Celebrating the harvest with Sonoma County vigneron Wayne Roden and his colleagues from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
San Francisco Symphony Violist Wayne Roden in his Cotati vineyard. Photo: Geneva Anderson
The morning after the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) gave its September 12 concert—the first in a four concert series at Green Music Center this season—a selection of orchestra members assembled for another kind of performance altogether, this one starting at 6:30 a.m. and involving pruners rather than tuners. The venue was a small vineyard just West of Cotati, on the farm of long-time San Francisco Symphony violist Wayne Roden and his wife, novelist Barbara Quick. Instead of the usual white tie and tails, the dress code for this performance was denim and sneakers. The highly-educated and accomplished harvest crew—including relatives and friends, fiddle players from SFS and a dog named Sophie—all showed up at the crack of dawn to help harvest and crush a bumper crop of Pinot noir.
The idea for the harvest party came about two years ago when Barbara convinced Wayne to do what they do in France during the vendange, when friends and family who help harvest the grapes are rewarded with a lavish feast afterwards.
Even though ARThound doesn’t play an instrument, I’d heard about the fun they had at the last harvest and was keen to hang out with these musicians, several of whom I’ve interviewed in the past couple of years. So, I too, was there—ready to lend a hand, to record the morning’s activities in a series of photos and, of course, to taste such delicacies as Barbara’s roasted heirloom tomato quiche, her heirloom tomato caprese, home-made pesto and amazingly sweet roasted cherry tomatoes, all of which came from her own garden harvest.
San Francisco Symphony Violist Wayne Roden and his wife, novelist Barbara Quick backstage at San Francisco Symphony. Photo: Geneva Anderson
When Wayne first decided to move from San Francisco to Sonoma County, he was thinking about horses rather than grapevines. But the favorable meso-climate of the little farm he bought 25 years ago, as well as his appreciation for Sonoma County’s wonderful wines, inspired him to join the growing league of hobby wine-makers. With the help of his grown son, film-maker Sam Roden, he planted a tenth of an acre in Pinot noir and Pinot gris. Seven years later, he is now in the process of vinifying the sixth vintage of his wonderfully delicious, Burgundian style Pinot Noir. (A glass of the 2012 frankly blew me away with its uniquely spicy, subtle dark-chocolate aromas.)
It’s been a great year for grapes and this was Wayne’s biggest harvest yet—782 pounds of Pinot noir and 168 of Pinot gris. This year’s musician-powered harvest should yield 325 bottles of the red stuff and 50 of the white.
Just as some of the finest houses of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or grow their grapes on miniscule but devoutly tended plots of land, Wayne nurtures his 275-or-so vines with the same diligence and artistry he devotes to playing the viola. He says it’s hard for him to imagine not being a member of the Symphony after 40 years of playing and touring around the globe with SFS. But if and when he does retire, he thinks he might like to turn his hobby into a small-scale, boutique wine-making operation.
Sam and Barbara recently collaborated on designing a new label for Roden Wines, featuring an image of a fine old violin. Once a musician, always a musician!
Pianist Yuja Wang—young, fun, impeccable—joins Michael Tilson Thomas & San Francisco Symphony at Green Music Center this Thursday, March 7, 2013
Chinese pianist Yuja Wang is known for her colorfully explosive playing and tight, bright, short dresses. She performs on the Green Music Center’s Steinway with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Thursday, March 7, 2013, at Weill Hall.
Yuja Wang, the young Chinese pianist legendary for her dazzling playing, performs at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall Thursday night with Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The diverse program includes two well-known works— Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 and Brahms Symphony No. 1—and one modern piece, Samuel Carl Adams’ “Drift and Providence.” Adams, a Brooklyn resident, is the 26-year-old son of composer John Adams, a part-time Sonoma Coast resident, who, along with SFS, won a 2103 Grammy Award in the category of Best Orchestral Performance for a live recording of Adams works.
This is the third of four SFS concerts at Weill Hall this inaugural season and marks MTT’s second concert appearance at the Green Music Center (GMC). At 26, Yuja Wang is the youngest musician to perform at Weill Hall in the MasterCard Performance Series and demand for tickets has been overwhelming for this performance as well as for the her three SFS Davies Hall performances on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Also on stage will be three SFS musicians who are based in Sonoma County—violist Wayne Roden of Cotati, percussionist Tom Hemphill who lives in a rural unincorporated area near the Washoe House, and bass player Chris Gilbert of Petaluma. (For ARThound’s profile of these musicians upon their first appearance at Weill Hall, click here.) Recognizing that getting to know a concert hall is really alot like getting to know a person—it’s only over time that you start to ntoice things —ARThound grabbed the chance to gather some further impressions about the experience of playing Weill Hall.
