Iron Tongue of Midnight
Lisa Hirsch's Classical Music Blog.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
Berce mollement sur ton sein sublime
Ô puissante mer, l’enfant de Dindyme!
Monday, March 10, 2025
Museum Mondays Resumed
Sunday, March 09, 2025
The First of Many?
The Pigeon Keeper at Opera Parallèle
The consortium is working together to commission new American operatic works that are flexible in scope and scale, with the potential to be performed in smaller venues and off the main stage while striving for rich storytelling and artistic integrity. The first new work, composed by Augusta Read Thomas with a libretto by Jason Kim, will receive its premiere in 2019 at Santa Fe Opera. The second commission, by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist Kimberly Reed, is slated to premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2020. Complete information including cast, creative team and performance schedule will be announced at a later date. Additional commissions will be chosen through an open invitational and in partnership with a panel of esteemed jurists.
The 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons were curtailed by the pandemic, obviously. Ruth Nott, who headed SF Opera's Department of Education in 2017, left the company at the end of 2019. She's now managing director of Opera Parallèle.
SF Opera never performed the Kaminsky. I'm sorry about that, because I liked the music for Kaminsky's As One, with librettist Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, despite the issues in the libretto.
OFAV has as part of its remit creating operas for all audiences (of all ages) and diverse subjects, with each opera on a small scale, making them financially accessible. They are also supposed to be short.
These constraints are certainly a challenge to the librettists and composers. They have to write operas that eschew the musical impact that you can have with a big orchestra–think about the scale difference and emotional impacts of two great operas, Dido and Aeneas and Les Troyens–and the dramatic impact of, well, traditional tragic operas that include such subjects as murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. They're still supposed to be serious operas on significant subjects.
I think that Hanlon and Fleischmann did an excellent job, particularly within those constraints. As I noted in my review, I felt as though the opera could have an alternative, bigger orchestration that would give it even more impact. I'd be very interested in hearing the first opera they wrote together, After the Storm.
Review round-up (to be updated later this week):
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
Saturday, March 08, 2025
International Women's Day
On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:
At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.
JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:
The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.
It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3).
Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.
And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.
Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Don Giovanni at Livermore Valley Opera
I reviewed Livermore Valley Opera / LVOpera's production of Don Giovanni over the weekend, and liked it a lot.
This was my fourth Don Giovanni since the SF Opera production in 2022. I might give the opera a break for a while, but it certainly has been interesting. I avoided Don Giovanni for a number of years because it is too easy to present it as a parade of great arias, without enough drama. The SFO production in June, 2017 was like that; an awful set and terrible direction left the cast adrift, and that production was a "reboot" of an earlier production that I gather was even worse.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
Josh Marshall on the Current Situation
I’ve said this a number of times. We’re embarked on a vast battle over the future of the American Republic, in which the executive and much of the judiciary is acting outside the constitutional order. That battle is fundamentally over public opinion. We’re in a constitutional interregnum and we are trying to restore constitutional government. The courts are a tool. Federalism is a big, big tool, the significance and importance of which is getting too little discussion. But it’s really about public opinion. And that means it’s about politics. The American people will decide this. That’s what this is all about. Waiting on the courts is just a basic misunderstanding of the whole situation.
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
San Francisco Symphony: Added Concerts
- Saturday, March 8, 2025, 7:30 p.m. $50-$200. SF Musicians for LA: A Benefit for Fire Relief. Edwin Outwater conducts music of Copland, Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, with the Symphony Chorus and Garrick Ohlsson, piano. Net proceeds from all ticket sales will be split evenly and donated to two vital organizations providing essential relief services:
- Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m. $29-$79. Verdi Requiem and choral works of Gordon Getty. James Gaffigan conducts. Soloists Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Jamie Barton, Mario Change, and Morris Robinson. Esa-Pekka Salonen is conducting in Germany that weekend. (The prices for this program are so low that I am guessing Getty is subsidizing the performances.)
Saturday, March 01, 2025
Turn It Up or Turn It Down.
Usually, when you hear a performance that's substantially different from what you're used to hearing, you think one of two things:
- Wow, that was great, I've never heard it done that way before and it really made sense!
- WTF that was just wrong-headed.
- Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle. "It was Ticciati’s slack leadership that made Widmann’s concerto sound so gray and meandering, when the music is actually anything but." That is...what I heard last night.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and San Francisco Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Lisa Hirsch, Opera; profile of Shawna Lucey and the company (Paywalled; check with me if you'd like to read this story.)
- Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
- Maria Natale talks with Operawire about singing Judith
Monday, February 24, 2025
"It's a Wrap"
Sad news: Michael Tilson Thomas's brain tumor has returned and he is retiring from performing. His 80th birthday concert on April 26, 2025, at San Francisco Symphony, will be his last appearance as a conductor.
- Announcement on his web site, a tender and very sweet note from MTT
- Tony Bravo, S.F. Chronicle
- Javier C. Hernández, NY Times
Saturday, February 22, 2025
This Week at San Francisco Symphony.
- S.F. Symphony appoints first Black principal in decades
- S.F. Symphony’s newly appointed principal Joshua Elmore solos in a thrilling performance
- Daniil Trifonov's encores were Samuel Barber, Mvt II from Piano Sonata, Op. 26, and Prokofiev, Gavotte from Cinderella, Op. 95 No. 2
- Xavier Muzik used a mirrorless Fujifilm X-Pro3 digital camera and a vintage Yashica Electro 35 film camera, mostly with Kodak Gold film, for the photos in the slideshow accompanying Strange Beasts.
- There was a brief pause between Parts I and II of The Rite of Spring, planned by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The pause was also for principal trombone Timothy Higgins and guest associate principal trombone Gracie Potter to change places so that Higgins could play bass trumpet
trombone.
- Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
- Joshua Kosman on Salonen's first Rite of Spring performance with SFS. I completely agreed with him about the weirdly soft-focus Stravinsky on the program, which I didn't find effective.
- Joshua Kosman on timpanist Elayne Jones. As it happens, SFS had a Black player before Jones, bassist Charles Burrell. Subsequently, these Black musicians were members of the orchestra:
- Violist Basil Vendrys, now principal viola of the Colorado Symphony
- Bassoonist Rufus Olivier, now principal bassoon of the SF Opera and SF Ballet Orchestras
- Nicole Cash, former associate principal horn
Monday, February 17, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Bard Summerscape and Bard Music Festival 2025: MARTINŮ AND HIS WORLD
Fisher Center LAB Commission/World Premiere
Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Décor by Sarah Crowner
Music by Caroline Shaw
Featuring Pam Tanowitz Dance
Inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
Friday, June 27 at 7 pm
Saturday, June 28 at 7 pm
Sunday, June 29 at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Dalibor
by Bedřich Smetana
SummerScape Opera/New Production
Libretto by Josef Wenzig, Czech translation by Ervín Špindler
Directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini
American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein
Sung in Czech with English supertitles
Friday, July 25 at 6:30 pm
Sunday, July 27 at 2 pm
Wednesday, July 30 at 2 pm
Friday, August 1 at 4 pm
Sunday, August 3 at 2 pm
Sosnoff Theater
The 35th Bard Music Festival
Martinů and His World
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
August 8–10
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
August 14–17
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
Program One: The Peripatetic Career
Friday, August 8
Sosnoff Theater
7 PM Performance with Commentary
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Double Concerto, H271 (1938)
Piano Quartet No. 1, H287 (1942)
Symphony No. 2, H295 (1943)
Fantasia, H301 (1944)
Petrklíč / Primrose, H348 (1954)
Panel One
Why Martinů: Understanding Classical Music, Past and Future
Saturday, August 9
Olin Hall
10 AM – 12 noon
Free and open to the public.
