Michael Zwiebach

Senior Editor and Content Manger at San Francisco Classical Voice

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Articles

Conductor Marin Alsop Makes High-Octane Debut With SF Symphony

1 week ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Conductor Marin Alsop has finally brought her love of big-boned, emotionally demonstrative music to the San Francisco Symphony. Making her subscription series debut at Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, April 10, the renowned 68-year-old music director led a pulse-quickening program that matched her highly physical conducting style with two Latin American works, two fanfares, and Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1.
Review: Conductor Marin Alsop makes high-octane debut with S.F. Symphony

1 week ago | datebook.sfchronicle.com | Michael Zwiebach

Conductor Marin Alsop has finally brought her love of big-boned, emotionally demonstrative music to the San Francisco Symphony. Making her subscription series debut at Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, April 10, the renowned 68-year-old music director led a pulse-quickening program that matched her highly physical conducting style with two Latin American works, two fanfares, and Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1.
New Century Chamber Orchestra Sends Out “A Prayer for Peace”

2 weeks ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

It doesn’t matter whether New Century Chamber Orchestra and its music director, Daniel Hope, anticipated the cascading disruptions and anxieties of 2025 when they planned “A Prayer for Peace,” last weekend’s concert set. A well-balanced, beautifully played program like this one, which saw its first performance on Friday, April 4, at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, would be a welcome respite at any time.
Les Arts Florissants on a Quest to Discover the Real Vivaldi

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Few masterworks are less in need of an anniversary celebration than Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Marking the 300th year since the work’s first publication in Amsterdam seems redundant given how present it is in our lives.
Tchaikovsky Takes Over at SF Symphony

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

It’s clear by now that conductor Elim Chan can bring out the best in a top-rank orchestra. Making her third appearance in just two years with the San Francisco Symphony, Chan led an all-Tchaikovsky concert on Thursday, March 13, at Davies Symphony Hall that was further confirmation of her prowess — and good news for anyone who was hearing her for the first time.
West Bay Opera’s La sonnambula Showcases the Company’s Many Virtues

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Making virtues of limitations is a West Bay Opera specialty, a skill set that much larger organizations have also had to embrace in recent years. In such circumstances, Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula (The sleepwalker) is a perfect opera, one that showed the company off to best advantage in a performance at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto on Saturday, Feb. 21.
SF Symphony and SF Conservatory of Music Come Together for Los Angeles Benefit Concert

2 months ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

In a gesture of goodwill and solidarity, the San Francisco Symphony, its musicians, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music announced last week that they will play a benefit concert on March 8 at Davies Symphony Hall on behalf of victims of the January wildfires in Los Angeles.
Music@Menlo Gives an Early Look at 2025 Festival

2 months ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Chamber music in the U.S. has no more determined champions than Wu Han and David Finckel. The musical power couple were at their West Coast base, the Menlo School in Atherton, on Saturday, Jan. 25, to announce the coming season of Music@Menlo, three weeks of concerts, teaching, lectures, and events running July 18 – Aug. 9.
Carmen Returns to SF Opera With a Top-Drawer Cast

Nov 18, 2024 | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

As the fate motif sounds in the orchestra at the end of the Prelude to Georges Bizet’s Carmen, the curtain — in San Francisco Opera’s current revival of director Francesca Zambello’s production — rises on the character Don José in chains, awaiting execution. It’s a reminder that the fortune Carmen reads in the cards later in the opera predicts death for both of them. It’s also Zambello’s attempt to push her staging beyond the stereotypes that can easily plague productions of this great work.
Review: ‘Carmen’ returns to S.F. Opera with a top-drawer cast

Nov 17, 2024 | datebook.sfchronicle.com | Michael Zwiebach

Eve-Maud Hubeaux as the title role with members of the San Francisco Opera Chorus in Bizet’s “Carmen.” Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco OperaAs the fate motif sounds in the orchestra at the end of the Prelude to Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” the curtain — in San Francisco Opera’s current revival of director Francesca Zambello’s production — rises on the character Don José in chains, awaiting execution.