“I really like Weill Hall and I’ve heard almost completely positive comments from all of my colleagues,” said violist Wayne Roden, who spoke to me from his home in rural Cotati. “I like the way it looks and feels and sounds. It’s just a beautiful place to play and that really does make a difference. A lot of modern halls are not that inviting. We play the best of them when we are on tour and this one is particularly nice, especially the sense of light and warmth.”
The acoustics also get a thumbs up, with an interesting caveat that only a seasoned musician can provide. “It’s very nice—it’s warm, live, and it feels good to play there,” said Roden. “Having played there now a few time times, I’ve experienced something I didn’t notice before—when you are on stage, there’s a little bit of the feeling that you hear yourself more than you would ideally like. This is not the only hall where I have experienced that. In the ideal world, you like to hear a warm sound and the sound of the whole. You do hear the whole quite well in Weill Hall but, in acoustical terms, there’s a slight feeling of isolation. It feels a little bit naked which has a slightly inhibiting effect for me because I am hyper aware of what I am putting out. One of the toughest things you have to do as a player in an orchestra is to balance expressing yourself—you try to put out musically, emotionally—while fitting into the whole. Some people err on the side of being careful and some err on the side of being expressive, which means they go for it and stick out. In an orchestra as good as SFS, you’ve got most people hitting the middle but that’s the art of playing in an orchestra. The acoustics of a hall can really impact that.”
Thursday’s program is quite varied musically and includes two pieces—Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 and Brahms Symphony No. 1— which are standard sympony repertoire. Of course, under MTT’s skilled conducting, the audience can expect magic from the Bay Area’s treasured orchestra.
“When you know pieces this well it’s very easy to fall into habits of playing and so it’s a question of whether you can find something vital in it each time and that’s the challenge of both the conductor and the musician,” said Roden. “Musicians are a kind of tabula rasa for the conductor and we kind of give ourselves over to him. I really think that a conductor can bring something to the moment emotionally and conceptually and that can make a huge difference in pieces that are standard repertoire.”
Program: Michael Tilson Thomas conductor, Yuja Wang piano, San Francisco Symphony
Samuel Carl Adams | \Drift and Providence
Beethoven | Piano Concerto No.4 in G major, Opus 58
Brahms | Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68
Beethoven’s No. 4, a Piano Classic: After its public premiere in December 1808 in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien, a review in the May 1809 edition of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung stated that Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major “is the most admirable, singular, artistic and complex Beethoven concerto ever.” Widely considered to be one of the central works of the piano concerto today, the No. 4 begins unconventionally—instead of entering after a lengthy wait, the solo instrument, the piano, starts the piece off by playing in almost improvisational style before the orchestra gently takes over and develops it. The second movement has a particularly distinct and intimate dialog between piano and orchestra as the serene and lyrical piano line is met with restless strings that mellow as the conversation continues. The piece is made to order as a showcase for Wang’s astounding technique and imagination, MTT’s strong conducting and for SFS and, of course, Weill Hall and its wondrous Steinway.
A strong mentor in MTT: Michael Tilson Thomas and Yuja Wang have a particularly close collaboration that began in 2006 when she, then 19, made her debut with the SFS at its annual Chinese New Year concert. Since then, she has returned to perform with SFS each year and performed on tour with MTT and the Orchestra in Macau, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo in November 2012. In 2008, Wang performed as a soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra led by MTT at Carnegie Hall.
In the YouTube clip below, Yuja Wang talks about her working relationship with MTT. The clip was made in 2011, to mark several performances Yang would have with MTT and SFS that year.
More about Yuja Wang: Born in Beijing in 1987, Wang began studying piano at age six, with her earliest public performances taking place in China, Australia and Germany. She studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing under Ling Yuan and Zhou Guangren. From 1999 to 2001 she participated in the Morningside Music summer program at Calgary’s Mount Royal College, an artistic and cultural exchange program between Canada and China, and began studying with Hung Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone at the Mount Royal College Conservatory. In 2002, when she was 15, she won Aspen Music Festival’s concerto competition. She then moved to the U.S. to study with Gary Graffman at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she graduated in 2008. In 2006 Yuja received the Gilmore Young Artist Award. In 2010 she was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) conducts the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at Weill Hall on December 6, 2012, in their first of four concerts this season. In Feburary, , the Orchestra’s recording of Bay Area composer John Adams’ works won a 2013 Grammy Award, the 15th Grammy win for SFS. Photo: courtesy SFS
Her acclaimed recordings include Transformation, for which she received an Echo Award 2011 as Young Artist of the Year. Wang next collaborated with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to record Rachmaninoff, her first concerto album featuring Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, which was nominated for a Grammy® as Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Her most recent recording, Fantasia, is a collection of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin and others.