Program Two: The Emigree in Paris
Saturday, August 9
Olin Hall
1 PM Preconcert Talk
1:30 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
String Trio No. 1, H136 (1923)
Flute Sonata, H306 (1945)
Duo No. 1 for Violin and Cello, H157 (1927)
Josef Suk (1874–1935)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 1 (1891)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major (1927)
Works by Jaroslav Řídký (1897–1956) and Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986)
Program Three: Music and Freedom
Saturday, August 9
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Orchestral Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Memorial to Lidice, H296 (1943)
Symphony No. 6 (Fantaisies symphoniques), H343 (1951–53)
Piano Concerto No. 4, “Incantation,” H358 (1956)
Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942)
Symphony No. 2 (1932)
Rudolf Firkušný (1912–94)
Piano Concertino (1929)
Program Four: The Search for a Distinctive Voice
Sunday, August 10
Olin Hall
11 AM Performance with Commentary
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Les Rondes, H200 (1930)
String Quartet No. 7, “Concerto da camera,” H314 (1947)
The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, for piano, H318 (1948)
Variations on a Slovak Theme, H378 (1959)
Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–40)
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 8 (1935)
Program Five: New Shores: Influences and Contexts
Sunday, August 10
Sosnoff Theater
2 PM Preconcert Talk
3 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
La revue de cuisine, H161 (1927)
Harpsichord Concerto, H246 (1935)
Tre ricercari, H267 (1938)
Piano Sonata No. 1, H350 (1954)
Arthur Honegger (1892–1955)
Concerto da Camera, H196 (1948)
Aaron Copland (1900–90)
Sextet (1937)
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
Program Six: The Spiritual Quest
Thursday, August 14, at 7 PM
Friday, August 15 at 3 PM
Church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
The Mount of Three Lights, H349 (1954)
Vigilie, H382 (1959)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
From Mass in D Major, Op. 86 (1887)
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Veni Sancte Spiritus (ca. 1903)
Constitues eos principes (1903)
Ave Maria (1904)
Postludium, from Glagolitic Mass (1926)
Petr Eben (1929–2007)
Finale, from Musica dominicalis (Sunday Music) (1958)
Program Seven: Myth, Faith, and Folklore
Friday, August 15
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Mariken de Nimègue, H236/2 I (1933–34)
Field Mass, H279 (1946)
Brigand Songs, H361 (1957)
Panel Two: Music and Politics: From the Habsburg Empire to Contemporary Populism and Autocracy
Saturday, August 16
Olin Hall
10 AM – 12 noon
Free and open to the public.
Program Eight: Martinů and the Craft of Composition
Saturday, August 16
Olin Hall
1 PM Preconcert Talk
1:30 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Duo No. 1, “Three Madrigals,” H313 (1947)
Cello Sonata No. 3, H340 (1952)
Nonet No. 2, H374 (1959)
David Diamond (1915–2005)
Quintet (1937)
Karel Husa (1921–2016)
Evocations de Slovaquie (1951)
Program Nine: Renewing the Public Power of Tradition
Saturday, August 16
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Orchestral Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Violin Concerto No. 2, H293 (1943)
The Epic of Gilgamesh, H351 (1955)
Jan Novák (1921–84)
Ignis pro Ioanne Palach (1969)
Program Ten: Martinů’s Legacy
Sunday, August 17
Olin Hall
11 AM Preconcert Talk
11:30 AM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Three Czech Dances, H154 (1926)
Songs on One Page, H294 (1943)
Songs on Two Pages, H302 (1944)
Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Petroushskates (1980)
Kryštof Mařatka (b. 1972)
Báchorky, fables pastorales (2016)
Works by Jaroslav Ježek (1906–42), Frank Zappa (1940–93), and Iva Bittová (b. 1958)
Program Eleven: The Opera of Dreams: Martinů’s Julietta
Sunday, August 17
Sosnoff Theater
2 PM Preconcert Talk
3 PM Semi-Staged Opera Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Julietta, H253 (1937) (Martinů, after Georges Neveux)
Seattle Opera 2025-26
Oakland Symphony 2025-26
Season announcement season is in full swing, and here's next year's schedule for the Oakland Symphony, under its new music director Kedrick Armstrong. As is typical of this orchestra and its music directors, there's a nice balance of standards and new/unusual music. Note that if you're still smoldering from the cancellation of the Verdi Requiem at the San Francisco Symphony, you can hear it in Oakland. For more details, see the Oakland Symphony web site.
