The piano trios of Maurice Ravel, Rebecca Clarke and Dmitri Shostakovich were composed within a ten-year period surrounding WWI and express the deeply emotional currents that reflect this transformative time. Kate Stenberg, Mary Artmann and Miles Graber come together through their blend of passion for chamber music and friendship.

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Graber/Artmann/Stenberg Trio

Old First Concerts

Portrayed as a “Keyboard Alchemist” (Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times) and the “Embodiment of a Muse” (Greg Burk, metaljazz.com), critically-acclaimed Japanese-born pianist/composer/interdisciplinary creator Motoko Honda has fascinated critics and audiences alike with her genre-defying innovative approach to piano playing and composing: “Imagine Radiohead teaching Franz List how to rock a Kaoss Pad; or John Cage facing off with Bud Powell over prepared piano”(Matthew Duersten, stompbeast.com). With stylistic influences ranging from jazz to Indonesian music and contemporary prepared & electrified piano, Honda is a musical force of nature, bringing a unique creative sound to her solo works and wide-ranging collaborations. In this concert Honda will showcase a variety of rarely-performed solo compositions and improvisational works to transport audiences on sonic adventures that transcend the boundaries and conventions of traditional contemporary piano music.

Motoko Honda - The Emergent Piano

Spend an evening in 19th century Paris at a salon concert discovering the seldom-heard music of Pauline Viardot and her admirers with this passionate and intimate program! Laure de Marcellus, mezzo soprano, in duo with Alberto Urroz will present music from their album Pauline Inspired, an homage to this fascinating woman. Viardot was a 19th century prima donna and composer whose artistic and musical personality inspired the greatest artists of her time, including de Musset, Gounod, Tourgueniev, and Chopin, and who left too-often unsung melodic treasures of her own. The program features her own compositions alongside music dedicated to her by Fauré, Gounod, Chapí and Saint-Saëns. This is the duo’s first appearance in San Francisco with this program which they premiered to rave reviews in Spain in July and September 2021.

Praised for her “important, very powerful voice, of clear timbre within its mezzo chiaroscuro” and “magnificent, elegant rendition, expressive without exaggerating the gesture”, Laure de Marcellus shines in this repertoire, delicately and expertly accompanied by Alberto Urroz, a pianist with impeccable technique and rare authenticity.

Laure de Marcellus & Alberto Urroz

An all-J. S. Bach concert showcasing some of the most talented young musicians in Northern California. Hear J. S. Bach’s music played with great skill and youthful exuberance! Selected through professionally adjudicated auditions, the Festival showcases performers under age 21 who are both technically virtuosic and capable of communicating the genius of Bach’s compositional language.

The Junior Bach Festival is a well-respected Bay Area institution. (In 1965, the California State Assembly issued an official proclamation in the Festivals honor!) The Festival presents annually a concert series around the time of Bach’s birthday on March 21 in venues throughout the Bay Area. The Festival also promotes the appreciation and study of Bach’s music by offering an annual public Workshop; with the audience, Bach experts examine topics such as baroque style, ornamentation, or ensemble playing. In recent years, the Festival has collaborated with local music organizations to offer students an opportunity during the Workshop to try out a period keyboard, stringed instrument, or wind instrument like those from Bach’s time.

Junior Bach Festival

This new program embraces musical traditions found across our globe, spanning America, Germany, the Czech Republic, and India. Come be uplifted, challenged and inspired by the late piano music of Beethoven, be drawn into a fairy world of Janàček, and revel in the dark, exotic Hindustani sounds of riding young Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, whose work is inspired by the iconic Hindi film Rang De Basanti. The program also includes a world premiere by Texas-based composer B.P. Herrington’s How Come That Blood—Darmstadt meets Southern Gothic: “…an intriguing blend of common-man expression and formal acuity.” (The New York Sun)

Hadley McCarroll - Pancultural

The Del Sol Quartet returns to Old First Concerts to host its 3rd annual festival—The Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival—highlighting the experimental innovators and traditional masters of pure-ratio harmonies. Although the Bay Area has long been a hotbed of alternate tunings, the Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival is the first local event dedicated to hearing these resonant harmonies. This year’s festival, Modes of Changes, highlights Persian scales with the world premiere of Reza Vali’s String Quartet No. 5, ‘Gavesht’ with a pre-concert talk on Vali’s new alternate tuning music software. The Del Sol Quartet set will also include the world premiere of Madeline Ashman’s Gravitation. The festival also includes performances by Ken Ueno with Viola Yip, Hafez Modirzadeh with Keshav Batish, and Vân-Ánh Võ.

3rd Annual Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival
Modes of Change

Sierra Ensemble is an innovative violin, French horn, and piano trio based in Richmond, California. Performing worldwide and throughout the United States since 1998, Sierra has built audience and expanded repertoire through numerous composer commissions and education projects. Sierra has been awarded grants from both CEC ArtsLink and U.S. Department of State. These grants funded two groundbreaking residency programs at universities in Turkey in May and June 2013. Deeply committed to music education and development of young artists, Sierra served as Ensemble in Residence for the John Adams Young Composers Program, at the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley in 2012. Recent local performances include appearances in Berkeley at the East Bay Music Collective in January, and a free livestream concert at the Center for New Music, San Francisco in July, In addition, the American Federation of Musicians, San Francisco Local, via the Music Performance Trust Funds, sponsored Sierra Ensemble in a free livestream concert to East Bay schools in April 2021. Sierra Ensemble is currently recording the Brahms Horn Trio. Their performance, noted for “… glowing dexterity … a first-class blend of sensitive Brahms…,” is set be released in early 2022.

Richard Aldag’s Trio For Violin, French horn and Piano was commissioned by Sierra Ensemble with the support of the Musical Grant Program, which is administered by InterMusic SF, and supported by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and San Francisco Grants for the Arts.

Sierra Ensemble

Circadian String Quartet tells the story of older sister Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and her younger brother Felix Mendelssohn by presenting two masterworks for string quartet-Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s dramatic String Quartet in E flat major and Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in F minor Op. 80. Fanny and Felix were both prodigiously talented musicians but were unequally supported and encouraged in their talents due to the prevalent sexism of the time to the point that many of Fanny’s compositions were errantly attributed to Felix. That this sexist treatment did not dampen their affection and respect for one another is born out by the fact that Op. 80 was composed by Felix as a loving “requiem for Fanny.” It turned out to be Felix’s last composition. Celebrate with us the enduring musicality and strong bond of this famous sister and brother-Fanny and Felix.

Old First Concerts

Apr 22, 2022

Graber/Artmann/Stenberg Trio

Apr 10, 2022

Motoko Honda - The Emergent Piano

Old First Concerts