Exciting things coming up in the next week. As mentioned previously, Sacred and Profane will be premiering the SATB version of “Oseh Shalom” tonight in Berkeley-- along with tomorrow in SF and Sunday in Santa Rosa. IOCSF, meanwhile, will have my “Hanukkah Blessings” on our program, also tonight in Berkeley and tomorrow in SF, and December 10 in Healdsburg as well. sacredandprofane.org and iocsf.org have the details respectively.

And in advance of the full release of the “All is Mere Breath” album from Navona Records, we have a single release, of movement II: “How she sits alone”. This is a very special movement to me because it's where the whole conception of the piece began: with my reading Lamentations in 2020 and realizing how relevant that opening lament could be to the COVID experience. It's available right now from all the major streaming services via https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6587/. Enjoy!

As I hinted in a previous post, Hakol Hevel is going to have an album release this year! It's coming out on the Navona Records label from Parma Recordings, and the release date is set for December 8. I'll post again when it's actually out there so you can find the appropriate links to buy or stream. I'm so grateful to everyone involved in the recording process; the result of lots of behind-the-scenes effort is very high quality.

I'm also singing in the SF Symphony Chorus a couple more times this fall. My engagements will include performances of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, on October 19, 21, and 22; and then just a few weeks later, Stravinsky's Les Noces on November 17 and 18. You can get tickets at sfsymphony.org and I hope to see folks ther.

I'm delighted to be able to officially announce that two of my pieces will be premiered in the Bay Area on the same weekend: December 1 and 2.

First, as previously mentioned, Sacred and Profane will premiere the SATB version of my Oseh Shalom, the final movement of my cantata Hakol Hevel (All is Mere Breath). Their concerts will be on December 1 in Berkeley, December 2 in San Francisco, and December 3 in Santa Rosa.

Second, my “home choir”, IOCSF, the wellspring of so much of my compositional and choral activity over the past sixteen (!) years, will have a new piece of mine on their-- really, our-- fall program as well. This season IOCSF is doing “Holidays with a Twist”, a program of new takes on well-known holiday poems and tunes; and my Hanukkah Blessings, a setting of the three Hebrew blessings traditionally sung when lighting Hanukkah candles, will be included. IOCSF's concerts are… also on December 1 in Berkeley and December 2 in San Francisco. Sorry about the conflict; there are only so many holiday-season weekends and they're always packed with concerts. I hope to see some of you there!

So the Hakol Hevel premiere went very well indeed. Performance venues were full, audiences were moved; the choir, soloists, and orchestra all did a fantastic job. Just one wrinkle for me: I couldn't attend because I came down with COVID the day of the premiere. Argh. The writers were really lazy that day, as they say.

But I have good news about the future of the piece. First of all, we should have an album release of the recording later this year… stay tuned for details on that one, but I'm super excited about both the quality of the recording and the quality of the record label involved. And second, the final movement of the cantata, Oseh Shalom, is tentatively set to receive a Bay Area premiere in SATB a cappella form in December, sung by the excellent East Bay chorus Sacred and Profane. Save the dates-- December 1 and 2-- and again watch this space for more details.

Meanwhile, in the shorter term, I am singing up a storm. Today and tomorrow I am joining the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, singing the men's chorus part in the last movement of the Busoni Piano Concerto. We gave our first performance Thursday night and it got a splendid review: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/classical/sf-symphony-busoni-concerto-review-18126671

And on July 18 I will be singing with a festival chorus organized by Volti for a program of contemporary music in Napa Valley, centered on the Yiddish-language oratorio “Vessels of Light” by Lera Auerbach: https://festivalnapavalley.org/calendar/seasons-of-hope/

Looking forward to the singing and to seeing folks there.

ECMC's Instagram feed is doing a series of chorister interviews about my cantata Hakol Hevel as they prepare for the premiere performances. They're all worth listening to if you Instagram, but I was particularly touched by this:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CosIsOrjOVq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

I can only hope the piece itself will do justice to the depth of feeling these wonderful folks are bringing to it!