They come from all over the Bay Area, commuting into San Francisco from as far away as the Central Valley. Rehearsing up to three times a week and performing at least 26 times a season (in 2004, they will have performed 32 concerts), they sing texts in French, Russian, German and Italian, a task complicated enough to require the help of voice coaches and linguists. They are the 200 members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, making it one of the largest of its kind in this country. Even more remarkable is the fact that 170 of the choristers are volunteers.

What makes people dedicate themselves to a task such as this? Perhaps it is the prestige of being a member of a celebrated singing ensemble. Or perhaps, more fundamentally, it is the opportunity to take one’s voice and blend it in with a couple of hundred others that can’t be replicated in any other setting. Spark goes behind the scenes while the San Francisco Symphony Chorus rehearses and performs Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem” at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

More about the San Francisco Symphony Chorus
The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1972, created at the request of Seiji Ozawa, then the music director of the San Francisco Symphony. Louis Magor served as the chorus’s director during its first decade. In 1982, Margaret Hillis, from the Chicago Symphony Chorus, assumed the ensemble’s leadership, followed by Vance George in 1983 and then Ragnar Bohlin in 2007. Since then, they have sung under such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Laureate Herbert Blomstedt, Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Robert Shaw.

San Francisco Symphony
sfsymphony.org
Where: Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
Phone: (415) 864-6000

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Watching the members of the Sonos Handbell Ensemble prepare, you might think that they were getting ready to play in a major sporting event — rather than preparing to play music: taping fingers, wrapping wrists, stretching, and putting on gloves. But Spark learns that being part of a handbell ensemble is more challenging and fun than anyone might expect.

The ensemble was founded in 1990, and hopes to move handbells out of the church-only realm and into the world of more mainstream contemporary music. The group has toured nationally, recorded three CDs and performed with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Oakland East Bay Symphony and San Jose Symphony.

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Since he became director of Cal Performances in 1986, Robert Cole has turned the performing arts presenter of the University of California, Berkeley, into a venue that rivals New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. The Spark episode “Movers and Shakers” offers a glimpse into one of the country’s most renowned performing arts centers.

After studying music at the University of Southern California, Cole began his career as a high school music teacher and part-time conductor. As a conductor, he became interested in other aspects of the orchestra, raising money and organizing a board of directors for a little opera company and a ballet company. In the 1970s, Cole moved from his native California to New York, where he took the job of associate conductor under Michael Tilson Thomas at the Buffalo Philharmonic and began presenting companies like the New York City Ballet and the Dance Theater of Harlem.

When he came to Cal Performances, Cole saw a unique opportunity to turn U.C. Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall into the premiere performing arts theater in the region, attracting acts accustomed to playing the most prestigious venues of London, New York, Paris and other cultural centers. He also set out to expand the number and variety of performances, and over the course of his tenure has increased annual ticket sales nearly tenfold, from $700,000 to more than $6 million.

In 1991, Cole booked a little known mezzo-soprano, Cecilia Bartoli, who has since become internationally celebrated as one of the greatest opera talents of her generation. In recent years, Cole has taken on the role of producer as well, enabling artists like choreographer Mark Morris to create new works whose world premieres are presented by Cal Performances.

Cole has been able to achieve this remarkable expansion in part by booking a combination of world-renowned performers and emerging young talents. Every January, Cole travels to the Arts Presenters Conference in New York, where he selects acts from among the thousands that meet there. Over the years, the New York conference has enabled Cole to bring performers from more than 50 countries to Berkeley, attracting new audiences to Cal Performances from the diverse ethnic communities that are characteristic of the Bay Area.

Cal Performances
calperfs.berkeley.edu
Where: U.C. Berkeley, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
Phone: (510) 642-9988

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East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (EBCPA) was founded in 1968 by five teachers to provide music lessons for 45 students in a rented church. Since then the organization has grown to include many other performing art forms that reflect the diverse range of the communities on the East Bay. Spark visits EBCPA and talks with the center’s artistic director, Jordan Simmons.

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Michael Govea is a Latin composer and artist, and leader of other bands like Los Compas and Cascada de Flores. He met a musician and lawyer named Susan Peña more than twenty years ago. Today, the two of them and their daughters Rene and Cecilia form, the band known as La Familia Peña-Govea, and play Latin music around the Bay Area. They have released two recordings, “Rene at 15” and “Cohetes.”

Spark joins the the family as they practice in their living room: each member alternates between guitar, accordion, vocals and percussion. Playing primarily Tex-Mex and Colombian music, La Familia Peña-Govea has recorded two CDs and appears at festivals and events around Northern California.

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Born in Osaka, Japan in 1971, Midori received her first violin at the age of 4 years old, when she began studying violin under the direction of her mother. In 1981, they moved to the United States so that Midori could further her studies at the Aspen Summer Music School and the pre-college division of the Juilliard School.

