Curious Flights with rarely performed Britten

Benjamin Britten

This coming Tuesday June 4th at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Curious Flights concert series continues its inaugural season with its second concert, which features the music of  Benjamin Britten in honor of the composer's centennial. The Britten centennial is really not getting the amount of attention it deserves from the City's major arts organizations, so it's been up to the smaller companies to step up and honor one of the most important conductors of the 20th century. Curious Flights is doing so in a big way with the West Coast premiere of Britten's Movements for a Clarinet Concerto, featuring Brenden Guy as soloist with a 40+ piece orchestra led by Marin Symphony Music Director Alasdair Neale.

Guy is also the Artistic Director of Curious Flights, which he helped form, one goal of which is to give the bounty of classical musicians in our midst the opportunity to perform rarely heard music. That might sound like the mission statement of a dozen other Bay Area music organizations, but it's not. While there are plenty of opportunities to hear the old and obscure and the new and unknown, there actually aren't that many organizations performing the repertoire which Guy intends to present with this concert series.

When I learned about the scope of Tuesday's concert (assembling a 40 piece orchestra is a huge undertaking) I couldn't help but be impressed by the audacity of what Curious Flights is doing. If creating a brand new orchestra wasn't enough, debuting a new classical music organization with a three concert season is a wonderfully bold move. It's not like we're lacking for opportunities to hear music in these parts so I tried to pin Guy down about what's motivating him, but I couldn't wriggle much more from the charming Englishman except that he's genuinely devoted to creating an opportunity for highly talented musicians to perform rarely heard music. It's that simple, even if what Curious Flights is doing is anything but.

Tuesday's concert begins at 8:00 PM. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is easily accessible by public transportation, has easy street parking, and the hall is acoustically one of the best in the City. The rest of the program (which will last less than an hour and a half) features the Valinor Winds performing the Movement for Wind Sextet; the Friction Quartet with guest violinist Jason Pyszkowski performing Phantasy Quintet in F minor; and Canticle III, Op. 55: Still Falls the Rain featuring tenor Brian Thorsett, horn player Kevin Rivard, and pianist Ulysses Loken.

Complete information for the entire program and principal performers can be found here. Strongly recommended. Buy tickets here.