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by Nina Beckwith FEATURED UCSF ARTIST | NINA'S ARTS NOTES 1st appeared 15 June 1998 Wilma Batiste -- Raise the Spirit, Lift the Soul
The Gospel Choir's next performance and the last for this season will be on Friday the l9th, Juneteenth from noon to 1 p.m. in the courtyard of Mission Center. A lifelong singer and musician, Batiste joined the Gospel Choir soon after she came to UCSF in l993 to work in the Cardiovascular Research Institute, where she is clinical trial coordinator for studies aimed at helping people to control their cholesterol levels, in order to prevent coronary heart disease. Participants in the trials may come through the Lipid Clinic in the Ambulatory Care Center, from medical records, previous patients, word of mouth, and newspaper ads. The studies are sponsored by drug companies and provide free medication and health care for the duration of the trial. Batiste's work involves clinic visits, drawing blood, controlling vital signs, and considerable time in a CVRI lab. Many people are understandably nervous when they have to have a quantity of blood drawn but Batiste, who won a Special Performance Award in 1996, has such skill and such a soothing and cheerful presence that she can allay their fears. "I have a special feel for the patients," she says, "because I know what it is. I'm living with it myself." She has a genetic disorder called hyperlipidemia which has to be managed with medication and diet. She first came to UCSF as a patient sent from Mt. Zion and then Dr. John P. Kane, who heads the Lipid Clinic, offered her a post on his team. "It was a gift from God," she says, "I got a healing physically, a healing emotionally, because I was very stressed out, and I needed the financial healing, too." She feels that her insight into people and her persuasive powers also come from God. Her motto is "If you have things you can change, change them. If you can't, don't waste the good energy on them," and a sign on her office wall reads "I'm too blessed to be stressed" -- something those of us who walk around full of impatience and anger might copy. Mother of five and grandmother of ten, Batiste derives great joy from her family and from knowing that she raised her children into loving, safe, and meaningful lives. For 17 years she was a corporate officer with a major California bank and then her department was closed and she was summarily laid off. Overcoming her anger and resentment while she started in the job market all over again has strengthened her faith and her power of positive thinking. Batiste has been a member of the Neighborhood Baptist Church on San Francisco's Hayes Street for 34 years and in addition to the UCSF Gospel Choir she sings in one of her church's four choirs and directs its children's choir. She started singing at about age three and played piano during grade school, violin and viola in junior and senior high school orchestras. The Gospel Choir's big Spring Concert was held in her church this year to give it exposure to a different audience and bring in more people.
To the people who might want to find expression and release with this music but think they can't sing, Batiste says, "You can sing. You just need to relax, open up and let it go...singing is a natural expression. Gospel singing is also worship, and it's a comfort, it's caressing, it's just love." Summertime Believe it or not -- and it's hard to believe this year -- but summer is here. San Franciscans know it isn't the Solstice that marks the season, it's the Stern Grove season that makes it summer. On Sunday June 14, Island Spice seasons the first Stern Grove Festival concert, serving a delectable musical menu of Afro-Caribbean, salsa, timba, and more in the lovely green amphitheater under the redwood trees. Featured are the Havana dance band Bamboleo and San Francisco pianist-composer Rebeca Mauleón, who flavors her original Latin jazz with gospel and flamenco, along with her 20-member Round Trip ensemble. Sunday June 21: a fun Father's Day to spend with songful kids from both the San Francisco Girls Chorus and the SF Boys Chorus. Guest artist is the terrific young mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, a graduate of the SF Opera Merola Program who is now singing leading roles all over Europe and the US. This 61st Stern Grove season offers ten concerts -- ALL FREE -- every Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. through August 16, featuring symphony, opera, dance, jazz, R&B, ballet, and choral singing. Experienced Grove-goers take picnics & blankets & get there early to find good places on the grass, the benches, or under the trees. Food & drink available on site. Stern Grove is at 19th Avenue and Sloat. Information 252-6252. * * * * * Two Artists Not to Miss At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, venture beyond the highly hyped Haring show and search out two remarkable exhibitions: A.G. Rizzoli, Architect of Magnificent Visions, on view only through June 23, and Sargent Johnson: African-American Modernist, through July 7. Achilles G. Rizzoli was a California-born visionary from a Swiss-Italian family who lived from l896 to l981 and had been forgotten until now. Working as an unassuming architectural draftsman by day, Rizzoli filled his modest San Francisco home with fantastical juxtapositions of many architectural styles, rendered on large sheets of exquisitely accurate and detailed drawings. He also invented an entire vocabulary of new words and special meanings. A religious man, his motto was "Yield to Total Elation." Look for "Kathredal," a large Gothic-style structure with statues atop all the buttresses, finials, arches, and spires, in which, it is said, Rizzoli represented his mother. And "Shirley's Temple," an immense tower rising from a grand palace with gardens and guards on parade, dedicated to a young neighbor who had shown interest in his ATE, Achilles Tectonic Exhibit. Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) sought to promote African-American identity in a modern way through his sculptures and reliefs, his etchings, lithographs, and drawings. He was among the artists active in the Negro Renaissance movement in the '20s and '30s and received several commissions from the Federal Arts Project for works in the Bay Area where he made his home. Among them are carvings at the Maritime Museum in Acquatic Park and a frieze of athletes for George Washington High School. Johnson said he wanted to show the beauty he had seen in African-American faces in Northern California, "and I wish to show that beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself," which he did in several striking sculptures in the show such as "Head of a Negro Woman" and the full-length figure called "Forever Free." One of Johnson's Bay Area teachers was the noted sculptor Beniamino Bufano and influences of Mexican culture and artists such as Diego Rivera are also important in his work. His influence on black artists all over the country has been profound. While at SFMOMA, take a look at Highlights from the Photography Collection on view through June 23. The earliest is from 1843, only a few years after Talbot and Daguerre invented photography. Among other delights are a portrait of Charles Darwin in old age from l868, and fascinating images by Matthew Brady, Muybridge, Stieglitz, Atget, Man Ray, and Edward Weston. SFMOMA. 151 Third Street between Mission and Howard. Open 10-6 except Wed., Thurs. 6 to 9 p.m. half-price admission. Phone 357-4000. (Museum shop is one of the best in the country; cafe very nice, too.) * * * * * Carmen Comes to Town Carmen is the third of the "Femmes
Fatales" in SF Opera's summer season. The seductive Spanish gypsy is
perhaps the most 'Fatale' and vivid of all opera heroines. Much of Georges Bizet's music
is familiar, especially Carmen's "Habanera" and the "Toreador Song" of
Escamillo, and all of this passionate opera is thrilling. Alban Berg's exciting Lulu continues at the War Memorial June 19, 23, and 28, and the glorious 17th century opera, The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi, plays June 16, 18, 21, and 26. All have English supertitles. Opera Box Office phone 864-3330, online www.sfopera.com. |
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| CAMPUS NOTES Copyright ©1998 Regents of the University
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Wilma Batiste is going into
her third year as president of the UCSF Gospel Choir. Its purpose, she says, is "to
share joy and love and uplift the people on the campus." She calls the group "a
bouquet of God's best flowers," a much lovelier way of saying non-denominational and
multicultural. The Choir is open to all and meets regularly to sing and celebrate music
from the African-American Gospel tradition. It has become a very important part of UCSF
campus activities and outreach.
The Gospel Choir's other major
annual concert is in the fall in Cole Hall, under its music director, the talented Jeffrey
Williams, a minister from Olivet Institutional Baptist church in Oakland who is also a
composer and arranger.