CD’s for Sale: A selection of CDs by Yuja Wang and SFS will be sold before the cocnert and during intermission in Weill Hall’s Person Lobby. The lobby is named after Evert and Norma Person, long-time Santa Rosa Symphony patrons.
PRE-CONCERT TALK: Interested in going deeper? One hour prior to the concert, Alexandra amati-Camperi will give an “Inside Music” talk from the stage all about the repertoire. Free to all concert ticket holders; doors open 15 minutes before, or 6:45 p.m.
Program Notes: Downloadable concert program notes can be found online here.
Upcoming SFS Performances at Weill Hall: The Orchestra’s four-concert series for GMC concludes Thursday, May 23 at 8 pm David Robertson conductor, Marc-André Hamelin piano, San Francisco Symphony
Elliott Carter Variations for Orchestra
Ravel Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Ravel La Valse
Details: The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performs Thursday, March 7, 2013 at 8 pm at Joan and Sanford I. Weill Hall, Green Music Center, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park.
Tickets: $15-$145. Tickets are still available at www.sfsymphony.org or by phone at 415-864-6000
New Fees SSU Parking: Parking is $10 for the lot nearest Weill Hall. Have cash ready to hand attendants as you drive in. All other SSU general parking lots have had a rate increase to $5, and a parking receipt must now be displayed all 7 days of the week, no exceptions.
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform the first concert of an annual 4-concert series at the Green Music Center this Thursday, December 6, 2012— 2 Sonoma County musicians will play and SFS Assistant Concertmaster Mark Volkert’s “Pandora” will have its world premiere
San Francisco Symphony Assistant Concertmaster and violinist Mark Volkert will have the world premiere of “Pandora,” his work for strings on Thursday, December 6, 2012, when SFS plays the first concert in an annual 4 concert series at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall. Photo: courtesy SFS
Musically speaking, the new Green Music Center is jamming. Since its grand opening on September 29, 2012, its stunning Weill Hall has hosted over 20 performances ranging from Lang Lang’s inspired piano sonatas to Buika’s sensual gypsy-flamenco to Joyce DiDonato’s dazzling baroque arias to the classical and cutting edge contemporary repertoire of the Santa Rosa Symphony. Thursday, the concert hall will be road-tested by the City’s treasured San Francisco Symphony (SFS), conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), with a program that includes the world premiere of “Pandora,” a 20-minute-long work for strings composed by SFS Assistant Concertmaster and violinist Mark Volkert. Grammy winning pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor.” Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks is also on the program.
ARThound sought out two of three SFS musicians based in Sonoma County, violist Wayne Roden and percussionist Tom Hemphill (Bass player Chris Gilbert of Petaluma will not perform in this concert). It’s highly unusual to have a SFS musician premiere a work he wrote and I couldn’t wait to speak Mark Volkert about “Pandora” and to get perspective from these two local musicians about the SFS series at Weill Hall and of course, what it feels like not to have to commute. Volkert joined SFS in 1972 and Roden and Hemphill both joined in 1974—that’s over a century of SFS performing experience between them.
This is not the symphony’s or MTT’s first time at Weill Hall. SFS had an Open Rehearsal at Green Music Center on May 6, 2010. SFS Associate Conductor Donato Cabrera was conducting and the purpose was to test the hall’s acoustics and fund-raising—this was before the Weills came on the scene in late December 2010. (The program: Bernstein “Overture to Candide,” Beethoven First Movement “Symphony No. 5,” and Tchaikovsky Third Movements from “Symphony No. 4” and Symphony No. 6.) There had only been one previous test of the hall and that was by the Santa Rosa Symphony in February, 2010.
MTT visited the concert hall on a separate occasion in the summer of 2011 and tested the fabulous Steinway piano out on stage. Jeff Langley, GMC’s artistic director recalls that MTT “was kind of in his own little world that day. He was conspicuously quiet but he played Mozart for about 20 to 25 minutes and he just got into it. He was preparing some concertos and sonatas for an upcoming concert and he was practicing these. I remember walking up and putting the lid all the way up so he could have full sound. At the end, he said something like ‘very nice’ and that was it.”
Cotati resident Wayne Roden has played viola in the San Francisco Symphony since 1974. He will perform with SFS on Thursday, December 6, 2012 at Weill Hall.
