie McLean asked the lanky left-hander to join his band. Within a year he had played on two of the most important fusion records ever made: Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay. In 1972, before joining RTF, White established his rock and roll credentials in the Escovedo brothers’ Latin rock band Azteca.

White proved his individual mettle in the 1970s by recording three critically acclaimed jazz-rock records on his own, in addition to collaborations with Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Carlos Santana and RTF band mates Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola and Chick Corea. White’s acclaimed work as a producer can be heard on the straight-ahead projects the Griffith Park Collection and the Grammy-nominated Echoes of an Era with vocalist Chaka Khan. In May 2010, White released his 13th album, Anomaly, in conjunction with the Abstract Logix label.

return to forever IV with zappa plays zappa

Lenny White (drums), as one of the founding fathers of the musical movement that became known as “fusion,” earned a worldwide reputation as the drummer in the mid-1970s supergroup Return to Forever. But as with many drummers, often overshadowed by the so-called “lead” players in their band, White’s legendary work with RTF, although important in the history of jazz, hardly represents the entirety of his musical contributions.

sweep picking prowess. His uncanny ability to blow fluently and unerringly over the most labyrinthine changes has earned him countless gigs and dozens of recordings over the past 20-plus years, as a valued sideman and leader in his own right.

From his earliest days with the Chick Corea Elektric Band in the mid 1980s to his more recent work with Vital Information, Billy Cobham and the all-star GHS power trio (with bassist Stu Hamm and drummer Steve Smith), the Australian-born guitarist has set a new standard of excellence with a combination of dazzling technique, inherent melodicism and soulful expression.

Zappa Plays Zappa Zappa Plays Zappa was founded by Dweezil Zappa to bring the music of his late father, Frank Zappa, to contemporary audiences through a series of international performance tours dubbed “Tour De Frank.” Dweezil’s fellow band members are among the most brilliant and innovative players working in any genre and, collectively, rise to the challenge of bringing the legendary Zappa repertoire alive in concert. Zappa Plays Zappa, a 2009 Grammy Award winner, continues to record and perform on a regular basis around the world.

Jean-Luc Ponty (violin), an undisputed master of violin and a pioneer in the area of jazz-rock, is widely regarded as an innovator who has applied his unique visionary spin to expand the vocabulary of modern music. Upon hearing “The Flying Frenchman” in concert in the 1960s, the great American jazz violinist Stuff Smith said of Ponty, “He is a killer! He plays on the violin like Coltrane does on sax.” In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976, Stéphane Grappelli said, “No, he is not a student, he is a great musician who invented a new style on the violin.” Ponty will bring his scintillating vocabulary to bear as the newest member of Return to Forever IV. In 1976, Ponty was invited by Chick Corea to participate in the recording My Spanish Heart, which included the stirring pianoviolin-trio number, “Armando’s Rhumba.” Through the 1970s and into the mid 1980s, Ponty toured the world repeatedly and recorded 12 albums for the Atlantic label. He switched to Columbia in 1987, releasing The Gift of Time that year and following up with Storytelling in 1989. In 2009, he appeared as a guest of Corea, Clarke & White along with Chaka Khan for a special evening at the famous Hollywood Bowl, with Stevie Wonder showing up by surprise for a jam at the end. In 2010, Ponty toured with his band in the Caribbean, Europe and Russia and also as a duet partner with pianist Wolfgang Dauner in Europe.

Frank Gambale (guitar), one of the elite guitarists in modern jazz, continues to raise the bar for a generation of aspiring six-stringers with his unsurpassed fretboard facility. Gambale is simply one of the greatest guitarists walking the planet today, a bona fide guitar hero who never fails to astound aficionados with his signature

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Davis Hospitality...



Proud Sponsors of The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis



Amenities Include:

 Breakfast Buffet with Cook To Order Omelets  Nightly Cocktail Reception  Deluxe Plush Bedding  WIFI Throughout  Bee Kind Amenities  32” LCD TVs

Now Featuring: Complimentary Bicycle Program* For reservations or more information* Please contact us at: (800) 753-0035 110 F Street Davis, CA 95616 • www.hallmarkinn.com

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Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Presents

MC

Debut

Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder An American Heritage Series Event Friday, September 30, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis

Individual support provided by John and Lois Crowe

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle this playbill for reuse.

MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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ricky skaggs and kentucky thunder

Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder Ricky Skaggs

Lead Vocals, Mandolin, Guitar

Kentucky Thunder

Mark Fain Paul Brewster Andy Leftwich Cody Kilby Justin Moses Eddie Faris

Bass Vocals, Guitar Fiddle Guitar Banjo, Dobro Vocals, Guitars

Program

How Mountain Girls Can Love Selfish Heart Crossville Blue Night Goin’ to the Ceili Pig in a Pen Lonesome River Bluegrass Breakdown Sawin’ on the Strings Walls of Time Road to Spencer Can’t Shake Jesus A Simple Life Sis Draper Sally Jo Minor Swing Choo Choo Kentucky Waltz Highway 40 Blues Uncle Pen

Songs subject to change.

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Mark Fain (bass) grew up in Rogersville, Tennessee, watching his family play music on the front porch. With the help of his uncles, Fain learned to play bass, drums and guitar. At age 13, he started his own rock and roll band. With such musical versatility, he performed with several gospel groups, including the Singing Americans, the Neelons and Gold City Gospel. In 1995, Fain became a member of the award-winning band Kentucky Thunder and has appeared on every Skaggs album since Life Is A Journey.

When not touring, his unparalleled musicianship keeps him in high demand as a studio musician.

ricky skaggs and kentucky thunder

Ricky Skaggs (lead vocals, mandolin and guitar), 14-time Grammy Award winner, is affectionately known as one of bluegrass music’s most recognized ambassadors. From his beginnings in bluegrass, he went on to put his own stamp on the mainstream country format, resulting in 12 number one hits, eight Country Music Association Awards and eight Academy of Country Music Awards.

The year 1997 marked Skaggs’ triumphant return to bluegrass and the establishment of his own Skaggs Family Records label, which has new set sales records in the genre. Now in his 40th year as a professional musician, he continues to record and tour with his band Kentucky Thunder as one of music’s most sought after live performers.

Justin Moses (banjo and dobro), hailing from Madisonville, Tennessee, is accomplished on many instruments, including mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro and bass. Playing music since the age of six, he began traveling with his family’s gospel group soon after learning his first chords on the mandolin. As a teen, he won several regional contests on multiple instruments.

In 2000, after graduating from high school, he helped to form the East Tennessee band Blue Moon Rising. He was a founding member of the band Sierra Hull & Highway 111, performing with Sierra in 2005. In 2006, Moses’ solo instrumental album Dusty Roads was released to many favorable reviews.

Eddie Faris (vocals and guitars) turned a childhood dream into reality by accepting Skaggs’s invitation to join Kentucky Thunder in 2009. At the age of nine, while attending a Ricky Skaggs concert, he pointed to former band member guitarist Darrin Vincent and said he wanted his job. Over the years, Vincent and Faris became friends, and through that friendship, Faris’s wish came true. Faris grew up in Kansas and was a member of his family’s band, the Faris Family Bluegrass Band, for 12 years.

He started playing music when he was just six years old and learned to play mandolin, bass, guitar and fiddle. As a member of Kentucky Thunder, he is a baritone vocalist and plays the guitar.

Paul Brewster (vocals and guitar), of Knoxville, Tennessee, began his music career with the band Knoxville Grass, singing lead and tenor vocals and playing rhythm guitar. After 10 years with the Osborne Brothers and brief stints with the Pinnacle Boys and Dollywood bluegrass band True Blue he was asked to become a member of Kentucky Thunder. In addition to lending his unmistakable tenor to countless Ricky Skaggs albums, Brewster is also an accomplished songwriter and solo artist. In 2001, he teamed up with band-mate Mark Fain to co-produce Everybody’s Talkin’, his first solo project for Skaggs Family Records.

Andy Leftwich (fiddle) In 2001, Ricky Skaggs surprised this young fiddler from White House, Tennessee, by extending an on-stage invitation to join Kentucky Thunder. Leftwich first learned to play the fiddle from his father when he was only six years old and later won the Tennessee State Fiddle Championship.

He also mastered the mandolin and guitar and began playing professionally for Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike by his early teens.

In 2003, Leftwich released his first solo project, Ride, on Skaggs Family Records, which includes nine original songs.

Cody Kilby (guitar), growing up in Cowan, Tennessee, picked up his dad’s banjo at age eight and had a Gibson banjo endorsement by the time he was 11. He started playing his mom’s guitar at 10, and by 17 he was the National Flatpicking Champion. He added mandolin and dobro at around age 13, and at 16 recorded Just Me, showing his mastery of each instrument on the recording.

While touring with Sally Jones and the Sidewinders, he caught the ear of Ricky Skaggs, joining Kentucky Thunder in 2001.

Kilby’s lightning-fast picking can be heard on a number of albums, including a solo CD, Many Roads Traveled, on which he shares his own original compositions.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Photo by Ronnie Wright

Presents

Wayne Shorter Quartet A Capital Public Radio Jackson Hall Jazz Series Event Saturday, October 1, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis

Sponsored by

Individual support provided by Tony and Joan Stone

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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wayne shorter quartet

Wayne Shorter Quartet Wayne Shorter Danilo Pérez John Patitucci Brian Blade

Saxophone Piano Bass Drums

The program will be announced from the stage.

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ayne Shorter’s continually expanding body of work is inextricably linked to the history of modern music. His music transcends genre while keeping the improvisational genius and surprise of jazz burning at the center. Regarded as one of the most significant and prolific performers and composers in jazz and modern music, Shorter has an outstanding record of professional achievement in his historic career as a musician. He has received substantial recognition from his peers, including six Grammy Awards and 13 other Grammy nominations to date. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from New York University, the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music. In 1997, the National Endowment for the Arts presented Shorter with the prestigious Jazz Master award. Shorter’s childlike imagination and ceaseless innovation in music invite comparison to the enduring vitality of Picasso in the world of art or of Bergman in film. Today, Shorter continues to dazzle audiences with his Quartet and his symphony project, creating some of the most powerful music of his career.

If the prolific composer had never written a single tune, his signature sound and choice of notes, sense of economy and unparalleled expression on both tenor and soprano saxes would have earmarked him for greatness. Combine the writing prowess with the fragmented, probing solos and the enigmatic Buddhist philosopher presence and you have the makings of a jazz immortal. “Life is so mysterious, to me,” says Shorter. “I can’t stop at any one thing to say, ‘Oh, this is what it is.’ And I think it’s always becoming, always becoming. That’s the adventure. And imagination is part of that adventure.”

Born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 25, 1933, Shorter had his first great jazz epiphany as a teenager: “I remember seeing Lester Young when I was 15 years old. It was a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic show in Newark and he was late coming to the theater. Me and a couple of other guys were waiting out front of the Adams Theater and when he finally did show up, he had the pork pie hat and everything. So then we were trying to figure out how to get into the theater from the fire escape around the back. We eventually got into the mezzanine and saw that whole show—Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie bands together on stage doing ‘Peanut Vendor,’ Charlie Parker with strings doing ‘Laura’ and stuff like that. And Russell Jacquet—Ilinois Jacquet. He was there doing his thing. That whole scene impressed me so much that I just decided, ‘Hey, man, let me get a clarinet.’ So I got one when I was 16, and that’s when I started music.”

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Switching to tenor saxophone, Shorter formed a teenage band in Newark called the Jazz Informers and later got some invaluable bandstand experience with the Jackie Bland Band, a progressive Newark orchestra that specialized in bebop. While still in high school, Shorter participated in several “cutting contests” on Newark’s jazz scene, including one memorable encounter with sax great Sonny Stitt. He attended college at New York University while also soaking up the Manhattan jazz scene by frequenting popular nightspots like Birdland and Cafe Bohemia. Shorter worked his way through college by playing with the Nat Phipps Orchestra. Upon graduating in 1956, he worked briefly with Johnny Eaton and his Princetonians, earning the nickname “The Newark Flash” for his speed and facility on the tenor saxophone.