Season Opening:
DAVE RAGLAND PREMIERE plus THE FIREBIRD!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2025 | 8:00PM
Paramount Theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Sara Davis Buechner, piano
ANNA CLYNE This Midnight Hour
MAURICE RAVEL Piano Concerto in G
DAVE RAGLAND Harmony of the Unheard
Oakland Symphony Commission World Premiere
IGOR STRAVINSKY The Firebird Suite (1919)
VERDI’S REQUIEM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 | 8:00PM
Paramount Theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Tiffany Townsend, soprano
Raehann Bryce-Davis, mezzo-soprano
Robert Stahley, tenor
Reginald Smith Jr., baritone
Oakland Symphony Chorus
CAVA MENZIES Oakland Symphony Commission World Premiere
GIUSEPPE VERDI Requiem
LET US BREAK BREAD TOGETHER
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2025 | 4:00PM
Paramount Theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
An “inspired, multifarious, musical bash!” raves San Francisco Classical Voice of the Oakland Symphony’s Let Us Break Bread Together. Kedrick Armstrong and the Orchestra are joined by the region’s top talent for this annual celebration, this year paying a special tribute to Whitney Houston.
ROUMAIN, MAHLER, ESMAIL & CHEN YI
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2026 | 8:00PM
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Tracy Silverman, violin
Oakland Symphony Chorus
CHEN YI Introduction, Andante, and Allegro
GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony No. 10, Adagio
REENA ESMAIL She Will Transform You
DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN (Artist-In-Residence)
America, To Us
HAMMOND ORGAN CONCERTO plus
SAINT-SAËNS THUNDERING ORGAN SYMPHONY
FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2026 | 8:00PM
Paramount theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Brian Nabors, organ
CLARICE ASSAD Baião N’ Blues
BRIAN RAPHAEL NABORS Hammond Organ Concerto
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Symphony No. 3, “Organ”
Season Finale: SCHEHERAZADE!
FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026 | 8:00PM
Paramount Theatre, Oakland
Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Oakland Symphony Chorus
JASMINE BARNES Oakland Symphony Commission World Premiere
NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Lise Davidsen in Recital
Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen's first Bay Area appearance was last week. She was awesome. I don't just mean her gigantic voice, about which you've probably read. She is an artist and the recital was really something. As both Opera Tattler and Michael Anthonio note, she is warm and funny on stage.
Oh, yeah, she is really tall.
And pregnant, with twins. You couldn't tell in the flowing flowered dress she wore in the first half of the recital, but you could in the tubelike number in the second half. She will sing Leonore in the Met's Fidelio next month before taking a break until sometime next year. She is apparently still planning to be in the Met's Tristan und Isolde. Between her role debut and Yuval Sharon's direction, you bet I'm planning a trip to NYC in March, 2026.
- Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle and SFCV. Yes, I burst into tears a measure or two into "Es gibt ein Reich," from Ariadne auf Naxos. It's time for SFO to revive this great and funny opera. Weirdly, I have a casting suggestion for them.
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "...the artistic results never really quicken the pulse the way one would wish — or at any rate, they don’t quicken my pulse."
- Opera Tattler. "Davidsen has a powerful voice, with beautiful low notes and pristine, completely effortless high ones." A person commenting anonymously on the post mentions bursting into tears elsewhere on the program.
- Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box. "...her take on “Tu che le vanità” completely blew my mind." (I haven't heard it sung better myself, just a stupendous vocal display.)
Monday, February 10, 2025
Saturday, February 08, 2025
Adriana Mater
Diversity in Opera
It's a common stance among U.S. classical music and opera lovers to wish that state and federal support for the arts reached the levels of such support in Europe. I've thought for a while that this would be a double-edged sword: a government that gives money can take away that money. We're seeing the depredations of Arts Council England in the UK, where subsidies for many important organizations has been cut back and the English National Opera is being forced to decamp from London, where they've been performing for the last 80 years, first as Sadler's Wells Opera, then as the ENO.
Not that private philanthropists can't do the same, plus there's generational change about what the rich give to: these days, what's popular is donating huge sums to medical research or hospitals rather than the arts.
Regardless, one good thing about lack of government support means that there's not much to take away and an organization that's dedicated to expanding their repertory past dead white European men and to casting people of color in leading roles can't be pressured by the government to stop doing these things. (Here I'll note that San Francisco Opera's excellent productions of Omar and El ultimo sueño de Frida y Diego sold very well, and making your audiences happy is good.)
