We invested in this year’s series. It’s mostly classical recitals but tonight was jazz. It’s a lovely venue, intimate and tastefully decorated, high on the hill near campus. Beautiful architecture and solid acoustics. Churches grab all the best real estate.
Jorge Luis Pacheco Cuban Jazz Trio - Pacheco was piano and vocals, Gerson Lazo Quiroja on electric bass and Reinier Mendoza Valdez on drums. Pacheco and Valdez were fierce. They both had that cool jazz style that made the impossible seem easy. We sat stage left (there wasn’t really a stage - the band was set up on the floor and chairs were arranged around them). This was behind the drummer but in the line of sight of Pacheco, which was cool because we could see him cueing the others, as well as his joy when the noodling reached its climaxes. Great show.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the series - 6 performances going into March of next year.
Alon Goldstein is a master pianist and teacher. Totally phenomenal. I’m always impressed when one person can enrapture an audience with one instrument - here a Yamaha grand. His skill was unreal.
Being a teacher, he introduced each piece with an informative, engaging chat that was charming and funny. He started with a Bach piece where he used a digital score. Next was a Shubert that was about 35 mins long and I was blown away that anyone could keep all those notes in their brain. During the intermission, we moved up to the front row to some seats that were being saved by a major donor that never got filled. We were house left, right behind him about 15 ft away. He did Debussy, a surprise Glass piece, a modern female composer, Chopin and an encore of … damn I’m blocking on the name because it’s 4;45 am … B something … plus one of my YMAA coworkers just called using the company line (wtf? Had to be a butt dial - not even answering at this hour)
Anyway it was an amazing performance. Educational a d inspirational. Made me realize once again how tiny my talent is compared to a true master of his art.
Violinist Oliver Neubauer & Pianist Zhu Wang
These two were kids. KIDS! Well, I mean they were in their early 20s, but they looked like teens. Kinda pissed me off. Between them, they may have a third of the years spent practicing than I have poured into my martial arts, and these little punks were total masters of their form. My lord. Im not even in the damn ballgame.
They swapped the first piece from Beethoven to Mozart which Stacy thoroughly enjoyed but I viewed with some skepticism... or grudging disdain...kids, man. That was a good piece. They followed that with Enseco's Sonata #3 which was an insane sound clash of ideas - it just went all over the place and I had to bow down to their mad skills. Then after intermission, they did Grieg Sonata #3 (another insane piece), followed by Tchaikovsky and a violin solo by Coleridge-Taylor Parkinson.
They encored with an excerpt of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which annoyed Stacy because it's such a pop ear worm that it erased all the cool stuff prior. I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed had not Stacy brought it to my attention.
Oliver was dynamic and dashing and surely woos the ladies into chamber music - skinny as a rail but man, could he play. My only consolation was that Zhu had poor posture, and that will surely catch up with him when he reaches maturity. RSI is the unspoken horror of every musician. He could easily shift to another music genre someday, something simpler - he had that mad approach of a rock star.
Another fine show. It was sorely under attended. Maybe a third full. I felt bad for the performers but was glad to have more run of the place. We sat in the same place - front row, house left, which gave us a fine view of the performers' backsides but also the church Christmas tree and the lovely sunset over Mo Bay.
I'm totally digging these shows. They're so masterful and low stress. We were running late after a quick hike with Yuki in Pogonip, but we still got there in plenty of time to get great parking and great seats (it's general seating).
Cellist Amit Peled & Pianist Peter Miyamoto
Peled made some funny commentary about the games. He is from Baltimore so he was bummed about the Ravens. He thanked everyone for being there instead of watching the Niners*. They opened with some Gershwin which always reminds me of 50s B&W movies. I’m not that into Gershwin. They did a piece by Florence Price, who is having a resurgence lately, and rightly so. Her works are beautiful. Then Peled spoke passionately about Israel (his native country - he became an American recently) and played a traditional lullaby then an ode piece that I didn’t know but it was very soulful. We were in the front row on the far house right so we could only see the feet of the pianist. We were both distracted by Miyamoto tapping his digital sheet music pedal because it made a loud clack.
After a short intermission (they had to catch a red eye to Washington) they went into a Copeland piece that allowed them both to show off their virtuosity. Then the closes with this pop piece that Peled wove a lot of showtunes into which annoyed Stacy because Fiddler on the Roof was an earworm for her, disrupting the more stellar pieces earlier.
I was very moved by the cello. It’s such a rich warm instrument and Peled brought out so many colors I’d never felt from it before. I’ve only heard cellos in quartets or orchestras, not as a soloist like this. It was dreamy, as sultry as a violin but with that bass bottom. I was more taken by the cello than the piano.
It was a full house, and an extremely polite and attentive audience. The unusual heat (mid 70s in January) brought out everyone’s good spirits and it was a lovely sunset over Monterey, which we could see clearly from the church windows.
* I could’ve worked the playoff game at Levi’s with RM, but aside from the Super Bowl, I’ve never worked a football game.
Pianist Chin-Yun Hu: Franz Liszt: Metamorphosis.
This was the best DA performance so far. Hu was spellbinding. She played selections from Etudes and some Shubert and Sherman without sheet music. She pulled so much sound out of that Yamaha grand. Again we were in the front row, facing Hu, which was an added bonus because she was ecstatically expressive as she played. What a tremendous skill. How one person can hold that much music in her head and body simply astounds me.
This was the least attended of the series, probably due to the Super Bowl, which made it even better because the audience was dialed in. After her first piece, there were several wows! And an immediate standing ovation. After the second, we were all too stunned to react as quickly. And the third drew another standing ovation.
We were home in time to catch the 2nd half.
Peter Toth
He played works of Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, & Shermann. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. He just came out and killed it.
Embarrassingly, despite a mouthful of cough drops, I had one of my coughing fits during the 2nd piece and had to excuse myself from the church. I sat in the back for the remainder of the performance. I must email my doctor about this - it’s a side effect of my Rx that’s been hounding me for weeks and I just can’t take it anymore.
Stacy felt this was her fav of the season. She’s into all the composers except for the last one and being a pianist, she found Toth’s interpretations like storytelling. I lean towards the previous performance as my fav although my coughing fit tainted my experience today.
Got home, walked Yuki, and watched replays of the Oscars.
Not sure if we’ll invest in the whole season again next time, but we’ll definitely go back for more.