But just as he was beginning to make his mark, Shorter was drafted into the Army. He recalls a memorable jam session at the Cafe Bohemia just days before he was shipped off to Fort Dix, New Jersey. “A week before I went into the Army I went to the Cafe Bohemia to hear music, I said, for the last time in my life. I was standing at the bar having a cognac and I had my draft notice in my back pocket. That’s when I met Max Roach. He said, ‘You’re the kid from Newark, huh? You’re The Flash.’ And he asked me to sit in. They were changing drummers throughout the night, so Max played drums, then Art Taylor, then Art Blakey. Oscar Pettiford was on cello. Jimmy Smith came in the door with his organ. He drove to the club with his organ in a hearse. And outside we heard that Miles was looking for somebody named Cannonball. And I’m saying to myself, ‘All this stuff is going on and I gotta go to the Army in about five days!’”

Following his time in the service, Shorter had a brief stint in 1958 with Horace Silver and later played in the house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. It was around this time that Shorter began jamming with fellow tenor saxophonists John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. In 1959, Shorter had a brief stint with the Maynard Ferguson Big Band before joining Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in August. He remained with the Jazz Messengers through 1963, becoming Blakey’s musical director and contributing several key compositions to the band’s book during those years. Shorter made his recording debut as a leader in 1959 for the Vee-Jay label and in 1964, cut the first of a string of important recordings for the Blue Note label. He joined the Miles Davis band in 1964 and remained with the group through 1970, contributing such landmark compositions as “Nefertiti,” “E.S.P.,” “Pinocchio,” “Sanctuary,” “Fall” and “Footprints.”

MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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BALLET DIRECTOR

RON CUNNINGHAM ISSUE #6

PLAYWRIGHT

GREGG COFFIN ISSUE #7

TONY WINNER

FAITH PRINCE ISSUE #8 ACTOR

COLIN HANKS ISSUE #15

PERFORMANCE ARTIST

DAVID GARIBALDI ISSUE #16

BROADWAY STAR

MARA DAVI ISSUE #19

Available at Raley's, Nugget Markets and Barnes & Noble.

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wayne shorter quartet

In 1970, Shorter co-founded the group Weather Report with keyboardist and Miles Davis alum Joe Zawinul. It remained the premier fusion group through the 1970s and into the early 1980s before disbanding in 1985 after 16 acclaimed recordings, including the Grammy Award-winning double-LP live set, 8:30. Shorter formed his own group in 1986 and produced a succession of electric jazz albums for the Columbia label—Atlantis, Phantom Navigator and Joy Ryder. He re-emerged on the Verve label in 1995 with High Life. After the tragic loss of his wife in 1996 (she was aboard the ill-fated Paris-bound flight TWA 800), Shorter returned to the scene with 1+1, an intimate duet recording with pianist and former Miles Davis Quintet bandmate Herbie Hancock. The two spent 1998 touring as a duet.

By the summer of 2001, Shorter began touring as the leader of a talented young lineup featuring pianist Danilo Pérez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, each a celebrated recording artist and bandleader in his own right. The group’s uncanny chemistry was well documented in 2002 on the acclaimed Footprints Live! Shorter followed in 2003 with the ambitious Alegria, an expanded vision for large ensemble which earned him a Grammy Award. In 2005, Shorter released the live Beyond the Sound Barrier which earned him another Grammy Award. “It’s the same mission, fighting the good fight,” he said. “It’s making a statement about what life is, really. And I’m going to end the line with it.”

Shorter marked another musical milestone in 2007 by pairing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, and a handful of the world’s best symphony orchestras to unveil his new symphonic repertoire including striking reworkings of earlier compositions and newly composed material. Bassist John Patitucci says that Shorter possesses the prowess of many classical composers combined. “Wayne’s got a feel for the melody, like Puccini, on an extremely high level, but he’s also got the harmonic complexity, like Ravel.” The rich harmonic palette of his music and the interaction between orchestra and soloists makes the music compelling and interesting to audiences and also energizing and interesting for orchestral musicians. The orchestra functions as a leading voice, in dialogue and interplay with improvisations by Shorter and his ensemble.

The events in his incredible life’s journey have been compiled by author Michelle Mercer in Footprints: The Life and Music of Wayne Shorter.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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El Macero Country Club •18-hole • Managed

championship golf course

by Troon Golf, the world leader in upscale Club management • Seasonal, • Meeting • Just

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To inquire about banquets or membership, please call or visit El Macero Country Club 530-753-3363

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Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Presents

Alexander String Quartet Zakarias Grafilo & Frederick Lifsitz, violins Paul Yarbrough, viola Sandy Wilson, cello An Alexander String Quartet Series Event Sunday, October 2, 2011 • 2PM and 7PM Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center, UC Davis Lecturer: Robert Greenberg (2PM concert only) There will be one intermission (2PM concert only) Post-Performance Q&A (7PM concert only) with members of Alexander String Quartet

further listening see p. 22

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 34 (1877) Allegro Alla Polka: Allegretto scherzando Adagio Finale: Poco allegro

alexander string quartet

Alexander String Quartet

Dvořák

Intermission (2PM concert only)

String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 51 (1878-79) Allegro ma non troppo Dumka (Elegie): Andante con moto; Vivace Romanze: Andante con moto Finale: Allegro assai

Dvořák

The Alexander String Quartet records for FoghornClassics.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Robert Greenberg with Alexander String Quartet

further listening

by jeff hudson Today’s concerts—initiating a one-year survey of major string quartets

by Antonin Dvořák—marks the beginning of the 10th season for lecturer Robert Greenberg and the Alexander String Quartet at the Mondavi Center.

It all started back in October 2002, with a three-year cycle covering the complete quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich.

But the relationship between Greenberg and the ASQ goes back much further than a single decade. “The thing got started back in the early 1990s, and we’re headed toward our 20th year with San Francisco Performances as a Saturday morning activity,” Greenberg recalled during a summer phone conversation.

Greenberg’s role in this relationship has changed over time. “It has evolved.

My talks have become much more detailed, and repertoire-specific,” he said.

“Early on (at San Francisco Performances in the 1990s), we were feeling our way, wondering ‘How much talk do people want at 10 o’clock in the morning?’ As it turns out, they wanted more than you might think.”

Certain customs have become established along the way. “I leave the programming entirely to the ASQ,” Greenberg said. “If they say ‘Let’s do Dvořák,’ I say ‘Fine.’ Generally, they present the composer’s music in chronological order, so that’s the way I put my lectures together. They trust me to say whatever I want to say—for which I am extremely grateful. I am also cognizant of the responsibility this puts on me. I try never to have more than three or four minutes of talk without bringing in some musical example. And I always like to end the lecture with the quartet playing. And then I pass the ball over to them for the performance.

“And I have to try to crack them up at least once or twice during the lecture.

If the quartet is happy, then the audience is happy,” Greenberg added.

What’s it like, moving from Beethoven (1770-1827) into Dvořák (1841-1904)?

“The transition is not a long one. I’m a real Dvořák fan, because of the accessibility of his musical language. Dvořák tends to be underestimated by many members of the listening public as a composer. He’s admired as a tunesmith, and as a ‘Czech composer,’ whatever that’s supposed to be. But the reality is that his chamber music is among the best of the 19th century.

He’s as good as Brahms. And Dvořák wrote more varied music—symphonies, chamber works, operas, sacred music—than anyone since Mozart. In the lectures, I’m going to be talking about Dvořák’s extraordinary craft, his development of small musical ideas into entire works and how he views music with tremendous unity and a sense of narrative motion. He also uses the same formal structures as Beethoven.

“The big difference, of course, is the accent—and that we will talk about a lot. By the late 19th century, it was considered advisable for non-German composers to bring some aspect of their national character into their music.

And Dvořák is a Czech native. He lived in Prague. His Czech background is indivisible from his music.”

Jeff Hudson contributes coverage of the performing arts to Capital Public Radio, the Davis Enterprise and Sacramento News and Review.

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String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 34 Antonín Dvořák (Born September 8, 1841, in Muhlhausen, Bohemia; died May 1, 1904 in Prague) Dvořák wrote his String Quartet in D Minor in the fall of 1877, just as he was on the edge of the most important transition of his life. At age 36, he had labored for years in obscurity (and sometimes on the edge of poverty). He supported his young family by giving music lessons, playing the viola in orchestras, playing the organ in church and trying to compose. His music was performed locally, but true fame eluded him, and as he moved through his thirties Dvořák was known in Prague but almost nowhere else.

Dvořák takes us into an entirely different world in the Adagio. He mutes the instruments here, and the heartfelt main theme is richly harmonized throughout this movement, which slips between D major and minor. The central section features a soaring, elaborate episode for first violin, and then Dvořák springs yet another surprise: he rounds this music off with the thematic figure that had appeared in the opening movement’s first and second themes—in this context, that little figure sounds disconsolate. The quartet concludes with a finale full of slashing energy and high spirits.

String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 51

And then his luck began to change. Through the 1870s, Dvořák repeatedly entered the competition for the Austrian State Compendium, an award instituted to assist poor young artists.

Brahms was one of the judges, and he was so impressed by Dvořák’s music that not only did he help him receive several grants, he did something much more valuable—he alerted his own publisher, Simrock in Berlin, to Dvořák. On November 30, 1877, the critic Eduard Hanslick, another of the judges for the Compendium, sent Dvořák a letter telling him that he had just been awarded 500 gulden and also encouraging him to make use of Brahms: “The sympathy of an artist as important and famous as Brahms should not only be pleasant but also useful to you, and I think you should write to him and perhaps send him some of your music.”

Dvořák’s sudden burst to fame in his late thirties was the result of help from powerful friends, primarily Brahms, who recognized the Czech composer’s talents and did much to get him launched, including getting his own publisher—Simrock of Berlin—to publish Dvořák’s music. There were others—critic Eduard Hanslick and violininst Joseph Joachim among them—who promoted and performed Dvořák’s music, and the young composer found himself in debt to a number of prominent German musicians. Dvořák was not entirely comfortable in the new world that he seemed to be conquering, for his new German friends wanted him to move from Prague to Vienna, to give up his Czech identity and to use his talents to write music in the mainstream German tradition. Dvořák was grateful for their help, but he refused to surrender his past or his identity, and when Simrock suggested that Dvořák change his first name from the Czech Antonín to the German Anton because it would make him more attractive to German audiences, Dvořák exploded and insisted on maintaining his Czech identity.

Dvořák did indeed send more of his music to Brahms, but he also made a much more personal gesture of thanks to the Viennese master. The following week, he began composing his String Quartet in D Minor and completed it very quickly (December 7-18, 1877). When it was done, Dvořák wrote to Brahms, asking permission to dedicate the new quartet to him. Now it was Brahms’s turn to be grateful, and he told Dvořák that he would be honored by the dedication. Three months later, in March 1878, Simrock commissioned the first set of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, and their success was immediate, with performances across the continent, as well as in England and the United States. By the end of 1878, Dvořák was a famous composer.

The Quartet in E-flat major makes clear how Dvořák found himself trapped between these two worlds at this moment in his life. It was commissioned by the German violinist Jean Becker, and it was first performed privately at the Berlin home of Joachim; the first public performance was in Magdeburg, and the Hellmesberger Quartet performed it in Vienna before it was heard in Prague. All this suggests how completely Dvořák had conquered the German musical establishment, but the music itself remains unmistakably, adamantly Czech. Even as he writes for German performers and audiences, Dvořák insists on using Czech rhythms, sounds and forms—it is as if he is declaring his place in both musical worlds at once.

Almost unknown to general audiences, the String Quartet in D Minor is a little jewel, full of lovely music and showing some unusual thematic relationships within and between movements.

Even at the specified piano dynamic, the opening Allegro is full of tension, slipping quickly between major and minor tonalities— these unexpected key shifts will mark the entire quartet. There are surprises in this music: when the second subject arrives, this flowing and sunny music is clearly derived from the closing phrase of the first theme, yet now that same figure sounds transformed.

Another surprise comes at the start of the development, where the music modulates upward unexpectedly. That development section is busy, and the movement drives to a dramatic close.