Violist Wayne Roden
Violist Wayne Roden lives in rural Cotati with his wife, author Barbara Quick, where they grow Pinot noir and Pinot gris and make their own wine and raise a lot of their own food. He’s lived in Sonoma County for 24 years and loves it. I touched base with him on Sunday, following the symphony’s Saturday rehearsal, the first go-through of the program they will perform on Thursday. He remembered playing at Weill Hall before it was Weill Hall. “We played a very short concert there a couple of years ago—this was before the bathrooms were built and they still had folding chairs and they were fund raising—but I was quite impressed. It’s certainly a very beautiful hall, one of the most beautiful we’ve been in, and it sounded very warm and alive. It’s hard to give a really good assessment of a hall until you’ve played in it a number of times because there’s always a first impression, a second impression and then, lingering impressions. By the end of this year, we will really know that hall.”
I was excited to hear Roden’s impression of Volkert’s new piece for strings. “Now days, it is unusual to have an accomplished violinist who is also adept at composing,” said Roden. “It’s quite an accomplishment to have written this large scale piece and to have someone as knowledgeable as MTT decide to conduct it. Mark has written some challenging parts too. The concertmaster (Alexander Barantschik, first violin, ) has a very challenging cadenza but because he’s first rate, he just nailed it. Also, he also wrote a very interesting and extremely difficult solo for Scott (Pingel), the principal bass player, and he played it great. You almost never hear a bass player having to play anything in orchestral repertoire with this level of complexity.”
Roden also got back to me, several days later, after having practiced “Pandora.” “With any music, but especially with more contemporary music, it takes a while for it to sink in and for you to start to comprehend what you’re hearing. My appreciation of the piece is growing. I particularly like the orchestration of the string section and in the big moments, there’s a very lush and appealing sound. There are several parts for the section violas that are challenging but one in particular that is very exposed. Initially, I was aggravated, as I always am, at having to learn something hard and new that, at first, I didn’t find at all appealing. As I’ve worked on it and learned it, I actually like the passage—it makes musical sense and it’s very original. I told Mark that I’m liking his piece more and more and he liked that because, you know, the opposite could have also been true.”
Of course, not having to commute into the City and, instead, having his colleagues come to Sonoma County delights Roden. “It’s a little bit of schadenfreude, especially when you consider that for my entire career—38 years—we used to have to play in Cupertino as many as 8 times a year which was bad enough when I lived in the City, but from Sonoma County, it was awful. Thankfully, they stopped that series and now we are at GMC, just about 10 minutes away from me. What a relief.”
San Francisco Symphony Percussionist Tom Hemphill plays every kind of percussion instrument called for and has clinked (and broken) many a wine glass on stage. edited photo: original Kirsten Loken
Percussionist Tom Hemphill
Percussionist Tom Hemphill lives in unincorporated Sonoma County, a couple of miles west of the Washoe House, in a fabulous Victorian home that he and his wife Regan have been restoring continuously since they bought it in 1991. They moved up to Sonoma County from San Francisco to raise their two boys who are now grown. He commuted for the first 12 years he lived in Sonoma County, but “never really liked the idea of commuting” so he rented, and now owns, a small apartment near Davies Symphony Hall and stays a few times a week with his wife. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Hemphill, “long walks in the country and in the City.”
“It’s pretty weird to be an old timer at 61,” says Hemphill of his 38 years SFS. He began playing drums in third grade in his school’s “easy steps to the band” summer program and never put down his sticks. Of course, he plays more than drums—basically every kind of percussion instrument called for in any piece the symphony performs—and has played many odd-ball items, including chains, flexitone wire and wine glasses. Thursday’s concert, however, is standard repertoire for percussion—cymbals, bass drum, timpani drum, and triangle—and Hemphill will crank a ratchet for the Strauss piece.
“The string players always have challenging parts,” said Hemphill, “we’re adding color and rhythm. Once in a while, we get a piece with very active parts where we have to utilize all our technique and that makes it challenging. I also enjoy it when the music is exciting. Something like Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 11” is lots of fun and some of his works really get your blood moving.”
Unlike most of the other instruments in the symphony, percussion instruments are frequently very exposed, explained Hemphill. “Often you have to come in on a single note by yourself, so you can never really sneak in on a note; you have to be right on top of it. There’s also the issue of hitting. All the other musicians have their touch in their instruments so they can focus on the conductor or the music. With the chimes, for example, you don’t really touch the instrument. You have the hammer and the rawhide and the chimes are hanging from a rack and you’re looking at the conductor and the chimes are nowhere in the same plane of sight.”
