New website coming next week!

It is only fitting for our 100th blog entry that we announce a new, redesigned website. Starting Monday, our homepage will look a bit more like this:

Loyal blog readers: Please be aware that our blog will also be shifting to this new site. Updates to this blog will cease at the end of August.

A needed change of perspective

Most of our staff will be attending the Association of California Symphony Orchestras 42nd Annual Conference this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Much like the League of American Orchestras earlier this summer, ACSO is sounding notes of a minor key: "Orchestras and choruses are struggling. Slashed funding, declining attendance, and increased costs are just a few of the problems we have to wrestle with as a community. Join your colleagues... to learn new techniques and acquire new tools that are necessary to remain competitive and viable in this ever-changing world."

We recently read two articles that suggest that we need to shift our perspective a bit to realize just how vital classical music is to our world today.

Speaking of jokes...

Alex Ross posted (and Scott thankfully forwarded) this hilarious spoof radio commercial from 1977 that ever so gently jibes the more contemporary compositions that you will probably never hear our orchestra perform, not even on period instruments.

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An inspiring model?

Annalisa Pappano, a viol player in town for BFX10 from Cincinnati, wrote on her group's blog today:

What I find especially intriguing [in San Francisco] is the culture for early music here. This city boasts the [San Francisco Early Music Society] series, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, an astonishing number of professional viol players (last count was 16!), a full-time professional baroque orchestra (Philharmonia Baroque) with the superstar conductor Nicolas [sic] McGegan, and a whopping 43 early music organizations. This city is an inspiring model... What does it take for a city to become such an exciting center for early music?

So, we ask you the same question Annalisa asked: "What do you think?" Why and how did the Bay Area become a hub for early music? We'll be answering that all summer ourselves as we explore our own history as we approach our 30th Anniversary Season concerts.

Forever mad: The Legacy of Orlando Furioso

38,736 lines of poetry collected into 46 cantos make up one of Western culture's most influential works of literature – Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso. Written and rewritten over the course of 26 years, this masterpiece once inspired operas, plays, poems, novels, art work and, of course, plenty of copy cats. Ariosta's work "of loves and ladies, knights and arms... of courtesies, and many a daring feat" was actually a sequel of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato, which fused the French legends Charlemagne with the English legends of King Arthur.

Until recently though, many in our office hadn't even heard of the poem, the source material, for Handel's opera Orlando (and a couple others too). Well, thank goodness for us (and you), Stanford University's Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies is hosting a symposium this spring about this poem and its legacy, which includes a conversation with Nic about Handel's Orlando and a performance by the Sicilian puppet company Figli d'Arte Cuticchio. Learn more.

Behind the scenes of "The Passion of Dido:" Rehearsal at Walt Disney Hall

This is the last post about November's concert, we promise! Here are pictures from our rehearsal at Walt Disney Hall in L.A.!

Since the supertitles say, "but, ah! I fear, I pity his too much," we must be in the first act.

Let's skip ahead to our favorite parts: Jill Grove sings the SORCERESS: "Appear at my call, and share in the Fame/Of a Mischief shall make all Carthage flame./Appear!"

The Chorale sings the FAIRIES: "Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!"

William Berger sings AENEAS: "What shall lost Aeneas do?" (Of course, Susan Graham's DIDO doesn't buy the self pity. You can see in her face that she's about to deliver one of our favorite lines: "Thus on the fatal Banks of Nile,/ Weeps the deceitful Crocodile.")

Susan Graham sings DIDO's lament: "Death is now a welcome guest."

More pictures on flickr.

Tonight's the night!

Tonight, our orchestra and chorale perform the first concert of our November program that features Dido and Aeneas and other works by the beloved English composer Henry Purcell. In celebration of the anniversary of the composer's birth (350 years ago this fall!), Music Director Nicholas McGegan conducts Susan Graham (left) and a stellar cast of singers at Herbst Hall in San Francisco. It would be an understatement to say that we are giddy with anticipation here in the office.

Here are a few distractions to help while away your afternoon:

If you haven't seen the cover story of the Chronicle's new "Ovation" section today, critic Joshua Kosman "hailed the queen" in his interview with Susan Graham.

Also out this week, interviews with Susan on Classical Voice and SFist.com.

The concert was also previewed by the Examiner and on Classical Voice.

See photos from the Susan and Nic's interview with the L.A. Times this past weekend... look for the article this weekend!

You can also read the program notes, listen to a preview of the concert, and learn about English opera's antecedent: the masque.

See you tonight!

What are you DOing next week?

We know where we'll be next Thursday through Sunday, what about you?

(No, not at Shonen Knife! Well, maybe our Marketing Director Sasha will be, but he's weird.)

Classical 101: From completely bamboozled to comfortably, enthusiastically, ignorant in Seven Steps

You might be surprised to hear that not everyone in the PBO office is an accomplished musician or lettered musicologist. So those of us who are bit more clueless than many of our work mates were happy to run into this article this weekend in the Irish Times (oh, how small the world is these days): Seven simple steps to a classical education. Enjoy!

Behind the scenes of "Apotheosis of the Dance:" Open Rehearsal

Did you see our 29th Season Premier concerts this week or last? Did you wonder "how DO they DO that?" Well, the orchestra studied and practiced of course! Now have a look for yourself – here are pictures from our recent open rehearsal. Photos by Zoe Cohen.

Steven Isserlis rehearses Haydn's Violoncello Concerto in C.

Nicholas McGegan conducts.

Rehearsing Haydn's Violoncello Concerto.

Sometimes, it's not all hard work.

Practice makes perfect.

Oh, by the way, check out our brand new toy: flickr. Become our friend or send us your own PBO related photos!

Welcome to A415

Welcome to Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra's new blog, A415. This site will be frequently updated with news and information about the orchestra and its members, articles about early music and period instruments and anecdotes (music related and not) from staff, musicians, subscribers and fans.

We invite you to post comments and ask follow-up questions. So, what do you think of the new blog? What kinds of articles would like to see posted here over the coming season?