Dvořák began this quartet on Christmas Day, 1878, and completed it three months later, on March 28, 1879. This is exceptionally lovely music, one of those hidden treasures that leave one wondering how they could ever have been neglected. From the first instant one knows that this will be relaxed music, content to make its way on the beauty of its material and the quality of its craftsmanship rather than through conflict or exploring the dark places of the soul. After a couple of tentative gestures, the opening theme of the Allegro ma non tanto unfolds upward. Dvořák’s biographer John Clapham hears an echo of the beginning of the Mendelssohn Octet here, but more striking is the little rocking three-note tag at the end of the phrases in this theme. This figure outlines the shape of the polka rhythm, and Dvořák builds the dancing second subject on that rhythm. A further theme feels more animated, but happy spirits will prevail in this movement, and in the development Dvořák deftly presents the opening theme with accompaniment from the polka rhythm.

Dvořák marks the second movement Alla polka, and he writes this movement—essentially a scherzo—in that form. A scherzo is usually in a three-beat pulse, but this one dances easily along the two-beat pulse of the polka, spilling over with happy energy as it goes. The trio section is a sousedska, an old country dance from Eastern Europe, and now the music does move into the expected 3/4. A pizzicato transition leads the way back to the polka.

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alexander string quartet

PROGRAM NOTES

The second movement is in one of the most Czech of forms, the dumka, though Clapham points out the Dvořák had little clear sense of the formal meaning of that term. For him, a dumka was simply MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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alexander string quartet

melancholy, lamenting music from which brighter moods would suddenly flash out. This one demonstrates that perfectly: it opens with a grieving melody in the first violin (Dvořák marks it dolce) and even introduces a singing second subject of similar character.

But suddenly the music leaps ahead and dances furiously. The sudden change to G major makes it seem all the more sunny, and the impressive thing is that Dvořák has derived this theme from the opening dumka—they share the same shape and many of the same notes. The dark opening returns, but Dvořák ends with a return of the fast material, and this wonderful movement—full of such different kinds of music—trails off into nothing.

College as Ensemble in Residence was celebrated through a performance by the ensemble of the Shostakovich string quartet cycle. Of those performances at the Baruch Performing Art Center Engelman Recital Hall, The New York Times wrote, “The intimacy of the music came through with enhanced power and poignancy in the Alexander quartet’s vibrant, probing, assured and aptly volatile performances. Seldom have these anguished, playful, ironic and masterly works seemed so profoundly personal.” The Alexander was also awarded Presidential Medals in honor of its longstanding commitment to the arts and education and in celebration of its two decades of service to Baruch College.

The Romanze can seem a little more conventional—it is the one movement in the quartet without a specifically Czech element— but it is still notable for its harmonic freedom and melodic shading: this music hovers delicately between keys. The energetic finale (correctly marked Allegro assai) zips along on an opening violin theme that seems made to order for a rondo-finale, but the theme quickly begins to develop and change. This theme appears to be derived from an old Czech leaping dance for men, and Dvořák really lets it fly. This is the most extroverted and virtuosic of the four movements, and in its closing moments Dvořák pushes the tempo ahead faster and faster to the ringing final chords.

Highlights of the 2010-11 season included two multiple concert series for San Francisco Performances, one presenting the complete quartets of Bartók and Kodály and the other music of Dvořák; the conclusion of a Beethoven cycle for Mondavi Center, UC Davis; and a continuing annual series at Baruch College in New York City. The quartet also performed an all-Beethoven program at the Lied Center of Kansas, two tours of Spain (including the inaugural performances of a new festival in Godella) and a second tour of Argentina. They also continued their annual residencies at Allegheny College, Lewis & Clark College and St. Lawrence University.

—Eric Bromberger

Over the past decade the Alexander String Quartet has added considerably to its distinguished and wide-ranging discography.

Currently recording exclusively for the FoghornClassics label, the Alexander’s most recent release (June 2009) is a complete Beethoven cycle. Music Web International has described the performances on this new Beethoven set as “uncompromising in their power, intensity and spiritual depth,” while Strings Magazine described the set as “a landmark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles.” The FoghornClassics label released a three-CD set (Homage) of the Mozart quartets dedicated to Haydn in 2004.

Foghorn released the six-CD album (Fragments) of the complete Shostakovich quartets in 2006 and 2007, and a recording of the complete quartets of Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco composer Wayne Peterson was released in the spring of 2008. BMG Classics released the quartet’s first recording of the Beethoven cycle on its Arte Nova label to tremendous critical acclaim in 1999.

The Alexander String Quartet The Alexander String Quartet has performed in the major music capitals of five continents, securing its standing among the world’s premier ensembles for more than three decades. Widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich, the quartet has also established itself as an important advocate of new music through more than 25 commissions and numerous premiere performances. The Alexander String Quartet is a major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving there as directors of the Morrison Chamber Music Center at the School of Music and Dance in the College of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University and Ensemble in Residence of San Francisco Performances.

The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar of concerts includes engagements at major halls throughout North America and Europe. The quartet has appeared at Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Jordan Hall in Boston; the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.; and chamber music societies and universities across the North American continent. Recent overseas tours have brought them to the U.K., Czech Republic, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, Republic of Georgia, Argentina and the Philippines. The many distinguished artists to collaborate with the Alexander String Quartet include pianists Menahem Pressler, Gary Graffman, Roger Woodward, Jeremy Menuhin and Joyce Yang; clarinetists Eli Eban, Charles Neidich, Joan Enric Lluna and Richard Stoltzman; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sadao Harada and David Requiro; violist Toby Appel; and soprano Elly Ameling. Among the quartet’s more unusual collaborations have been numerous performances of Eddie Sauter’s seminal Third Stream work, Focus, in collaboration with Branford Marsalis, David Sánchez and Andrew Speight.

The Alexander String Quartet’s 25th anniversary as well as the 20th anniversary of its association with New York City’s Baruch 24

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In celebration of the Alexander String Quartet’s forthcoming 30th anniversary, San Francisco Performances has commissioned a new work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano from Jake Heggie; the work will be premiered in a performance in collaboration with Joyce DiDonato in February 2012 at the Herbst Theater. Other recent Alexander premieres include Rise Chanting by Augusta Read Thomas, commissioned for the Alexander by the Krannert Center and premiered there and simulcast by WFMT radio in Chicago.

The quartet has also premiered String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 by Wayne Peterson and works by Ross Bauer (commissioned by Stanford University), Richard Festinger, David Sheinfeld, Hi Kyung Kim and a Koussevitzky commission by Robert Greenberg.

The Alexander String Quartet was formed in New York City in 1981 and the following year became the first string quartet to win the Concert Artists Guild Competition. In 1985, the quartet captured international attention as the first American quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition, receiving both the jury’s highest award and the Audience Prize. In May 1995, Allegheny College awarded honorary doctor of fine arts degrees to the members of the quartet in recognition of their unique contribution to the arts. Honorary degrees were conferred on the ensemble

by St. Lawrence University in May 2000.

Greenberg has composed more than 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

Greenberg has received numerous honors, including three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-TheComposer Grants. Recent commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Strata Ensemble, San Francisco Performances and the XTET ensemble. Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of Composers, Inc., a composers’ collective/production organization based in San Francisco.

alexander string quartet

Robert Greenberg Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay area since 1978.

Greenberg received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976. In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Chamber Music of Mozart, The Piano Sonatas of Beethoven, The Concerto and The Fundamentals of Music—have been recorded since, totaling more than 500 lectures.

In 2003, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News referred to Greenberg as “the Elvis of music history and appreciation,” an appraisal that has given him more pleasure than any other. Dr. Greenberg is currently writing a book on opera and its impact on Western culture, to be published by Oxford University Press.

The Alexander String Quartet is represented by BesenArts LLC 508 First Street, Suite 4W Hoboken, NJ 07030-7823 www.BesenArts.com The Alexander String Quartet records for FoghornClassics www.asq4.com

Greenberg has performed, taught and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently music historian-inresidence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994, and a faculty member of the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He has served on the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley; California State University, East Bay; and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the Department of Music History and Literature from 1989-2001 and served as the Director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991-96. Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where for 10 years he was host and lecturer for the Symphony’s nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Van Cliburn Foundation, Chautauqua Institute (where he was the Everett Scholar in Residence for the summer of 2006), Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony Orchestra and Music@ Menlo.

Greenberg has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor and San Francisco Chronicle. For many years Greenberg was the resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s Weekend All Things Considered, and presently plays that role on Weekend Edition, Sunday with Liane Hansen.

In 1993, Greenberg recorded a 48-lecture course, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music for the Teaching Company/SuperStar Teachers Program, the preeminent producer of college level courses-on-media in the United States. Twelve further courses— Concert Masterworks, Bach and the High Baroque, The Symphonies of Beethoven, How to Listen to and Understand Opera, Great Masters, The Operas of Mozart, The Life and Operas of Verdi, The Symphony,

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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campus community relations is a proud sponsor of the robert and margrit mondavi Center for the performing arts

The magic of Receive a $50 gift certificate for booking your private dining event before October 31st!

Offering Private INDOOR & OUTDOOR Dining Rooms

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mondaviarts.org 2612 | | mondaviarts.org

Voted “Best Place to Eat Before a Mondavi Center Performance.”

—Sacramento Magazine (2010)

Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Presents

Yamato Japanese Taiko Drum Ensemble A Bistro 33 Marvels Series Event Thursday, October 6, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis There will be one intermission.

Sponsored by

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

27

yamato

Yamato Gamushara Hisato Fukuda Gen Hidaka Madoka Higashi Saori Higashi Subaru Imai Jun Kato Akiko Matsushita Takeru Matsushita Marika Nito Taiki Takemura Midori Tamai

“Gamushara” means to be immersed in activities heading toward one goal without thinking ahead Let me ask you Are you embracing a dream?

Is there a foresight?

Once you have found it out don’t think too much any more Head toward just a single goal without thinking ahead Ecstatic enthusiasm Who cares if reviled to be a fool or a whim of youth?

Run! Start running!

Someone said…

There is no road in front of me but it trails along behind me Don’t be scared Keep running Go for “Gamushara”

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Japanese Taiko drummers Yamato was born in Yamato-no-kuni (country of Yamato), the present day Nara prefecture in 1993

by Masa Ogawa, and has its headquarters in Asuka village in Nara, which is known for many ancient monuments and named as the birthplace of Japanese culture. Everything started with the group’s participation in a festival held at the Toichi shrine in Kashihara-shi, Nara. They played a piece called “Hyuga.” A newspaper journalist asked for the group’s name for his article, and they didn’t have one. So Ogawa just said Yamato. “Sounds like a road-side cafe” was an often heard comment then, but the name has come to suit the group. It started as a one-off performance, but invitations from many places started to come in and now Yamato runs “round the world tours” with more than 150-200 performances a year everywhere in the world. The number of members has grown from four to 15, with both males and females.

yamato

Yamato

The place where Yamato performs is the space where people gather in the resounding beat of drums. The moments are born when the sound created by Yamato resonates with the pulse of everybody present.

Ripples of pulses softly and gently overlap. At that moment everyone will feel the energy of tomorrow being born.

The moment of “meeting” exists in a space called a concert. The energy created by this encounter in turn gives the performers energy with which to keep on the journey of creation and expression. Empathetic exchange of energy. This is the main theme of the activities of Yamato.

Setting off from Asuka village in the country of Yamato, running through the world and returning home to Asuka, Nara again, Yamato will continue drumming and seeking encounters.

Yamato went to China in 1994, just one year after they started, and had audiences of 20,000 for four performances. Then they toured other Asian countries including Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore. Yamato had South American tours in 1997, 1998 and 1999. They started to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the biggest art event in the world, in 1998, wanting to broaden their horizons and meet people. Twenty-three performances were sold out and they received the Spirit of the Fringe Award; the British media called them the “music of physique.” With this festival as the springboard Yamato started world tours.

In the village of Asuka with more than a thousand years of history, Yamato seeks new expression with Wadaiko—Japanese drums as its backbone. “Go anywhere if invited and make the world a little more happy” as their motto. Here is a glimpse of the difficult lives of Yamato performers. They start the day with a 10km run followed by weight training for the rest of the morning. They practice drumming together in the afternoon and individual practice will continue till bedtime. Then on foreign tours, they spend from six to 10 months in a year in foreign countries, which may sound great but actually it is quite difficult. They don’t have time for sightseeing. All they do is to prepare, perform, clear up every day and travel. All they know is the theaters, especially the back-stage areas and hotels. But, more than 300,000 people from 15 to 20 or more countries in a year came to see them. Yamato continue touring because meeting people is the joy of it all.