Midori began touring the world in 1986. Today, she performs over 100 concerts worldwide each season. However, despite her rigorous performing schedule, Midori finds time to engage the community and founded the non-profit organizations, Midori & Friends in New York City and Music Sharing in Japan.

When she is not on the road, Midori lives in Los Angeles. Spark caught up with the violinist for a one-night appearance at San Francisco Performances.

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Mohawks and pink hair are not the usual hair-dos for classical musicians, but the Punk Rock Orchestra breaks many stereotypes. The 50+ member orchestra’s musical taste is apparent from the other ensembles they have played with — everything from the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera to The Dead Kennedys.

Lead by conductor John Gluck and his trusty toilet cleaning brush, the Punk Rock Orchestra plays songs from punk bands like Black Flag and the Sex Pistols on classical instruments. Craigslist brought them together in 2002, and since then the group has recorded an album and played at venues such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Herbst Theater. Spark caught up with them at one of their rare performances.

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“Hear with your ears, listen with your heart” can be dismissed as fortune cookie musing, but anybody who knows or has heard of Pauline Oliveros will say it’s the pioneering musician and composer’s guiding principle. Spark takes you into Oliveros’s world filled with improvisational jam sessions, accordions, frogs and extreme slow walking (she’ll explain).

Soul music comes in many forms, and nowhere is this taken to its most literal extreme than with Oliveros. The Oakland-based teacher, composer, performer and musical ambassador is deeply attuned to the meditative qualities of sound. Since the ’60s, she has pioneered the electronic and improvisational mediums, creating theories of “sonic meditation” and “deep listening” — accomplishments that have brought her and her Mills College program worldwide acclaim.

Born in Houston, Texas, in the early ’30s, Oliveros learned piano from her mother and grandmother before switching to accordion. After high school, Oliveros moved to San Francisco to attend college and discovered new methods of making music. In 1961, she joined up with like-minded composers at San Francisco Tape Music Center, which pioneered techniques of sound gathering and archiving in electronic music, which later became the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College. During the ’70s, she sought to strengthen the connection between music (and atmospheric sounds) and the soul leading her to begin a series of performances and practices called “sonic meditations” and “deep listening,” the most minute sound or unintentional noises are amplified in the composition’s importance.

Transmitting from Kingston, New York, Oliveros — now over 70 years old — still teaches music composition at Mills College and practices deep listening techniques with fellow musicians using her bandoneon (an accordion-like instrument). Her performances range from peaceful to restless, thoughtful to transcendent, and ultimately embody a spiritual freedom that defies borders and categorization. She often encourages her audience to not just listen but to participate at recitals. Through her work, Oliveros explores what music and sound means to each individual, something that goes back to the “listening versus hearing” thing — a dichotomy far removed from conventional (fortune) cookie cutter wisdom.

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“The bass, the treble, don’t make a rebel/Having your life together does.” Those words, rapped by Michael Franti back in 1992, seem eerily prophetic today. In an industry notorious for perpetrating fantasy and the philosophy of “getting mine,” the Bay Area-based musician is a thinking, feeling person joyously out of step with his contemporaries in the music industry. Spark talks politics with Franti, from the set of his latest music video to backstage of a free performance at Amoeba Music.

Franti’s dedication to making politics personal began in the late ’80swith the agitprop punk band The Beatnigs, continued in the early ’90s with the industrial hip-hop forum Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, to arrive at what he is today: a mesmerizing spoken word artist and leader of the politically astute San Francisco band Spearhead.

He makes conscious music that engages brain, booty and soul in a funky soundtrack of hip-hop, reggae, Latin, blues, spoken word and R&B. He’s stepping in the oversized footprints of Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Gil Scott-Heron, Sly Stone, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Chuck D yet creating his own path — embracing new music and communities as he goes along. Live shows have included drum circles, alternative energy generators, DJs, potlucks, massage therapy and information tables.

He’s rapped about AIDS awareness (“Positive”) and homelessness (“Hole in the Bucket”). After the band’s second major-label album, “Chocolate Supa Highway,” Spearhead put attracting mainstream attention on the back burner to remain true to its consciousness-raising mission. Its 2001 album “Stay Human” centered on the death penalty. In July 2003, the band released “Everyone Deserves Music,” a conscious party that drags speakers onto the White House lawn until the break of dawn.

Franti documents injustice, but more important, he does something about it. He’s inhaled tear gas on the front lines of anti-WTO rallies and lent his time and talent to support Mumia Abu-Jamal, anti-death penalty legislation, marijuana decriminalization, conscientious objector groups and the anti-war organization Not in Our Name.

For artists struggling to make it in the rap game, songs with politically progressive messages practically beg for radio banishment and audience alienation. Michael Franti has put his mind on record for more than 15 years and enjoys a supportive and loyal worldwide fan base. And he doesn’t wait for an election year to get political. The heart that beats inside his chest — booming louder than any passing car stereo system — simply won’t let him.

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