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Carnegie Hall Presents

San Francisco Symphony - American Mavericks - Students

Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, Emanuel Ax, and other guests join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for two back-to-back concerts that celebrate the groundbreaking composers of the 20thand 21st centuries. Plus, get a free American Mavericks book with this subscription.

Series Events

Tuesday, Mar 27, 2012 | 8 PM
San Francisco Symphony
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Performers

  • San Francisco Symphony
    Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director and Conductor
  • St. Lawrence String Quartet
    ·· Geoff Nuttall, Violin
    ·· Scott St. John, Violin
    ·· Lesley Robertson, Viola
    ·· Christopher Costanza, Cello
  • Joan La Barbara, Vocalist
  • Meredith Monk, Vocalist
  • Jessye Norman, Soprano
  • Jesse Stiles, Electronics
  • Yuval Sharon, Stage Director

Program

  • CAGE Song Books
  • COWELL Synchrony
  • JOHN ADAMS Absolute Jest for String Quartet and Orchestra (NY Premiere, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Symphony, with support from the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for New Works of Music.)
  • VARÈSE Amériques
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The San Francisco Symphony begins its American Mavericks residency at Carnegie Hall with a spectacular, ground-shaking ode to our country from the 1920s by a Frenchman who found creative sustenance right here in the Big Apple and the New York premiere of John Adams’s Absolute Jest.

Also on the program is music from John Cage’s enigmatic Song Books with Jessye Norman, Meredith Monk, and Joan La Barbara. Imagine video screens pulsing with images that reinforce action. Envision three houses with cut-away walls, revealing the three divas. They explore three Cage worlds: one of theater, one populated by avant-garde French composer Erik Satie and Dada icon Marcel Duchamp, and another of Cage's idol Henry David Thoreau. The action is directed by Yuval Sharon, who has staged productions with New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, and many other companies. But no two performances are the same, for the singers act on the moment’s inspiration, guided by Cage’s prompts. “Leave the stage by going up (flying) or by going down through a trap door,” Cage directs in one number. “Return in the same way wearing an animal’s head.” “Breathe as though you had lost your voice.” Prepare for fractured settings from Thoreau: “Wasps are building summer squashes, saw a fish hawk, when I hear this both bushes and trees are thinly leaved.”
Varèse's Amériques
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, Conductor
Deutsche Grammophon
Wednesday, Mar 28, 2012 | 8 PM
San Francisco Symphony
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Performers

  • San Francisco Symphony
    Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director and Conductor
  • Emanuel Ax, Piano

Program

  • RUGGLES Sun-Treader
  • FELDMAN Piano and Orchestra
  • IVES A Concord Symphony (orch. Brant)
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On its second concert at Carnegie Hall as part of American Mavericks, the San Francisco Symphony presents Carl Ruggles’s Sun-Treader, whose title comes from a Robert Browning poem, and an orchestration of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, inspired by New England’s transcendentalists. Ruggedly nonconformist, these works are matched with the no-less-individualistic music of iconoclast Morton Feldman.

Ruggles Sun-Treader
Boston Symphony Orchestra; Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor 
Deutsche Grammophon