Central to Yamato’s production is, of course, Wadaiko drumming.

They think of the sound of the drums, made of animal skin and ancient trees, some of which are more than 400 years old, as the pulse or the Heartbeat (Shin-on) the center of life and the source of power, which pulsates within your own body. Like the strong and sturdy heartbeats of a lonely runner with pulsating sleek and powerful body, Yamato attempts to create the energy of life which envelops the audience and the performers. And what you feel when surrounded by the sound of Wadaiko, brought out by these highly trained bodies, is what the Japanese call Tamashy which can be translated as soul, spirit, psyche and so on, which is the basic element of life. This is something which is invisible and intangible but whose existence is certainly felt. The pulse, carried down from antiquity, should be resonating within all the bodies gathered at the theater today. Yamato wants to create a stage production which is the celebration of life.

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Hyatt P lace is a proud sponsor of The robert and margrit Mondavi Center for the performing arts, UC Davis

Hyatt Place UC Davis 173 Old Davis Road Extension Davis, CA 95616, USA Phone: +1 530 756 9500 Fax: +1 530 297 6900

MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

| UC Davis

Presents

MC

Photo by Greg Martin

Debut

Jonathan Franzen On Autobiography & Fiction Writing: An Evening with Jonathan Franzen A Distinguished Speakers Series Event Saturday, October 8, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis Post-Performance Q&A Moderated by Eric Rauchway, Professor, Department of History, UC Davis Individual support provided by Lawrence and Nancy Shepard

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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jonathan franzen

Jonathan Franzen When The Corrections was published in the fall of 2001, Jonathan Franzen was probably better known for his nonfiction than for the two novels he had already published. In an essay he wrote for Harper’s in 1996, Franzen lamented the declining cultural authority of the American novel and described his personal search for reasons to persist as a fiction writer. “The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read,” he wrote. “Where to find the energy to engage with a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture?”

Five years after publishing the Harper’s essay, Franzen became fully engaged with his culture. The Corrections was an enormous international bestseller, with translations in 35 languages, American hardcover sales of nearly one million copies and nominations for nearly every major book prize in the country—Franzen was awarded the National Book Award for this novel. As if sales and critical acclaim weren’t enough to boost his profile, the author found himself in a public relations imbroglio over his conflicted reaction to his book’s endorsement by Oprah’s Book Club.

Jonathan Franzen’s first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), was a reimagination of his hometown, St. Louis, through the eyes of conspirators and terrorists from southern Asia. His second novel, Strong Motion (1992), was a thriller-cum-love-story set in the student slums of Boston. Both books displayed Franzen’s ability to connect the personal and the political, the emotional and the social, in compelling and richly textured narratives.

Born in Western Springs, Illinois, in 1959, Jonathan Franzen grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1981, he studied in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and later worked in a seismology lab at Harvard. Franzen is also the author of a best-selling collection of essays, How to Be Alone and the memoir The Discomfort Zone.

He recently published a new English translation of the play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind. He has written the New York chapter of Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey’s 2008 collection State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, inspired by the state guides written for the WPA in the 1930s. His short stories and essays, including political journalism, have most recently appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Essays, The New York Times and The Guardian. A new collection of his nonfiction, Farther Away, will appear in 2012.

Franzen’s most recent novel is Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2010). In August 2010, he was featured on the cover of TIME—only the second time in the last decade that a living writer has been on the cover of this national magazine. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, declared Franzen’s Freedom, “a masterpiece of American fiction,” and the book debuted at number one on the Times’s bestseller list. In September, Freedom was chosen as Oprah’s 64th Book Club pick, and Franzen and Oprah “made up” with each other on air. Freedom won the 2011 John Gardner Prize for fiction and was chosen as one of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2010 and as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Post-Performance Q&A Moderator: Eric Rauchway Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at UC Davis who writes about the United States, almost always as nonfiction. He has written five books, including The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) and his novel Banana Republican is just out in paperback from Picador.

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Post-performance Q&A Moderator: Don Roth, Ph.d.

Dr. Don Roth is the executive director of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis.

A native of Brooklyn N.Y., Roth joined the Mondavi Center in June 2006, arriving from the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he served as president from 2001 through 2006. Previously Roth served as president of the Saint Louis Symphony and of the Oregon Symphony, and as general manager of the San Francisco Symphony.

In 2010, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson appointed Roth to Co-Chair the For Arts Sake regional arts initiative. Roth also serves on the Board of Overseers for the Curtis Institute of Music and the Advisory Council of American Bach Soloists.

He has chaired numerous panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and has served on the Executive Committee of the Sacramento Philharmonic board. In addition, he is a member of the Directors Council (emeritus Board) of the League of American Orchestras, the national organization of symphony orchestra professionals, trustees and volunteers.

For almost 10 years, Dr. Roth chaired the League’s Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, the leading training program for symphony executives in the U.S. More recently, he taught non-profit management in the arts in the Graduate School of Management, UC Davis.

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Robert and Margrit Mondavi

Center for the Performing Arts

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Photo of James Conlon by Robert Millard

Presents

San Francisco Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas, music director James Conlon, conducting Olga Guryakova, soprano Sergei Leiferkus, baritone A Western Health Advantage Orchestra Series Event Thursday, October 13, 2011 • 8PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis Sponsored by

Additional support provided by Anne Gray Raventos in Memory of Antolin Raventos, M.D. Pre-Performance Talk Thursday, October 13, 2011 • 7PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis Speakers: Conductor James Conlon in conversation with Don Roth, Executive Director, Mondavi Center, UC Davis (see p. 38) further listening see p. 47

The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off all electronic devices.

Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director James Conlon, Conducting Symphony No. 14 in G Minor, Op. 135 Shostakovich Adagio. De profundis Allegretto. Malagueña Allegro molto. Lorelei Adagio. The Suicide Allegretto. On the Alert Adagio. Look Here, Madam!

Adagio. At the Santé Jail Allegro. The Zaporozhye Cossacks’ Reply to the Sultan of Constantinople Andante. O Delvig, Delvig!

Largo. The Poet’s Death Moderato. Conclusion Texts begin on page 40.

Olga Guryakova, soprano Sergei Leiferkus, baritone

Intermission

Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky-Ravel Promenade Gnomus Promenade Il vecchio castello Promenade Tuileries Bydlo Promenade Ballet of Chicks in Their Shells Samuel Goldenberg and Shmuel The Marketplace at Limoges Catacombae: Sepulcrum romanum—Cum mortuis in lingua mortua The Hut on Fowls’ Legs The Great Gate of Kiev

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Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director and Conductor Donato Cabrera, Resident Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, Conductor Laureate

First Violins Alexander Barantschik Concertmaster Naoum Blinder Chair Nadya Tichman Associate Concertmaster San Francisco Symphony Foundation Chair Mark Volkert Assistant Concertmaster 75th Anniversary Chair Jeremy Constant Assistant Concertmaster Mariko Smiley Paula & John Gambs Second Century Chair Melissa Kleinbart Katharine Hanrahan Chair Yun Chu Sharon Grebanier Naomi Kazama Hull In Sun Jang Yukiko Kurakata Catherine A. Mueller Chair Suzanne Leon Leor Maltinski Diane Nicholeris Sarn Oliver Florin Parvulescu Victor Romasevich Catherine Van Hoesen Second Violins Dan Nobuhiko Smiley Principal Dinner & Swig Families Chair Dan Carlson Associate Principal Audrey Avis Aasen-Hull Chair Paul Brancato Assistant Principal Kum Mo Kim The Eucalyptus Foundation Second Century Chair Raushan Akhmedyarova David Chernyavsky John Chisholm Cathryn Down Darlene Gray Amy Hiraga Frances Jeffrey Chunming Mo Kelly Leon-Pearce Polina Sedukh Isaac Stern Chair Robert Zelnick Chen Zhao

Violas Jonathan Vinocour Principal Yun Jie Liu Associate Principal Katie Kadarauch Assistant Principal John Schoening Joanne E. Harrington & Lorry I. Lokey Second Century Chair Nancy Ellis Gina Feinauer David Gaudry David Kim Christina King Wayne Roden Nanci Severance Adam Smyla Stephanie Fong† Cellos Michael Grebanier Principal Philip S. Boone Chair Peter Wyrick Associate Principal Peter & Jacqueline Hoefer Chair Amos Yang Assistant Principal Margaret Tait Lyman & Carol Casey Second Century Chair Barbara Andres The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation Second Century Chair Barbara Bogatin Jill Rachuy Brindel Gary & Kathleen Heidenreich Second Century Chair Sébastien Gingras David Goldblatt Christine & Pierre Lamond Second Century Chair Carolyn McIntosh Anne Pinsker

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Basses Scott Pingel Principal Larry Epstein Associate Principal Stephen Tramontozzi Assistant Principal Richard & Rhoda Goldman Chair S. Mark Wright Charles Chandler Lee Ann Crocker Chris Gilbert Brian Marcus William Ritchen Flutes Tim Day Principal Caroline H. Hume Chair Robin McKee Associate Principal Catherine & Russell Clark Chair Linda Lukas Alfred S. & Dede Wilsey Chair Catherine Payne Piccolo Oboes William Bennett Principal Edo de Waart Chair Jonathan Fischer Associate Principal Pamela Smith Dr. William D. Clinite Chair Russ deLuna English Horn Joseph & Pauline Scafidi Chair Clarinets Carey Bell Principal William R. & Gretchen B. Kimball Chair Luis Baez Associate Principal E-flat Clarinet David Neuman Bassoons Stephen Paulson Principal Steven Dibner Associate Principal Rob Weir Steven Braunstein Contrabassoon

Horns Robert Ward Principal Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Chair Nicole Cash Associate Principal Bruce Roberts Assistant Principal Jonathan Ring Jessica Valeri Kimberly Wright Trumpets Mark Inouye Principal William G. Irwin Charity Foundation Chair Glenn Fischthal Associate Principal Peter Pastreich Chair Micah Wilkinson† Ann L. & Charles B. Johnson Chair Jeff Biancalana Trombones Timothy Higgins Principal Robert L. Samter Chair Paul Welcomer John Engelkes Bass Trombone Tuba Jeffrey Anderson Principal James Irvine Chair

Staff John D. Goldman President Brent Assink Executive Director John Kieser General Manager Nan Keeton Director of Marketing, Communications and External Affairs D. Lance King Director of Development John Mangum Director of Artistic Planning Oliver Theil Director of Public Relations Rebecca Blum Orchestra Personnel Manager Joyce Cron Wessling Manager, Tours and Media Production Tim Carless Production Manager Vance DeVost Stage Manager Dennis DeVost Stage Technician Rob Doherty Stage Technician Roni Jules Stage Technician

Harp Douglas Rioth Principal Timpani David Herbert Principal Marcia & John Goldman Chair Percussion Jack Van Geem Principal Carol Franc Buck Foundation Chair Raymond Froehlich Tom Hemphill James Lee Wyatt III Keyboards Robin Sutherland Jean & Bill Lane Chair

*On Leave †Acting member of the San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony string section utilizes revolving seating on a systematic basis. Players listed in alphabetical order change seats periodically.

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SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY

san francisco symphony

The San Francisco Symphony, which celebrates its centennial this season, gave its first concerts in December 1911.

Its music directors have included Henry Hadley, Alfred Hertz, Basil Cameron, Issay Dobrowen, Pierre Monteux, Enrique Jordá, Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt and, since 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas. The SFS has won such recording awards as France’s Grand Prix du Disque, Britain’s Gramophone Award and the United States’s Grammy. For RCA Red Seal, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS have recorded music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, two Copland collections, a Gershwin collection, Stravinsky ballets (Le Sacre du printemps, The Firebird and Perséphone) and Charles Ives: An American Journey. Their cycle of Mahler symphonies has received seven Grammys and is available on the Symphony’s own label, SFS Media. Some of the most important conductors of the past and recent years have been guests on the SFS podium, among them Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, and Sir Georg Solti, and the list of composers who have led the Orchestra includes Stravinsky, Ravel, Copland and John Adams. The SFS Youth Orchestra, founded in 1980, has become known around the world, as has the SFS Chorus, heard on recordings and on the soundtracks of such films as Amadeus and Godfather III. For two decades, the SFS Adventures in Music program has brought music to every child in grades 1 through 5 in San Francisco’s public schools. SFS radio broadcasts, the first in the U.S. to feature symphonic music when they began in 1926, today carry the Orchestra’s concerts across the country. In a multimedia program designed to make classical music accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, the SFS has launched Keeping Score on PBSTV, DVD, radio (The MTT Files) and at the website keepingscore. org. San Francisco Symphony recordings are available at shopsfsymphony.org.

