Arthur Hitchcock
In a Landscape
Bringing the concert hall to the great outdoors, the series “In a Landscape” will be presenting several performances to the Bay Area in the coming days. This weekend, they’ll be in San Geronimo (18) and Tiburon (19), and then into next week there are concerts at the Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside (20-21), the San Francisco Botanical Garden (22) and Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen (24). This is the 9th season of the series, which was the brainchild of pianist Hunter Noack. He’s brought a 9-foot Steinway grand piano on a flatbed trailer “to State and National Parks, urban greenspaces, working ranches, farms, and historical sites for classical music concerts that connect people with each landscape.” Audiences wear special wireless headphones that are provided, allowing them to be immersed in the music, and able to explore the natural world around them. The Saturday concert is at San Geronimo Commons at 5pm; Sunday’s is at McKegney Green in Tiburon at 4pm.
SF Bach Choir’s St. John Passion
Two Bay Area performances of Bach’s St. John Passion is the culmination of this season of the San Francisco Bach Choir – led by Magen Solomon in her tenth season as Artistic Director, for the performances on Saturday in Berkeley and Sunday in San Francisco, the choir will be joined by instrumentalists of the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra, and professional soloists – Kyle Stegall as the Evangelist, Chung-Wai Soong as Jesus, and soprano Michele Kennedy, mezzo-soprano Heidi Waterman, tenor David Kurtenbach Rivera, and baritone Nikolas Nackley. The Saturday concert is at 4pm at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, and Sunday’s is at 4pm at San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church. There’s also an option to see the concert as video on demand a few weeks after the performances.
FREE: Prometheus Symphony Orchestra
The all-volunteer, community based Prometheus Symphony Orchestra ends its 59th season with another free concert, which will include Tchaikovsky’s Symphony in E-flat (neither published nor performed during his lifetime) and Edward Elgar’s beloved Cello concerto. The soloist for the concerto is Cara Wang, one of this year’s Khuner Young Artist Concerto Competition winners. Music Director Eric Hansen will conduct. The concert is at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, near Lake Merritt, and families with children are always welcome. (Free) tickets are required, and there’s a brief pre-concert talk at 2:40, prior to the performance at 3pm.
