Sunday, June 7, 2020

not quite a concert review

For Friday evening, I had bookmarked a webcast of a piano recital that I might have wanted to attend anyway if it had come to my attention during normal times: Sarah Cahill, local keyboard domina of the new and unusual, in "The Future Is Female," a collection of works by women composers of interest.

As it turned out, my hectic schedule for the day meant I missed it, which is not surprising because appointments to watch things on television or such have never had a hold on my mind the way actually going out to a concert does. Fortunately you can still listen to it and read the program notes too.

I listened to the whole thing, but found as I have before with webconcerts that I have more trouble giving it review-level concentration than I would if I were there in person. So there will be no attempt to replicate the review I might have written for SFCV. But I will say it was pleasurable to hear works I didn't know by composers I did, Gubaidulina and Bacewicz and Tailleferre and Jolas and Kats-Chernin. Of the rest, the most interesting were Lois Vierk's extraordinary reworking of "She Loves You," slowing down the chord sequences so much that it's unrecognizable, and a Prelude & Etude by Gabriela Ortiz, which had much of the clotted drive and busy intensity of New York-style minimalism.

The other latest electronic event has been a Zoom social gathering of PenSFA, the local sf social club. A fair number of people showed up, some decent conversation was had, and it worked reasonably well for us with B's ipad. Tybalt made a brief appearance in our screen window.

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