James Conlon has been Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera since 2006; he is also Music Director of the Ravinia Festival and has led more than 30 seasons of the Cincinnati May Festival.

He debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1974 and the Metropolitan Opera (where he has since led more than 250 performances) in 1976. Conlon has served as principal conductor of the Paris National Opera; general music director of the City of Cologne, Germany; and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1978 and appeared in Davies Symphony Hall most recently in October 2010. Renowned for his interpretations of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Europe, James Conlon conducted his first Ring at LA Opera in 2010. In an effort to increase public consciousness of composers suppressed by the Nazi regime, he has championed music of Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Erwin Schulhoff, Ernst Krenek and others. He teaches annually at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at the Tanglewood Music Center. Since 1997, he has been involved with the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where he leads master classes, coaches finalists and conducts the final round of the competition.

This work has been documented in the DVD The Cliburn: Playing on the Edge and in the TV series Encore with James Conlon.

Conlon has recorded extensively for EMI, Erato, and Sony Classical. His Los Angeles Opera recording of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny won Grammys for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording. Among his honors are the Opera News

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Award, the Medal of the American Liszt Society and Italy’s Premio Galileo 2000 Award. In recognition of his efforts in championing composers silenced by the Third Reich, he has received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League. He is a Commander of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and he received the Légion d’Honneur in 2002.

Olga Guryakova was born in Novokuznetsk and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. In 1994, she joined the company of Moscow’s Musical Theatre by Stanislavsky and NemirovichDanchenko. She has worked extensively with conductors Valery Gergiev and Mstislav Rostropovich, and her roles include Tatyana (Eugene Onegin), Mimi (La Bohème), Desdemona (Otello), Thais (Thais), Micaela (Carmen), Elvira (Ernani), Gorislava (Russlan and Ludmilla) and Militrisa (The Tale of Tsar Saltan), among many others. Guryakova appears regularly at the Ludwigsburg Festival and Schleswig-Holstein Festival and made her U.S. debut in 1998 at the Metropolitan Opera, singing Maria in Mazeppa, a role she has also sung at La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. At the San Francisco Opera, she has been featured in La Bohème. She has also sung at such venues as the Vienna State Opera, Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Opéra Bastille in Paris, Opéra de Lyon, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Bavarian State Opera. Guryakova records for Denon Records. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut this week.

Sergei Leiferkus is noted for such baritone roles as Scarpia (Tosca), Iago (Otello), Rangoni (Boris Godunov), Telramund (Lohengrin) and Alberich (Der Ring des Nibelungen). He has appeared at opera houses throughout the world, among them San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Opéra Bastille and La Scala Milan and at the Edinburgh, Bregenz, Glyndebourne and Salzburg Easter festivals. In concert he has appeared with ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra. His repertory includes almost 50 roles, among them the title roles of Eugene Onegin, Mazeppa, Simon Boccanegra and Don Giovanni. His many recordings include Mahler’s Das klagende Lied with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas. His first CD of songs by Mussorgsky received a Grammy nomination, while another recording of all Mussorgsky’s songs was awarded the Cannes Classical Award and Diapason d’Or Prize. He may be seen in many videos, including director Robert Wilson’s production of Wagner’s Ring at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Leiferkus also gives master classes and teaches. Born in Leningrad, he graduated from the conservatory there, then joined the ensemble of the Mariinsky Theatre. His debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Kurt Masur in the early 1980s launched his international career.

Symphony No. 14 in G Minor, Op. 135 Dmitri Shostakovich (Born September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg; died August 9, 1975 in Moscow) “Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of that fear people create poetry, prose and music; that is, they try to strengthen their ties with the living and increase their influence upon them.”

So reads a passage in Dmitri Shostakovich’s purported memoirs, Testimony, essential to the understanding of his Fourteenth Symphony, a work written three years after he began waging his personal battle against the damage to his health done by a massive heart attack in 1966. “I tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t fear death,” he continued. “But how can you not fear death?

Death is not considered an appropriate theme for Soviet art, and writing about death is tantamount to wiping your nose on your sleeve in company. But I always thought that I was not alone in my thinking about death and that other people were concerned with it too, despite the fact that they live in a socialist society in which even tragedies receive the epithet ‘optimistic.’ I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question, and as it seems to me, they’re not particularly optimistic works. The most important of them, I feel, is the Fourteenth Symphony; I have special feelings for it.

“I think that working on these compositions had a positive effect, and I fear death less now; or rather, I’m used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such. After all, it’s a law of nature and no one has ever eluded it. When you ponder and write about death, you make some gains. First, you have time to think through things that are related to death and you lose the panicky fear. And second, you try to make fewer mistakes. [The critics] read into the Fourteenth Symphony the idea that ‘Death is all-powerful.’ They wanted the finale to be comforting, to say that death is only the beginning. But it’s not a beginning, it’s the real end, there will be nothing afterward, nothing. I feel that you must look truth right in the eyes.”

Hard, blunt, pessimistic words, these. When Shostakovich spoke them to Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov, who edited Testimony for publication, he was mortally ill and very bitter about his years of mistreatment by the Soviets, and the Fourteenth Symphony reflects both of these elements of his sadness. Besides being a document of his personal convictions about death, the work also touches on larger issues: the catholic, universally unifying fact of the subject that he treats, and the aspects of harsh death so common in the country, the Russia of Stalin, in which he lived. In music masterfully matched to words, for example, he chillingly portrays the living death of solitary incarceration for a figure such as Solzhenitsyn (“At the Santé Jail”) and a despot’s bloodthirsty butchery, not unlike Stalin’s purges of the 1930s (“Cossacks’ Reply”). Conductor and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich once spoke about Shostakovich’s understanding and empathy: “After I played the Cello Concerto No. 1 for him for the first time at his dacha in Leningrad [in 1958], he accompanied me to the railway station to catch the overnight train to Moscow. In the big waiting hall we found many people sleeping on the floor. I saw his Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle this playbill for reuse.

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Program Notes

face, and the great suffering in it brought tears to my eyes. I cried, not from seeing the poor people but from what I saw in the face of Shostakovich.”

As the content of the Fourteenth Symphony is unique, so is its structure—a song cycle of 11 poems by four authors dealing with death, scored for soprano and baritone soloists accompanied by a chamber orchestra of strings and percussion. Traditional formal outlines do not apply within or between movements, their progress being controlled rather by the verses. Only one musical theme recurs: the keening violin melody that opens the first movement is heard again in the penultimate song to make a “frame” around movements one through 10 and allow the final poem to stand as an epilogue to the series. Shostakovich found the precedents for such a work (though not its designation as a symphony) in the orchestral song cycles of Gustav Mahler and in Benjamin Britten’s 1958 Nocturne for Tenor, Seven Obbligato Instruments and Strings, whose texts all deal with sleep. (The score of the Symphony was dedicated to Britten, whom Shostakovich felt closer to than any other Westerner. When Britten conducted the first performance of the work outside Russia, at the 1970 Aldeburgh Festival, he brought the score to his lips and kissed it at the end of the concert.)

The strongest influence on the Symphony, however, was that of Mussorgsky, of whom Shostakovich said, “He was an entire academy for me—of human relations, politics, and art. Mussorgsky and I have a ‘special relationship.’” Shostakovich had orchestrated Mussorgsky’s operas Boris Goudonov in 1939 and Khovanshchina in 1959, but the piece closest to the Fourteenth Symphony was the Songs and Dance of Death, which he orchestrated in 1962, just before starting his Symphony No. 13. His desire to write a modern counterpart to Mussorgsky’s songs was strong from that time, but it was not until early in 1969, during an extended hospital stay, that the piece was begun. So deeply involved was Shostakovich with this score that he spent several sleepless nights after completing it in the spring worrying that the copyist would lose the manuscript. The Symphony was premiered on September 29, 1969, in Leningrad.

Shostakovich chose Russian translations of the verses of four poets for the Fourteenth Symphony. The first two poems are by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), one of Spain’s outstanding poets and dramatists. Lorca, whose work was at once traditional, modern, personal and often inspired by folk materials, was killed by Nationalist partisans shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The six poems forming the central portion of the Symphony are by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), the important French writer whose works are marked by a distinctive lyricism often tinged with surrealism. The only Russian poem in the Symphony (“O, Delvig, Delvig!”) is one by Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker (1797-1846), of Russian-German descent. Küchelbecker took part in the Decembrist uprising of 1825 in Russia, and subsequently spent 20 years in prison and in Siberia, where he died. The Symphony closes with two poems by the great German lyricist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), whose insightful verses were influenced by mysticism and impressionism.

Continued on page 39

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The Mondavi Center School Matinee program provides exposure to the performing arts for both students and educators. And because the Mondavi Center is part of the UC Davis campus, a trip to the Mondavi Center guarantees students the perfect opportunity to experience a university.

We invite you to join us for our tenth season at the Mondavi Center!

Mondavi Center Arts Education offers Curriculum Guides, CueSheets and Pre-Matinee Classroom Talks to prepare students for live performances at the Mondavi Center. All matinees support the California Visual and Performing Arts content standards to offer a fully informed and balanced educational experience for students.

2o11–12

Yamato Japanese Taiko Drum Ensemble Friday, October 7, 2011 Hot 8 Brass Band Tuesday, November 8, 2011 MARIACHI SOL DE MéXICO DE JÓSE HERNàNDEZ Mariachi Christmas Friday, December 9, 2011 Lara Downes Family Concert Green Eggs and Ham Monday, December 12, 2011 Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca Friday, January 20, 2012 CIRCA 61 Circus Acts in 60 Minutes Monday, February 13, 2012 Curtis On Tour Thursday, March 8, 2012 The Improvised Shakespeare Company Thursday, April 19, 2012 Friday, April 20, 2012 ODC/Dance The Velveteen Rabbit Monday, May 14, 2012

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—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle)—There was no item by this title in the exhibition, but it presumably refers to one of several architectural watercolors done on a trip to Italy. Stasov tells us that the piece represents a medieval castle with a troubadour standing before it.

Tuileries—The park in Paris, swarming with children and their nurses. Mussorgsky reaches this picture by way of a Promenade.

Bydlo—The word is Polish for “cattle.” Mussorgsky explained to Stasov that the picture represents an ox-drawn wagon.

Ballet of Chicks in Their Shells—A costume design for a ballet. In this scene with child dancers, canaries are “enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor, with canary heads put on like helmets.” The ballet is preceded by a short Promenade.

Samuel Goldenberg and Shmuel—Mussorgsky owned two drawings by Hartmann entitled A Rich Jew Wearing a Fur Hat and A Poor Jew: Sandomierz. Hartmann had spent a month of 1868 at Sandomierz in Poland. Mussorgsky’s manuscript has no title, and Stasov provided one, Two Polish Jews, One Rich, One Poor; he seems later to have added the names of Goldenberg and Shmuel.

Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (Born March 21, 1839, in Karevo, Russia; died March 28, 1881, in St. Petersburg) Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel (Born March 7, 1875, in Cibourne, France; died December 28, 1937, in Paris)

The Marketplace at Limoges—Mussorgsky jots some imagined conversation in the margin of his manuscript: “Great news! M. de Puissangeout has just recovered his cow...Mme. De Remboursac has just acquired a beautiful new set of teeth, while M. de Pantaleon’s nose, which is in his way, is as much as ever the color of a peony.” With a great rush of wind, Mussorgsky plunges us directly into the...

Pictures at an Exhibition dates from 1874, but it had to wait nearly half a century before it began to achieve its enormous popularity.

The Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote his Pictures as a set of piano pieces. In 1922, the French composer Maurice Ravel introduced them to the Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Koussevitzky’s enthusiasm was fired. He asked Ravel to orchestrate the piano pieces. Ravel’s version made Pictures at an Exhibition an indispensable repertory item.