I was thinking about how racism manifests itself in the performing arts. There are all sorts of ways: thinking you can't cast Black men as romantic heroes, assigning fewer solos in concerts to singers of color, failing to admit singers of color to important training programs, the economic inequality that makes it easier for people with money than people without money to pay for music or voice lessons and buy good instruments, treating students of color differently, and on and on.
Other than in Porgy and Bess, I did not see a production with more than one Black singer on stage until 2017! I've now seen enough productions with one to many Black or Asian singers to know that it's absolutely not for lack of good singers of color. And there are some outstanding Black singers I've seen in the last few years who didn't have careers at major U.S. opera houses until they were approaching or past 50. I expect that most people reading this are aware that star singers are usually established by age 35, so that's a lot of prime earning years lost.
DEI works the same way in the arts as anywhere else: expanding the pool of talent means you have more choices about who to hire, and generally results in quality going up. Having fewer mediocre white people in the corner suite or on stage benefits us all.
Friday, February 07, 2025
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Ojai 2026
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
San Francisco Opera, 2025-26
- Rigoletto, Verdi. Sept. 5-27. Eun Sun Kim/Amartuvshin Enkhbat (Rigoletto), Giovanni Sala (Duke), Adela Zaharia (Gilda), J’Nai Bridges (Maddalena), Peixin Chen (Sparafucile)
- Dead Man Walking, Heggie. Sept. 14-28. Patrick Summers/Jamie Barton (Sister Helen Prejean), Ryan McKinny (Joseph De Rocher), Susan Graham (Mrs. De Rocher), Brittany Renee (Sister Rose). Graham, who created the role of Sister Helen Prejean, returns as Mrs. De Rocher, the mother of the condemned man.
- Parsifal, Wagner. Oct. 25-Nov.13. New SFO production. Eun Sun Kim/Brandon Jovanovich (Parisfal), Kwangchul Youn (Gurnemanz), Brian Mulligan (Amfortas), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Kundry), Falk Struckmann (Klingsor). Matthew Ozawa directs.
- The Monkey King, Huang Ruo/Libretto by David Henry Hwang. Nov. 14-30. Carolyn Kuan/Kang Wang (Monkey King), Mei Gui Zhang (Guanyin), Konu Kim (Jade Emperor), Jusung Gabriel Park (Subhuti/Buddha), Peixin Chen (Supereme Lord Laozi), Joo Won Kang (Lord Erland/Ao Guang), Hongni Wu (Crab General/Venus Star). World premiere, SFO commission; Basil Twist directs.
- The Barber of Seville, Rossini. May 28-June 21, 2026. Benjamin Manis/Joshua Hopkins & Justin Austin (Figaro), Maria Kataeva & Hongni Wu (Rosina), Levy Sekgapane & Jack Swanson (Count Almaviva), Renato Girolami & Patrick Carfizzi (Dr. Bartolo).
- Elektra, R. Strauss. June 7-27. Eun Sun Kim/Elena Pankratova (Elektra), Elza van den Heever (Chrysothemis), Michaela Schuster (Klytämnestra). Keith Warner production seen here in 2017.
- Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle
- Janos Gereben, SFCV
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. Note that SFO had up to 12 operas/year as recently as the 90s and the first few years of this century.
- Opera Tattler
- Parterre Box
Monday, February 03, 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025
Words That Should Not Have Been Spoken
Heard on KDFC, said by different announcers:
- ".....the McGill boys," following a performance featuring the distinguished musicians Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, and his brother Demarre McGill, principal flute of the Seattle Symphony. They are both great players, if I haven't already made that clear. If you're not aware of it, the McGills are Black men. Apply the word "boy" to adult Black men was something done by white people to dehumanize and disrespect Black men during the period of slavery, during the Jim Crow/segregation period, and at other times. Don't do this, ever. And remember, it would have been easy to refer to "the McGill brothers," which is factual and neutral.
- "Celebrate Esa-Pekka Salonen's last season as music director of the San Francisco Symphony." COME ON. Somebody at KDFC should be paying attention enough to know that Salonen's last season is nothing to celebrate. It's an institutional disaster and a huge mistake. We should have been celebrating the extension of his contract, but no. I mean...maybe this was part of a paid ad. Maybe KDFC should have refused the money.