Hemphill recalls first time the orchestra played at the unfinished Green Music Center, “We played an early evening concert and the natural light coming in through those top windows was just gorgeous. It’s so unusual to have natural light in a concert hall and the wood was glowing and the sound too was great. It’s not such a large hall that it has the challenges of a large and more cavernous hall like Davies which seats about 2,700. GMC has that classical shoebox design which favors acoustics. That first concert we did was like Potpourri. After playing a series like this, we’ll have a very good feel for the hall and its capabilities.”
SFS Assistant Concertmaster and violinist, Mark Volkert on the world premiere of his “Pandora
In the summer of 20120, SFS Assistant Concertmaster and violinist Mark Volkert wrote “Pandora” his new 20 minute-long piece for strings, specifically with the great SFS string section in mind. “I write because it’s enjoyable,” said Volkert from his Oakland home. In 1972, when he was junior at Stanford University, he auditioned and won the second violin seat at SFS and moved up to Assistant Concertmaster in 1980. Throughout his career, he was written and arranged music and always has the musicians in mind. “I tried to write something that was challenging, because these players can certainly handle that, but also idiomatic, well-suited to the string instruments. I gave the bass a prominent solo part as well all of the first chair string players. The cadenzas are all written out but I tried to give them freedom to shape it the way they want to. All musicians want and need to add a personal touch to what they do.”
While “Pandora” is an abstract piece of music to be enjoyed without any background information, the title was inspired by Hesiod’s 8th century B.C. version of the myth of Pandora, the earliest written account of the well-known myth. Volkert had a fairly detailed sketch of the piece completed before he settled on a title, which is generally one of the last things he chooses. “The whole story seemed to fit with my preliminary sketches for this piece,” said Volkert “and I actually went back and actually revised the piece so that it would have a more narrative element. I chose Hesiod’s version because I liked his spin on the story.”
Hesiod’s Pandora is a beautiful woman imbued with a treacherous nature who is charged by Zeus to release a jar (pithos) of evils on the world as a punishment. In the process, somehow, hope gets trapped under the rim of the jar and Pandora puts the lid on the jar, trapping it inside. “Philosophers for centuries have been pondering what it means to have hope stuck in the jar of evils and that fascinated me,” said Volkert. “What is Hesiod trying to tell us about hope—which is translated as the expectation for either good or bad? It might be that he is telling us that hope is not a good thing because it forces us to dwell on what might happen in the future, essentially to live in the future. He might be saying that it is not our place to question the gods, that hope can prevent you from living in the moment which is the important thing to do in this life.” (Click here to read SFS program notes on “Pandora” by Scott Fogelsong who interviewed Volkert on the the storyline of the myth.)
“Pandora” will be Volkert’s second piece to be premiered with SFS which commissioned his 1995 Solus, a 15 minute-long piece for strings. He has done numerous arrangements, too, for the symphony such as Ravel’s violin-cello sonata for string orchestra. Within context of SFS, it is not unheard of to have a violinist who composes. Violinist, composer, teacher, and conductor David Sheinfeld (1906-2001) had several of his orchestral compositions premiered with SFS during his tenure as a SFS violinist (1945-1971). And in the 17th (Corelli), 18th (Vivaldi) and 19th centuries (Joachim), it was common for violinists who were soloists to compose. Volkert stresses that he composes because he enjoys it and that basically anyone can learn to do it once they learn the language of music. On Thursday, he will sitting in the audience listening to his piece. “I’m not sure where I’ll sit but this is going to be quite an experience.”
Details: The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performs Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 8 pm at Joan and Sanford I. Weill Hall, Green Music Center, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park
Tickets: $15-$145. Tickets are available at www.sfsymphony.org or by phone at 415-864-6000 or in person at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office on Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street in San Francisco or at the Green Music Center Box Office located on the first floor of the SSU Student Union in the interior of the Sonoma State University Campus.
Other Upcoming SFS Performances at Weill Hall: The Orchestra’s four-concert series for GMC also includes performances January 31, March 7, and May 23, 2013
Thursday, January 31 at 8 pm: Charles Dutoit conductor, James Ehnes violin, San Francisco Symphony
Ravel Rapsodie espagnole
Lalo Symphonie espagnole, Opus 21
Elgar Enigma Variations, Opus 36
Thursday, March 7 at 8 pm: Michael Tilson Thomas conductor, Yuja Wang piano, San Francisco Symphony
Berio Eindrücke
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58
Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68
Thursday, May 23 at 8 pm David Robertson conductor, Marc-André Hamelin piano, San Francisco Symphony
Elliott Carter Variations for Orchestra
Ravel Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Ravel La Valse
ARThound 