Catacombae—The picture shows the interior of catacombs in Paris. The music falls into two sections, Sepulcrum romanum (Roman Sepulchers) and Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language), a ghostly transformation of the Promenade.

The pictures that inspired Mussorgsky, and whose essence he attempted to render in sound, were by his friend Victor Hartmann, whose death at only 39 in the summer of 1873 caused the composer profound grief. The art critic Vladimir Stasov organized a posthumous exhibition of Hartmann’s drawings, paintings and sketches in Saint Petersburg in the spring of 1874, and by June 22, Mussorgsky, having worked at high speed, completed his own tribute. He imagined himself “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and at times sadly thinking of his departed friend.” That roving music which opens the suite he calls the Promenade.

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“The musical language of the Fourteenth, though highly concentrated, leaves the composer free to be as chromatic or as diatonic as he chooses, and the impact of the work is closely bound up with Shostakovich’s superb control over the immense range of tensions at his disposal,” wrote Hugh Ottaway in his study of Shostakovich’s symphonies. The words of the poems, of course, dictate the style and nature of each setting, from the almost Schumannesque harmonies of “O, Delvig, Delvig!” and the sardonic mockery of “Look Here, Madam!” to the spiky, militaristic, 12-tone xylophone theme of “On the Alert” and the virtually toneless fugue played by pizzicato and col legno strings as the disturbing central episode of “At the Santé Prison.” The sequence of the songs provides musical contrast and balance, yet the work achieves a tightly unified structure through the singularity of its content and consistent artistic vision. The Fourteenth Symphony is, as Shostakovich once said of the music of Britten, a work that achieves its profound effect because its outer simplicity is coupled with a vast inner depth of emotional expression.

The Hut on Fowls’ Legs—A clock in 14th-century style, in the shape of a hut with cocks’ heads and on chicken legs. Mussorgsky associated this with the witch Baba Yaga, who flew about in a mortar in chase of her victims.

The Great Gate of Kiev—A design for a series of stone gates that were to have replaced the wooden city gates, to commemorate the escape of Tsar Alexander II from assassination. Mussorgsky’s vision is majestic.

—Michael Steinberg

Here is a description of the pictures Mussorgsky paints: Gnomus—According to Stasov, this represents “a child’s plaything, fashioned, after Hartmann’s design in wood, for the Christmas tree at the Artists’ Club. It is something in the style of the fabled Nutcracker, the nuts being inserted into the gnome’s mouth. The gnome accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks.”

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Texts for Symphony No. 14 in G Minor, Op. 135

DE PROFUNDIS Federico García Lorca (I. Tynyanova)

Sto goryacho vlyublyonnykh

A hundred fervent lovers

Snom vekovym usnuli

Fell into eternal sleep

Gluboko pod sukhoy zemlyoyu.

Deep beneath the dry soil.

Krasnym peskom pokryty

Red sands cover

Dorogi Andaluzii.

The roads of Andalusia.

Vetvi oliv zelyonykh

The green boughs of olive trees

Kordovu zaslonili.

Spread over Cordova.

Zdes im kresty postavyat

Here crosses will be erected

Shtob ikh ne zabyli lyudi.

So that people will not forget them.

Sto goryacho vlyublyonnykh

A hundred fervent lovers

Snom vekovym usnuli.

Fell into eternal sleep.

MALAGUEÑA Federico García Lorca (L. Geleskula)

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Smert voshla i ushla iz taverny.

Death stalks in and out of the tavern.

Chyornyye koni i tyomnyye dushi

Black horses and dark souls

V ushchelyakh gitary brodyat.

Wander in the chasm of the guitar.

Zapakhli solyu i zharkoy krovyu

The smell of salt and hot blood

Sotsvetya zybi nervnoy.

Permeates the florets of the nervous sea.

A smert vsyo vykhodit i vkhodit

Death keeps stalking in and out

I vsyo ne uidyot iz taverny.

And will not leave the tavern.

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san francisco symphony

LORELEYA (“LORELEI”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov)

K belokuroy koldunye iz prireinskovo kraya

To the blonde sorceress from the Rhine country

Shli muzhchiny tolpoy, ot lyubvi umiraya.

Came lovesick men in droves.

I velel yeyo vyzvat yepiskop na sud,

And the Bishop summoned her,

Vsyo v dushe yei proshchaya za yeyo krasotu.

Forgiving her everything in the face of her beauty.

“O, skazhi, Loreleya, chyi glaza tak prekrasny,

“O, say, Lorelei, whose eyes are so beautiful,

Kto tebya nauchil etim charam opasnym?”

Who taught you this wicked sorcery?”

“Zhizn mne v tyagost, yepiskop, i proklyat moy vzor.

“Life is burdensome to me, Bishop, and my eye is accursed.

Kto vzglyanul na menya, svoy prochol prigovor.

Whoever looks at me is condemned.

O, yepiskop, v glazakh moikh plamya pozhara,

O, Bishop, my eyes are full of flame,

Tak predaite ognyu eti strashnyye chary!”

Let then my sorcery be set afire.”

“Loreleya, pozhar tvoy vsesilen: ved ya

“Lorelei, your fire is so powerful: even I

Sam toboy okoldovan i tebe ne sudya.”

Myself am bewitched and cannot be your judge.”

“Zamolchite, yepiskop! Pomolites i verte:

“Be silent, Bishop! Pray and know:

Eto volya Gospodnya—predat menya smerti.

God wills my execution.

Moy lyubimyi uyekhal, on v dalyokoy strane,

My beloved has gone, he is in a distant country.

Vsyo teper mne ne milo, vsyo teper ne po mne.

Nothing pleases me, nothing is worthwhile.

Sertse tak isstradalos, shto dolzhna umeret ya.

My heart is so sick, I must die.

Dazhe vid moy vnushayet mne mysli o smerti.

Even my own appearance makes me think of death.

Moy lyubimyi uyekhal, i s etovo dnya

My beloved has gone, and from that day on

Svet mne belyi ne mil, noch v dushe u menya.”

Nothing pleases me, darkness fills my heart.”

I tryokh rytsarei kliknul yepiskop: “Skoreye

The Bishop orders three knights: “Quickly

Uvedite v glukhoy monastyr Loreleyu.

Take Lorelei to a distant convent.

Proch, bezumnaya Lor, volookaya Lor!

Begone, mad Lor, doe-eyed Lor!

Ty monakhiney stanesh, i pomerknettvoy vzor!”

You will become a nun and your eyes will be dimmed!”

Troye rytsarei s devoy idut po doroge.

The three knights lead the maiden down the road.

Govorit ona strazhnikam khmurym i storgim:

She pleads with her grave and stern escorts:

“Na skale toy vysokoy daite mne postoyat,

“Let me stand upon that rock

Shtob uvidet moy zamok mogla ya opyat,

To look upon my castle once more.

Shtob svoyo otrazhenye ya uvidela snova

Let me see my reflection in the Rhine

Pered tem kak voiti v monastyr vash surovyi.”

Before I enter the forbidding convent.”

Veter volosy sputal, i gorit eyo vzglyad,

Her tresses are blown, her eyes are afire,

Tshchetno strazha krichit yei: “Loreleya, nazad!”

In vain the escorts call: “Lorelei, get back!”

“Na izluchinu Reina ladya vyplyvayet,

“Around the bend of the Rhine comes a boat,

V nei sidit moy lyubimyi, on menya prizyvayet.

Therein sits my beloved, he calls me.

Tak legko na dushe, tak prozrachna volna.”

My heart is so light, the wave is so clear.”

I s vysokoy skaly v Rein upala ona,

Off the rock and into the Rhine falls Lorelei,

Uvidav otrazhonnyye v gladi potoka

Seeing in the smooth flow of the river

Svoi reinskiye ochi, svoy solnechnyi lokon.

The reflection of her eyes and her sunlit curls.

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san francisco symphony

SAMOUBIITSA (“THE SUICIDE”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov) Tri lilii, tri lilii, lilii tri na mogile moyei bez kresta.

Three lilies, three lilies, three lilies, on my grave by cross unmarked.

Tri lilii, chyu pozolotu kholodnyye vetry sduvayut,

Three lilies, the icy winds blow off their gilt,

I chornoye nebo, prolivshis

And the black sky spills rain over them at times,

dozhdyom, ikh poroy omyvayet,

I slovno u skipetrov groznykh, torzhestvenna ikh krasota.

Their beauty is as sombre as regal scepters.

Rastoyot iz rany odna, i kak tolko zakat zapylayet,

One grows from my wound and at sunset,

Okrovavlennoy kazhetsya skorbnaya liliya ta.

This mournful lily seems bloodstained.

Tri lilii, tri lilii, lilii tri na mogile moyei bez kresta.

Three lilies, three lilies, three lilies, on my grave by cross unmarked.

Tri lilii, chyu pozolotu kholodnyye vetry sduvayut.

Three lilies, the icy winds blow off their gilt.

Drugaya iz sertsa rastyot moyevo, shto tak silno stradayet

The other grows from my heart which suffers so

Na lozhe chervivom; a tretya

Upon a verminous bed; the third

kornyami mne rot razryvayet.

one’s roots lacerate my mouth.

Oni na mogile moyei odinoko rastut, i pusta

Lonely they grow on my grave, and barren

Vokrug nikh zemlya, i, kak zhizn

Around them lies the earth, and like

moya, proklyata ikh krasota.

Tri lilii, tri lilii, lilii tri na mogile moyei bez kresta.

my life their beauty is accursed.

Three lilies, three lilies, three lilies, on my grave by cross unmarked.

NA CHEKU (“ON THE ALERT”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov) V transheye on umryot do nastuplenya nochi,

In the trench he will die before nightfall,

Moy malenkii soldat, chey utomlyonnyi vzglyad

My little soldier, whose weary eye

Iz-za ukrytiya sledil vse dni podryad

From out the shelter kept watch day after day

Za Slavoy, shto vzletet uzhe ne khochet.

For Glory, which had lost desire to soar.

Sevodnya on umryot do nastuplenya nochi,

This day he will die before nightfall,

Moy malenkii soldat, lyubovnik moy i brat.

My little soldier, my lover and my brother.

I vot poetomu khochu ya stat krasivoy.

And this is why I want to become beautiful.

Pust yarkim fakelom grud u menya gorit,

Let my breast burn as a bright torch,

Pust opalit moy vzglyad zasnezhennyye nivy,

Let my glance scorch the snow-covered fields,

Pust poyasom mogil moy budet stan obvit.

Let my waist be encircled by a belt of graves.

V krovosmeshenii i v smerti stat krasivoy

In incest and death I want to become beautiful

Khochu ya dlya tovo, kto dolzhen byt ubit.

For the one who is to be killed.

Zakat korovoyu revyot, pylayut rozy,

The sunset bellows like a cow, the roses are ablaze,

I siney ptitseyu moy zacharovan vzglyad.

My gaze is enchanted by the blue bird.

To probil chas Lyubvi i chas likhoradki groznoy,

The hour of Love struck, the hour of terrible fever,

To probil Smerti chas, i nyet puti nazad.

The hour of Death struck, and there is no way back.

Sevodnya on umryot, kak umirayut rozy,

Today he will die, as roses die,

Moy malenkii soldat, lyubovnik moy i brat.

My little soldier, my lover and my brother.

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MADAM, POSMOTRITE! (“LOOK HERE, MADAM!”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov) “Madam, posmotrite!

“Madam, look!

Poteryali vy shto-to...”

You have lost something.”

“Akh, pustyaki! Eto serdtse moyo.

“Ah, just a trifle! It is only my heart.

Skoreye evo podberite.

Pick it up quickly.

Zakhochu—otdam. Zakhochu—

I may return it. I may

Zaberu evo snova poverte.

Take it back again, believe me.

I ya khokhochu, khokhochu

And I laugh, laugh

Nad lyubovyu, shto skoshena smertyu.”

At the love which is cut off by death.”

V TURME (“AT THE SANTÉ JAIL”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov) Menya razdeli dogola,

They stripped me bare

Kogda vveli v turmu;

When they brought me to prison.

Sudboy srazhon iz-za ugla,

Struck by Fate from around the corner

Nizvergnut ya vo tmu.

I am thrust down into darkness.

Proshchai, vesyolyi khorovod,

Farewell, gay circle,

Proshchai, devichii smekh.

