         
|
|
||
|
FEATURED UCSF
ARTIST (8 September 1998)| 1st appeared 8 September 1998 Stephen Paulson -- UCSF's New Music Man Stephen Paulson is the kind of musician who will never rest on his laurels but keeps growing and exploring and enlarging his scope. His latest steps are taking him to the stage of Cole Hall as soloist in the inaugural program of the new Chancellor's Concert Series on October 15, and to the podium as the UCSF Orchestra's new conductor. Its first concert of the season will be a month later, on November 14.
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument whose sound is deeper than those of the clarinet or the oboe; it requires a double reed or thin, precisely shaped mouth-piece through which the player blows. Whether in jolly rippling runs or mournful far-away calls, it is very difficult to play. When Paulson was in high school on Long Island, not far from New York City, the familiar band instruments and also less usual ones, such as the bassoon, were made available to the kids as a regular part of music in the school. "Public school music was the greatest thing that ever happened to me," Paulson says. "Looking back now, I see how lucky I was and how unlucky the whole country is now that these programs are missing from so many public schools." This lucky bassoonist is now the father of three sons and is working to expand music in the schools of Corte Madera, where he and his family live. "If we're going to keep audiences alive and growing for future generations," he believes, "it will take more than just hearing the instruments -- and in many places kids don't even get to that point. There's no substitute for trying them yourself, getting to feel what it's like to play in a group with others. Someone who has had that experience is much more likely in later life to attend a concert and appreciate at least the rudiments of what's happening onstage. And that is essential for our culture." About ten years ago, Paulson got interested in conducting and began with small ensembles at the Conservatory. "That felt OK, but I never thought I'd have the nerve to get in front of a symphony orchestra," he recalls. "Then I got a call from Seth Montfort, who runs the SF Concerto Orchestra, and suddenly found myself conducting Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with a whole orchestra. And from then on I've kept doing more and more. "The main part of conducting is musicianship, though you do have to learn certain techniques. Some of the conductors we see at the SF Symphony are not obvious virtuosos in terms of great stick-waving technique but the musicians recognize it when the conductor has a clear rhythmic pulse and a sense of musicality, knowing what to do, knowing what not to do, getting behind the impulse of the music. That's the kind of conductor I'm striving to be." Paulson's big break came during the Symphony strike 18 months ago when various orchestra members put on concerts elsewhere because "we wanted to play and people wanted to hear us." Paulson organized and conducted a sold-out concert in Mill Valley of music by Copland, Mozart, and Beethoven which was favorably reviewed. "It was an unfortunate time and I happened to benefit from it," he says. "Not that I would ever choose to have that happen again. A week later, the strike was settled." The Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony will be on the UCSF Orchestra's November 14 program, along with Bach's First Brandenberg Concerto and the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, to be performed in St. Gregory's Church on Potrero Hill and repeated on Sunday afternoon, November 15th, in the Millberry Gymnasium. Paulson is convinced that "you can take a piece as frequently performed as the Tchaikovsky Fourth and explore ways to freshen it and bring it to new people, even some members of our UCSF Orchestra who have never played it." The new season will see a number of former UCSF Orchestra members returning. "And quite a few new people have come with their violins and cellos," Paulson says, "and they play very well for non-professionals and have a level of musical ability which will be inspiring but not intimidating to the other players." Right now, anyone who plays a stringed instrument at the appropriate level for the Orchestra and wants to audition should call Paulson at 415/924-2458 or email PAUL458@aol.com "I'm very excited about this opportunity and about the UCSF Orchestra. I would like to see the Orchestra truly become an institution of the University," Paulson says. "Many things are still up in the air: what kind of sound we can make, whether I can push the Orchestra up to the next level without professional musicians and without making people in any way uncomfortable who come and volunteer their time to rehearse and play. That's my challenge." Interacting with Calder It's the most fun I've had at an art show for many, many years. The SF Museum of Modern Art's new blockbuster show is the most extensive and exhilarating salute to the genius of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) that has ever been mounted. Marking the centenary of his birth, this is the first major Calder retrospective in over 20 years. It was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC The SFMOMA is the only other place it will be seen. Many of the more than 250 works have never before been exhibited in public. Some are on loan from the Calder family -- the show's organizers included grandson Alexander S. C. Rower, who is compiling the complete scholarly Calder catalogue. "My family is very pleased that the exhibition is being presented in San Francisco," Rower said, "so that art audiences on both sides of the country can view the entire range of my grandfather's work." Rower also felt, as did Marla Prather who curated the exhibition in Washington, that it's a new and different show here, owing to the wonderful suitability of the SFMOMA's black textured stonework and its tall, white, beautifully illumined gallery spaces to Calder's art. Over the catwalk at the very top of the Museum hangs a large mobile, a perfect Calder setting. We may think we know too well some of the shapes Calder created for his mobile sculptures -- for years they have been copied in such things as plastic dingle-dangles over babies' cribs -- but the ingenuity, the playfulness, and the elegance of the real things are still delightful discoveries. After all, it's only 70 years since this American modernist master, trained as a mechanical engineer, began to work wire into weightless sculptures. They look like simple fun but they are clever caricatures, and Calder's inventive intelligence and imagination developed them into artworks that moved and kept creating complex new forms and structural relationships throughout his immensely productive career. The works in this exhibit cover two floors and include examples of every kind of art that Calder undertook, each gallery shaped around a particular work and period, from the animals he carved as a boy and his early paintings, to the sculptures of his mature decades, his "Constellations," and a fascinating collection of his jewelry designs. Across Third Street in Yerba Buena Gardens are two of the 300 enormous monumental works he created for outdoor installation. Others can be seen in many American cities. (And every time I return to Italy and travel by train to the beautiful hilltown of Spoleto, I find the taxis still parked under Calder's huge many-legged black iron monument, the Teodelapio, which has loomed in front of the station since l962.) Especially if you come to the SFMOMA Calder show with children -- and this is a show children will really enjoy -- don't overlook a small room just to the right of the 4th floor entrance. There one can watch an utterly delightful 19-minute video in which Calder manipulates his own miniature animals, clowns, sword swallowers, belly dancers, chariot racers, and trapeze artists in "Sandy's Circus," which he made in Paris in the 1920s. With Calder, viewers are not just passive sightseers: we agitate the air currents, we make the mobiles mobile, we share in Calder's irrepressible joy of creation. "I want to make things that are fun to look at," he told an interviewer in l957, during the Cold War, and added, "things that have no propaganda value whatsoever." Alexander Calder: 1898-1976 will be at the SFMOMA through December 1. Its large, copiously illustrated catalogue is a treasure and its audio guide is particularly good & informative. Credit to Banana Republic and Charles Schwab for helping bring the show to us; also general and senior admission fees have been raised by $1 or $2 to offset expenses. Student admission remains at $4, children 12 and under free. Museum is at 151 Third St., bet. Mission & Howard. First Tuesday of each month free day. Open every day but Wednesday 10:30 to 6 p.m.; Thursdays until 9:30. Information phone 357-4000; website www.sfmoma.org * * * * * Fooling around the Moon A zany, hilarious comedy-without-words has just opened at the beautifully restored Geary Theatre to get things goin' like Hellzapoppin' for A.C.T.'s l998-99 season. Fool Moon, which had two award-winning runs on Broadway, is a show created by two crazily original "Partners in Mime," masters of physical comedy Bill Irwin, a founding member of San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus, and David Shiner, a former star of Cirque du Soleil. They certainly keep their weight down during this evening of nonstop leaps and kicks and runs, pratfalls, skits, soft shoe dances, and other athletic antics in which they involve happy and hapless audience members. It's a unique mixture of street theater, circus, vaudeville, and silent film comedy. Not a word is spoken -- or needed. Accompanying, if that's the word for it, are The Red Clay Ramblers: five guys from North Carolina who play bluegrass with a whole arsenal of instruments, sing, dance, and somehow produce a hundred kinds of sound effects. Fool Moon plays at the Geary until October 4. Performances Tues.-Sat. at 8 p.m. (except Tue. 9/15 at 7 p.m.) Matinees Wed. Sat. & Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets at Geary Theater Box Office, Geary at Mason, phone 749-2228, BASS outlets, or online at www.act-sfbay.org To celebrate Deaf Awareness Week, A.C.T. will offer an American Sign Language-interpreted performance of Fool Moon for people of all ages on Saturday, September 26 at 2 p.m. Special ticket price is $19. For TDD, call A.C.T. via CA relay at 800/935-2929 * * * * * Season opens on Ortega An interestingly varied program opens the new concert season of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra on Saturday, September 19. Starting his second season as Conductor, Jung-Ho Pak has programmed the last of the great symphonies by Johannes Brahms, No. 4 in E-Minor, and a Mozart rarity: the concert aria Per questa bella mano (K. 612) to be performed by baritone Hermann le Roux and Stephen Tramontozzi, double bass, with members of the Conservatory Orchestra. The Hebrew lament Kol nidrei by Max Bruch, and a section of John Corigliano's Fanfares to Music, called here simply To Music, conclude the program. Jung-Ho Pak will give a pre-concert talk at 7:15 p.m., free to ticket holders. Hermann le Roux has been a member the SF Conservatory faculty since l972 and performs widely. Stephen Tramontozzi is Assistant Principal Bass of the SF Symphony and is also on the Conservatory faculty. Tickets to this opening Hellman Hall concert on September 19th at 8 p.m. are $10; $6 for students, seniors and Conservatory Friends. The SF Conservatory is at 1201 Ortega at 19th Avenue. Phone 759-3475. A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health Program for Performing Artists. |
|||
DAYBREAK | ARCHIVES | CALENDAR
| CAMPUS NOTES Copyright ©1998 Regents of the University
of California. All rights reserved. |
|||
The laurels are there for all to see: for 21 years Paulson has
occupied a highly prestigious position in the professional American music world as
principal bassoon of the San Francisco Symphony. He has also taught for two decades at the
SF Conservatory of Music. Before coming here, he was appointed by conductor William
Steinberg as principal bassoon of the Pittsburgh Symphony. And before his seven-year stint
there, he had succeeded his teacher at the Eastman School of Music in the principal
bassoonist's chair of the Rochester Philharmonic.