Opening Night Gala Concert

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, USA

| 22 September 2023 |
7:00 pm

Screenshot: Munich Festival Concert 30.07.2021

    Orchestra : San Francisco Symphony
    Conductor : Esa-Pekka Salonen
     

    Baritone : Simon Keenlyside
    Hip-Hop Artist : Kev Choice
    Freestyle Artist : Anthony Veneziale
    Soprano : Hila Plitmann
     

From the San Francisco Symphony website:

"... Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in an exhilarating Opening Night Gala program that interweaves music and technology in a tapestry of heightened emotional journeys and artistic exploration. Bookending the love-sick verses of Gustav Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, here brought to life by baritone Simon Keenlyside, are Richard Strauss’s picaresque Don Juan and Maurice Ravel’s hypnotic Boléro—all augmented by cutting-edge lighting and video projections created by 59 Productions. And in Anders Hillborg’s Rap Notes, live rappers square off against artificial intelligence in a captivating collision of human creativity and technological prowess...."

 

Programme

 

Richard Strauss  Don Juan

Gustav Mahler    Songs of a Wayfarer

Anders Hillborg   Rap Notes

Maurice Ravel     Boléro

 

This concert will be recorded live and then broadcast on radio station KDFC on Sunday 08 October at 7pm (local California time). It should then be available for on demand streaming for 21 days following the broadcast.

 

Link to KDFC.com

 

The concert programme will be repeated as the All San Francisco Celebration on 23 September.

 

SOUNDBITES

 

 

"..In a more somber mood, British baritone Simon Keenlyside equally appealed in Gustav Mahler’s 1883 four-tune cycle “Songs of a Wayfarer” evoking the tumultuous emotions of a lovesick fellow..."#

 

 

There is no mention of Simon in the text of this review, but there are two photos of him in the scroll-through picture gallery just below the article heading.