Farewell, young girls’ laughter.

Zdes nado mnoy mogilnyi svod,

The tomb’s dome is above me here,

Zdes umer ya dlya vsekh.

Here I am dead to everyone.

Nyet, ya ne tot,

No, I am not the same,

Sovsem ne tot, shto prezhde:

Not at all the same as before:

Teper ya arestant,

I am a prisoner now.

I vot konets nadezhde.

Hope ended here.

V kakoy-to yame, kak medved,

Like a bear in a pit

Khozhu vperyod-nazad.

I pace back and forth.

A nebo...luchshe ne smotret—

And the sky...it’s better not to look,

Ya nebu zdes ne rad.

It brings me no joy.

V kakoy-to yame, kak medved,

Like a bear in a pit

Khozhu vperyod-nazad.

I pace back and forth.

Za shto ty pechal mnye etu prinyos?

Why have you brought me this sadness?

Skazhi, Vsemogushchii Bozhe.

Tell me, Almighty.

O szhaisya, szhalsya! V glazakh moikh netu slyoz,

Have pity! Have pity! My eyes have no tears,

Na masku litso pokhozhe.

My face is like a mask.

Ty vidish, skolko neschastnykh serdets

You see how many sick hearts

Pod svodom turemnym byotsya!

Beat in this vaulted prison.

Sorvi zhe s menya ternovyi venets,

Take the crown of thorns from my head,

Ne to on mnye v mozg vopyotsya.

Lest it pierce my brain.

Den konchilsya. Lampa nad golovyu

The day is ended. The lamp above my head

Gorit, okruzhonnaya tmoy.

Burns surrounded by darkness.

Vsyo tikho. Nas v kamere tol ko dvoye:

All is quiet. There are only two of us in the cell:

Ya i rassudok moy.

I and my mind.

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Saturday, November 19, 2011

7:00 pm

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre — Classical Cabaret Seating Empyrean Ensemble: Fabián Panisello Composer Portrait Fabián Panisello (artist-in-residence) is conductor of the Ensemble Plural in Madrid, and has been guest conductor of orchestras and ensembles, including musikFabrik of Cologne, Ensemble Contemporain of Lyon, Musiques Nouvelles of Brussels, and the Israel Contemporary Players of Tel-Aviv. Panisello has been commissioned by the National Orchestra of Spain and the Southwestern German Radio Symphony Orchestra. $8 Students & Children, $20 Adults.

SuNday, November 20, 2011

7:00 pm

Jackson Hall — Standard Seating UC Davis Symphony Orchestra Stravinsky: Berceuse and Finale from The Firebird Panisello: Violin Concerto Hrabba Atladottir, violin Fabián Panisello, guest conductor and artist-in-residence Strauss: Don Juan Verdi: Overture to I vespri siciliani $8 Students & Children, $12/15/17 Adults.

Tickets are available through the Mondavi Center Box Office 12–6 pm Monday–Saturday (530) 754.2787 | mondaviarts.org

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OTVET ZAPOROZHSKIKH KAZAKOV KONSTANTINOPOLSKOMU SULTANU (“Zaporozhye Cossacks’ Reply to the Sultan of Constantinople”) Guillaume Apollinaire (M. Kudinov)

Ty prestupney Varavvy v sto raz.

Thou art a hundred times more wicked than Barabbas.

S Velsevulom zhivya po sosedstvu,

Living next to Beelzebub,

V samykh merzkikh grekhakh ty pogryaz,

Thou art steeped in the most sinful mire,

Nechistotami vskormlennyi s detstva.

Fed on filth since childhood.

Znay: svoy shabash ty spravish bez nas.

Know: thy sabbath thou wilt celebrate without us.

Rak protukhshii, Salonik otbrosy,

Rotten cancer, Salonica’s refuse,

Skvernyi son, shto nelzya rasskazat,

Horrid nightmare that cannot be told,

Okrivevshiy, gniloy i beznosyi,

Cock-eyed, rotten and noseless,

Ty rodilsya, kogda tvoya mat

Thou wert born when thy mother

Izvivalas v korchakh ponosa.

Writhed in spasms of filth.

Zloy palach Podolya, vzglyani:

Mad butcher of Padolie, look:

Ves ty v ranakh, yazvakh i strupyakh.

Thou art covered with wounds, cankers and scabs.

Zad kobyly, rylo svinyi,

Rump of a horse, snout of a pig,

Pust tebe vse snadobya skupyat

Let all the medicinals be bought

Shtob lechil ty bolyachki svoi.

For thou to care for thy ills.

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san francisco symphony

O, DELVIG, DELVIG! Wilhelm Küchelbecker

O, Delvig, Delvig! Shto nagrada

Oh, Delvig, Delvig! What reward

I del vysokikh i stikhov?

For lofty deeds and poetry?

Talantu shto i gde otrada

For talent what comfort

Sredi zlodeyev i gluptsov?

Among villains and fools?

V ruke surovoy Yuvenala

In the stern hand of Juvenal

Zlodeyam groznyi bich svistit

For the knaves a menacing whip whistles

I krasku gonit s ikh lanit.

And drains the color from their faces.

I vlast tiranov zadrozhala.

And the powerful tyrants tremble.

O, Delvig, Delvig? Shto gonenya?

Oh, Delvig, Delvig! What persecution?

Bessmertiye ravno udel

Immortality is equally the lot

I smelykh vdokhnovennykh del

Of bold, inspired deeds

I sladostnovo pesnopenya!

And sweet songs!

Tak ne umryot i nash soyuz,

Thus will not die our bond,

Svogodnyi, radostnyi i gordyi!

Free, joyful and proud!

I v schastye i v neschastye tvyordyi,

In happiness and in sorrow it stands firm

Soyuz lyubimtsev vechnykh muz!

The bond of eternal lovers of the Muses.

SMERT POETA (“THE POET’S DEATH”) Rainer Maria Rilke (T. Silman)

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Poet byl myortv. Litso evo, khranya

The poet was dead. His face, retaining

Vsyo tu zhe blednost, shto-to otvergalo.

His usual paleness, rejected something.

Ono kogda-to vsyo o mire znalo,

Once it knew all about the world,

No eto znanye ugasalo

But this knowledge expired

I vozvrashchalos v ravnodushye dnya.

And turned into indifference of the day.

Gde im ponyat, kak dolog etot put?

How can they understand how long this road is?

O! mir i on—vsyo bylo tak yedino:

O! world and he—once they were one:

Ozyora i ushchelya, i ravnina

The lakes, the valleys and the plains

Evo litsa i sostavlyali sut.

Of his face contained its quintessence.

Litso evo i bylo tem prostorom,

His face was that expanse

Shto tyanetsya k nemu i tshchetno Inyot,

Which reaches out to him in vain;

A eta maska robkaya umryot,

But this timid mask will die

Otkryto predostavlennaya vzoram,

Being openly exposed,

Na tlenye obrechonnyi, nezhnyi plod.

A tender fruit doomed to decay.

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san francisco symphony

ZAKLYUCHENIYE (“CONCLUSION”) Rainer Maria Rilke (T. Silman) Vsevlastna smert.

All-powerful is Death.

Ona na strazhe

It is on watch

I v schastya chas.

Even in the hour of happiness.

V mire vysshey zhizni ona v nas strazhdet

In the world of higher life it suffers within us

Zhivyot i zhazhdet

Lives and longs

I plachet v nas.

And cries within us.

Shostakovich and Mussorgsky, Conlon and Leiferkus

further listening

by jeff hudson If tonight’s concert whets your appetite for more music by the composers and performers on the program, there are recordings leading in several directions.

Conductor James Conlon, who is in the midst of a rather dazzling career, has a discography to match. Of particular note are Conlon’s recordings (made in the late 1990s and early 2000s) featuring the music of composer Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942). Zemlinsky was a pivotal turn-of-the-century figure whose name is not prominent nowadays, but he wrote some excellent music and lived a life that included fascinating connections. Zemlinsky was personally encouraged as a young composer by the aging Brahms, became a friend of Mahler and his wife, was a colleague of Schoenberg (who married Zemlinsky’s sister) and a teacher of Erich Korngold.

Conlon’s recording of the rarely-heard Zemlinsky cantata Frühlingsbegräbnis features soprano Deborah Voight, a familiar figure to Mondavi audiences. (And if you have a really good memory, you’ll recall that UCD’s Empyrean Ensemble played Zemlinsky’s Trio, dating from 1897, as a sort of 100th anniversary performance back in October 1998 at the Wyatt Pavilion.)

Baritone Sergei Leiferkus has recorded the Shostakovich Symphony No. 14 with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (under conductor Neeme Järvi) for the Deutsche Grammophon label. Sharing that disc is a recording of the work that largely inspired the Shostakovich 14th—Modest Mussorgsky’s eerie Songs and Dances of Death—also featuring Leiferkus. In addition, Leiferkus has recorded the complete Mussorgsky songs (four discs) on the Conifer label. If you’re looking for more, Leiferkus sings on a recording of the

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Shostakovich Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar) on the Teldec label, featuring the New York Philharmonic (coming to the Mondavi Center later this season) under the baton of Kurt Masur.

Most fans of Pictures at an Exhibition are probably already aware that Modest Mussorgsky wrote the original piano version in 1874, and Maurice Ravel orchestrated the piece almost a half century later in 1922. The orchestral version gets played quite a lot (the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra performed it in Jackson Hall in February 2011, accompanied by projections of the artwork by Victor Hartmann that inspired Mussorgsky).

But I’m equally fond of the earlier piano version, and in some ways I prefer it. If you want to make the comparison yourself, check out Vladimir Ashkenazy’s disc on the Decca label, which features both versions (Ashkenazy plays the Mussorgsky piano score himself and conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra of London in the Ravel orchestration).

Lastly, the San Francisco Symphony has recently released two new live recordings made under conductor Michael Tilson Thomas: an American disc featuring A Concord Symphony

by Charles Ives/Henry Brant and Aaron Copland’s Organ Symphony, recorded at Davies Hall in February 2010; and a Beethoven disc featuring the Symphony No. 5 and the Piano Concerto No. 4 (with soloist Emanuel Ax), recorded at Davies Hall in December 2009.

Jeff Hudson contributes coverage of the performing arts to Capital Public Radio, the Davis Enterprise and Sacramento News and Review.

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Mondavi Center Support

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Event & Additional Support Partners Boeger Winery Ciocolat El Macero Country Club Hot Italian Hyatt Place 48

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Osteria Fasulo Seasons Restaurant Strelitzia Flower Company Watermelon Music

Dance Series Sponsor

The Friends of Mondavi Center is an active donor-based volunteer organization that supports activities of the Mondavi Center’s presenting program. Deeply committed to arts education, Friends volunteer their time and financial support for learning opportunities related to Mondavi Center performances. When you join the Friends of Mondavi Center, you are able to choose from a variety of activities and work with other Friends who share your interests.

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Join the Friends of Mondavi Center!

There are so many ways to participate!

Gift Shop Managed and staffed by the Friends of Mondavi Center volunteers, profits from the Gift Shop support Mondavi Center Arts Education program.

School Matinee Support Friends provide talks at area schools to prepare students to attend a school matinee at Mondavi Center. They use materials that are researched and written by Friends.

In addition, Friends volunteer as ushers for all Mondavi Center school matinees.

Tours Friends coordinate and give public tours of the Mondavi Center to groups as large as 100 people.

Friends Events Fundraisers for the School Matinee Ticket Program and fun social events are organized by a creative group of Friends. Fundraiser revenue provides tickets to students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to attend a performance at Mondavi Center. The Friends Outreach Committee coordinates distribution of tickets to targeted school districts in the Sacramento region.

Ad Hoc Ad hoc volunteers provide support for Arts Education activities such as artists’ master classes, the Young Artists Competition program and the Globe Education Academy Workshops.

Audience Enrichment Members of the Audience Enrichment Committee will assist the Mondavi Center with outreach activities that occur on campus and throughout the greater community. These activities might involve disseminating materials or participating in community events as a representative of the Mondavi Center.

For information on becoming a Friend of Mondavi Center, email Jennifer Mast at jmmast@ucdavis.edu or call 530.754.5431.

