Jeff Kaliss

1 week ago | sfcv.org | Jeff Kaliss

In his 92nd year, Gordon Getty remains a working composer. On June 20 and 22, the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus are set to premiere three of Getty’s works, flanked on the program by Mozart’s Ave verum corpus and Verdi’s Requiem. A longtime funder of the Symphony and San Francisco Opera — and a co-founder and funder of this publication — Getty was raised with his siblings in San Francisco by his mother Ann Rork.

1 week ago | sfcv.org | Jeff Kaliss

“We would have liked for him to stay,” said Berkeley Symphony Executive Director Marion Atherton about Joseph Young, who conducted his final concert as the orchestra’s music director earlier this month. “But I think this created an opportunity, and we’re taking advantage of it.” Over coffee, Atherton was discussing the orchestra’s 2025–2026 season, announced on May 20.

2 weeks ago | sfcv.org | Jeff Kaliss

When environmental awareness is being perniciously purged from government funding, let’s applaud the Volti choir for programming the issue into their performances at Z Space this past weekend. In her printed notes for Ochre, which Volti premiered in 2022, Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York City-based composer Caroline Shaw described her creation as a “contemplation of the Earth ...

3 weeks ago | sfcv.org | Jeff Kaliss

San Francisco-based composer Gordon Getty’s fourth opera, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, has not followed the traditional path from conception to the stage to audio recording. The planned premiere at Festival Napa Valley in July 2020 was confounded by COVID. On the suggestion of director Brian Staufenbiel, the production was shifted from the live stage to the medium of film, requiring a bigger budget and many months of enterprising adaptation and innovation.

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Jeff Kaliss

Berkeley Symphony’s Spring Gala earlier this month was a joyous way to celebrate outgoing Music Director Joseph Young, as well as to share fellowship, fundraising, food and drink, and a modicum of music. Executive Director Marion Atherton credited Young with having rendered the 54-year-old ensemble “more inclusive, more adventurous, and more alive than ever before” — qualities visible in his expansive, ingenuous style of conducting.