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MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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Mondavi Center Staff DON ROTH, Ph.D. Executive Director Jeremy Ganter Associate Executive Director PROGRAMMING Jeremy Ganter Director of Programming Erin Palmer Programming Manager Ruth Rosenberg Artist Engagement Coordinator

AUDIENCE SERVICES Emily Taggart Audience Services Manager/ Artist Liaison Coordinator

DEVELOPMENT Debbie Armstrong Senior Director of Development

Yuri Rodriguez Events Manager

Ali Kolozsi Director of Major Gifts

Natalia Deardorff Assistant Events Manager Nancy Temple Assistant Public Events Manager

BUSINESS SERVICES Debbie Armstrong Senior Director of Support Lara Downes Curator: Young Artists Program Services ARTS EDUCATION Joyce Donaldson Associate to the Executive Director for Arts Educaton and Strategic Projects

Carolyn Warfield Human Resources Analyst

Jennifer Mast Arts Education Coordinator

Russ Postlethwaite Billing System Administrator

Mandy Jarvis Financial Analyst

Dena Gilday Payroll and Travel Assistant

Mondavi Center Advisory Board

MARKETING Rob Tocalino Director of Marketing

production Christopher Oca Stage Manager

Will Crockett Marketing Manager

Christi-Anne Sokolewicz Stage Manager

Erin Kelley Senior Graphic Artist Elisha Findley Corporate & Annual Fund Officer Morissa Rubin Senior Graphic Artist Amanda Turpin Donor Relations Manager Amanda Caraway Public Relations Coordinator Angela McMillon Development and Support Services Assistant TICKET OFFICE Sarah Herrera Ticket Office Manager FACILITIES Herb Garman Steve David Director of Operations Ticket Office Supervisor Greg Bailey Susie Evon Lead Building Maintenance Ticket Agent Worker INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Darren Marks Programmer/Designer

Russell St. Clair Ticket Agent Head Ushers Huguette Albrecht George Edwards Linda Gregory Donna Horgan

Mark J. Johnston Lead Application Developer Tim Kendall Programmer

Jenna Bell Production Coordinator Zak Stelly-Riggs Master Carpenter Daniel Goldin Master Electrician Michael Hayes Head Sound Technician Adrian Galindo Scene Technician Kathy Glaubach Scene Technician Daniel Thompson Scene Technician

Mike Tracy Susie Valentin Janellyn Whittier Terry Whittier

The Mondavi Center Advisory Board is a university support group whose primary purpose is to provide assistance to the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis, and its resident users, the academic departments of Music and Theatre and Dance and the presenting program of the Mondavi Center, through fundraising, public outreach and other support for the mission of UC Davis and the Mondavi Center.

11-12 Season Board Officers John Crowe, Chair Joe Tupin, Patron Relations Chair Randy Reynoso, Corporate Relations Co-Chair Garry Maisel, Corporate Relations Co-Chair

Members Jeff Adamski Wayne Bartholomew Camille Chan John Crowe Lois Crowe Cecilia Delury Patti Donlon David Fiddyment Dolly Fiddyment Mary Lou Flint

Samia Foster Scott Foster Anne Gray Benjamin Hart Lynette Hart Dee Hartzog Joe Hartzog Barbara K. Jackson Vince Jacobs Garry P. Maisel Stephen Meyer

Randy Reynoso Nancy Roe William Roe Lawrence Shepard Nancy Shepard Joan Stone Tony Stone Joe Tupin Larry Vanderhoef Rosalie Vanderhoef

Ex Officio Linda P.B. Katehi, Chancellor, UC Davis Ralph J. Hexter, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, UC Davis Jessie Ann Owens, Dean, Division of Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies, College of Letters & Sciences, UC Davis Jo Anne Boorkman, Friends of Mondavi Center Board Don Roth, Executive Director, Mondavi Center Erin Schlemmer, Arts & Lectures Chair

Arts & Lectures Administrative Advisory Committee

friends of Mondavi Center

The Arts & Lectures Administrative Advisory Committee is made up of interested students, faculty and staff who attend performances, review programming opportunities and meet monthly with the director of the Mondavi Center. They provide advice and feedback for the Mondavi Center staff throughout the performance season.

11-12 Executive Board

11-12 Committee Members Erin Schlemmer, Chair Prabhakara Choudary Adrian Crabtree Susan Franck Kelley Gove Holly Keefer

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Sandra Lopez Danielle McManus Bella Merlin Lee Miller Bettina Ng’weno Rei Okamoto

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Hearne Pardee Isabel Raab Kayla Rouse Erin Schlemmer Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie

Jo Anne Boorkman, President Laura Baria, Vice President Francie Lawyer, Secretary Jim Coulter, Audience Enrichment Jacqueline Gray, Membership Sandra Chong, School Matinee Support Martha Rehrman, Friends Events Leslie Westergaard, Mondavi Center Tours Phyllis Zerger, School Outreach Eunice Adair Christensen, Gift Shop Manager, Ex Officio Joyce Donaldson, Director of Arts Education, Ex Officio

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Tickets may not be exchanged after your performance date.

There is a $5.00 exchange fee per ticket for non-subscribers and Pick 3 purchasers.

If you exchange for a higher priced ticket, the difference will be charged. The difference between a higher and a lower priced ticket on exchange is non-refundable.

Subscribers and donors may exchange tickets at face value toward a balance on their account. All balances must be applied toward the same presenter and expire June 30 of the current season.

Balances may not be transferred between accounts.

All exchanges subject to availability.

All ticket sales are final for events presented by non-UC Davis promoters.

No refunds.

Parking

Accommodations for Patrons with Disabilities The Mondavi Center is proud to be a fully accessible state-of-the-art public facility that meets or exceeds all state and federal ADA requirements.

Patrons with special seating needs should notify the Mondavi Center Ticket Office at the time of ticket purchase to receive reasonable accommodation. The Mondavi Center may not be able to accommodate special needs brought to our attention at the performance.

Seating spaces for wheelchair users and their companions are located at all levels and prices for all performances.

Requests for sign language interpreting, real-time captioning, Braille programs and other reasonable accommodations should be made with at least two weeks’ notice. The Mondavi Center may not be able to accommodate last minute requests. Requests for these accommodations may be made when purchasing tickets at 530.754.2787 or TDD 530.754.5402.

You may purchase parking passes for individual Mondavi Center events for $7 per event at the parking lot or with your ticket order.

Rates are subject to change. Parking passes that have been lost or stolen will not be replaced.

Special Seating

Group Discounts

Assistive Listening Devices

Entertain friends, family, classmates or business associates and save!

Groups of 20 or more qualify for a 10% discount off regular prices.

Payment must be made in a single check or credit card transaction.

Please call 530.754.2787 or 866.754.2787.

Student Tickets (50% off the full single ticket price) Student tickets are to be used by registered students matriculating toward a degree, age 18 and older, with a valid student ID card. Each student ticket holder must present a valid student ID card at the door when entering the venue where the event occurs, or the ticket must be upgraded to regular price.

Children (50% off the full single ticket price) Child tickets are for all patrons age 17 and younger. No additional discounts may be applied. As a courtesy to other audience members, please use discretion in bringing a young child to an evening performance. All children, regardless of age, are required to have tickets, and any child attending an evening performance should be able to sit quietly through the performance.

Privacy Policy The Mondavi Center collects information from patrons solely for the purpose of gaining necessary information to conduct business and serve our patrons efficiently. We sometimes share names and addresses with other not-for-profit arts organizations. If you do not wish to be included in our e-mail communications or postal mailings, or if you do not want us to share your name, please notify us via e-mail, U.S. mail, or telephone. Full Privacy Policy at MondaviArts.org.

POlicies

Policies and Information

Mondavi Center offers special seating arrangements for our patrons with disabilities. Please call the Ticket Office at 530.754.2787 [TDD 530.754.5402].

Assistive Listening Devices are available for Jackson Hall and the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre. Receivers that can be used with or without hearing aids may be checked out at no charge from the Patron Services Desk near the lobby elevators. The Mondavi Center requires an ID to be held at the Patron Services Desk until the device is returned.

Elevators The Mondavi Center has two passenger elevators serving all levels.

They are located at the north end of the Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby, near the restrooms and Patron Services Desk.

Restrooms All public restrooms are equipped with accessible sinks, stalls, babychanging stations and amenities. There are six public restrooms in the building: two on the Orchestra level, two on the Orchestra Terrace level and two on the Grand Tier level.

Service Animals Mondavi Center welcomes working service animals that are necessary to assist patrons with disabilities. Service animals must remain on a leash or harness at all times. Please contact the Mondavi Center Ticket Office if you intend to bring a service animal to an event so that appropriate seating can be reserved for you.

*Only one discount per ticket.

Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle this playbill for reuse.

MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 1: Sept-Oct 2011 |

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The art of performance draws our eyes to the stage

Our community’s commitment to arts and culture says a lot about where we live and it brings us together from the moment the lights go down and the curtains come up.

wellsfargo.com © 2011 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved.

Member FDIC. (594507_02705)

594507_02705 7.25x9.25 4c.indd 1

8/4/11 3:10 PM

can The health plan that

take care of your employees.

And your bottom line.

As a founding partner of the Mondavi Center, Western Health Advantage has been a strong supporter of local arts. Which might explain why we’ve lifted local health care to an art form. What’s our method? We deliver friendly, responsive service, keep costs low, and provide access to 2,300 area physicians and specialists. Maybe that’s why over 4,000 local businesses offer our plans and 90,000 individuals and families choose our coverage.

That kind of recognition is worthy of a standing ovation.

Visit westernhealth.com to learn more about our health plans.

september 2011

december 2011

21

30

7–10 8

11

15 18

Return To Forever IV with Zappa Plays Zappa Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder

october 2011 1 2 6 8 13 19 20 21 24

29 29–30

Wayne Shorter Quartet Alexander String Quartet Yamato Jonathan Franzen San Francisco Symphony Scottish Ballet k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang Rising Stars of Opera Focus on Film: Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould Hilary Hahn, violin So Percussion: “We Are All Going in Different Directions”: A John Cage Celebration

november 2011 4 5–6 7–8 9–11 12

12–13

14 14–15

mondavi center–

Tia Fuller Quartet Mariachi Sol de México de Jóse Hernàndez Lara Downes Family Concert: Green Eggs and Ham Blind Boys of Alabama Christmas Show American Bach Soloists: Messiah

january 2012 5 9 14–15

19 25–28 27 29 30

San Francisco Symphony Focus on Film: Platoon Alexi Kenney, violin and Hilda Huang, piano Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca Alfredo Rodriguez Trio Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Alexander String Quartet Focus on Opera: Tosca

february 2012

3 4 Cinematic Titanic Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise 9 Hot 8 Brass Band 11–12 Trey McIntyre Project 14 and Preservation Hall Jazz Band 17 Lara Downes: 18 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg

Focus on Film: Salaam Bombay!

22 Growing Up In India: 25 A Film and Photo Exhibition

Oliver Stone Rachel Barton Pine, violin, with the Chamber Soloists Orchestra of New York Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo CIRCA Loudon Wainwright III & Leo Kottke Eric Owens, bass-baritone Chucho Valdés and the Afro-Cuban Messengers The Chieftains Overtone Quartet

Media Clips & More Info:

MondaviArts.org

MondaviArts.org

Rachel Barton Pine

530.754.2787

2 9 10–11 17–18 18 22

24–25 29

Angelique Kidjo Garrick Ohlsson, piano Curtis On Tour Ballet Preljocaj: Blanche Neige Alexander String Quartet Zakir Hussain and Masters of Percussion Circus Oz SFJAZZ Collective

april 2012 1

9 11 13 14–15 17 18–21 19–22

28

2

9 12 13

14

16–19

530.754.2787

| mondaviarts.org

march 2012

Young Artists Competition Winners Concert Focus on Opera: The Elixir of Love Sherman Alexie Bettye LaVette Zippo Songs: Poems from the Front Anoushka Shankar The Bad Plus The Improvised Shakespeare Company Maya Beiser: Provenance

may 2012

Call for Tickets!

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866.754.2787 (toll-free)

San Francisco Symphony Chamber Ensemble Patti Smith New York Philharmonic ODC/Dance: The Velveteen Rabbit Focus on Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor Supergenerous: Cyro Baptista and Kevin Breit