Alexander Barantschik, Concertmaster
Inside Music Pre-Concert Talks
Join us at Davies Symphony Hall and the Flint Center, Cupertino, one hour before select concerts for a free pre-concert talk! Inside Music talks are designed to enhance your enjoyment of the concert by providing insights into the works on the program—bringing you “inside” the music. Our roster of speakers includes a variety of music professionals who will bring different viewpoints and approaches to their conversations about the music. Some of the approaches might include exploring why a composer wrote a particular work, examining the social and historical context of a piece of music, looking at how a piece of music is constructed, and guided listening through recorded excerpts of the works being performed.
From our season calendar, simply click on your upcoming concert to view whether the concert includes an Inside Music talk.
Speaker Biographies
Alexandra Amati-Camperi, originally from Italy, holds a BA/MA in Slavic Studies and Philology from the Università degli Studi di Pisa (Italy), degrees in piano from the Conservatory of Music of Lucca (Italy), and both an MA and a Ph.D. in Musicology from Harvard University. She is presently Associate Professor and Director of the Music Program at the University of San Francisco. Her interests include the Italian Renaissance, Italian opera, Feminist criticism, Romantic piano music, and German Baroque choral music. She has published books and papers on Renaissance, operatic, and gender related topics. She is now working on a book about the presentation and treatment of women in opera, as seen through a few settings of the Orpheus myth, tentatively titled Euridice: The Evolution of the Mythical and Musical Other. An article on the castrati in feminine roles is forthcoming, and one on the first operatic heroines has just been published. She is a professional program annotator and pre-concert lecturer for many Bay Area organizations, including the SF Symphony, the SF Opera and its six Bay Area Guilds, the SF Bach Choir, the SF Boys Chorus, Philharmonia Baroque, and others.
Donato Cabrera joined the San Francisco Symphony in 2009 as Assistant Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the Youth Orchestra. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in April 2009, when he stepped in on short notice to lead the Orchestra in a program of Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 and Overture to Le nozze di Figaro, and the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition. In September 2009, he substituted for Michael Tilson Thomas for part of the Symphony’s South Bay opening night at Flint Center. This season, Mr. Cabrera leads the San Francisco Symphony in subscription concerts of Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush. Mr. Cabrera also conducts the Orchestra in Concerts for Kids, Adventures in Music, and Music for Families concerts, in addition to leading SFSYO rehearsals and concerts. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Cabrera was associate conductor of the San Francisco Opera, where he participated in the world premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic and conducted performances of Die Fledermaus, Don Giovanni, Tannhäuser, and The Magic Flute. He has also been an assistant and cover conductor for projects at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Ballet. Mr. Cabrera made his South American debut in 2008, conducting Madama Butterfly with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Concepción in Chile; those performances led to an invitation to conduct the ensemble’s 2009 production of Lucia di Lammermoor as well as the final concert of their symphonic season. In December 2009, he makes his debut with the San Francisco Ballet, conducting performances of The Nutcracker. A champion of new music, Mr. Cabrera was co-founder and music director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), and has led that ensemble in works of John Adams, Jacob Druckman, Donald Martino, Frederic Rzewski, and Elliott Carter. Donato Cabrera has long been dedicated to music education and community outreach. For more than four seasons, he programmed and conducted Young People’s Concerts for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In addition, he has conducted the Preparatory Orchestra of the Juilliard School, as well as the youth orchestras of Newark, Cincinnati, Norwalk, and Ridgefield. Mr. Cabrera has also worked with singers in the young artist programs of the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Portland Opera. In March 2009, Mr. Cabrera was asked to be one of eight participants in the biennial 2009 Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview, leading the Nashville Symphony over two days in a variety of works. In 2002, Mr. Cabrera was a Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellow for the Salzburg Festival. He has been assistant conductor at numerous summer festivals, including the Ravinia, Spoleto (Italy), and Aspen festivals, and he has served as resident conductor at the Music Academy of the West. Donato Cabrera holds a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Nevada, Reno; a master’s degree in conducting from the University of Illinois; and has pursued graduate studies in conducting at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the Manhattan School of Music.
Scott Foglesong is currently the Chair of Musicianship and Music Theory at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he has been a faculty member since 1978. Mr. Foglesong also teaches in the Fall Freshman Program at the University of California in Berkeley, where he has the privilege of introducing young people to the glories of Western art music. As a pianist he has appeared with the Francesco Trio, Chanticleer, members of the San Francisco Symphony, and has played solo and chamber recitals nationwide in a repertoire ranging from Renaissance through ragtime, jazz, and modern idioms. He regularly contributes program notes for the San Francisco Symphony, and has published pieces on music in diverse publications. Originally trained at the Peabody Conservatory, he studied piano with Konrad Wolff; later at the San Francisco Conservatory he studied piano with Nathan Schwartz, harpsichord with Laurette Golberg, and theory with both Sol Joseph and John Adams.
Ronald Gallman, the San Francisco Symphony’s Director of Education Programs, is a music educator who has written and lectured extensively on symphonic repertoire, chamber music, and opera. Gallman manages the San Francisco Symphony’s “Inside Music” talks and oversees the SFS’s extensive slate of education initiatives.
Peter Grunberg served as Head of Music Staff at San Francisco Opera from 1992 to 1999 and is currently Musical Assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas. He has appeared as piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, has performed at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg festivals, and has collaborated in recital with such artists as Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, and Joshua Bell. He has also conducted at the Moscow Conservatory, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the Pacific Music Festival. In 2003 he played and spoke at the “Visual Sounds” symposium at SF MOMA, part of the SFS’s festival on Wagner, Weill, and the Weimar Republic.
James M. Keller, the San Francisco Symphony’s Program Annotator since 2000, also serves as Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic, where this season he has been named Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence. He holds degrees in music history and Romance languages from Oberlin College and a graduate degree in music history from Yale University. He was on the staff of The New Yorker for ten years, and he was honored with the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award for his writing in Chamber Music magazine, which he serves as Contributing Editor. His many articles include contributions to the Encyclopedia of New York City (Yale University Press, 1995), George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound (Colorado College Music Press, 2005), and Leonard Bernstein: American Original (HarperCollins, 2008). His book Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide will be published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.
Susan Key is a musicologist specializing in American music. She has taught at the University of Maryland, the College of William and Mary, and Stanford University. A co-editor (with Larry Rothe) of American Mavericks: Musical Visionaries, Pioneers, Iconoclasts, published by University of California Press, she has also published articles on Stephen Foster, John Cage, and American music on early radio. Ms. Key currently directs the education component of Keeping Score: MTT on Music, the Symphony's multimedia program to connect listeners with music and the emotions it conveys.
John R. Palmer completed his Ph.D. at UC Davis and has taught courses on the music of Wagner, Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart and Verdi, as well as on popular music, cultural history, and writing. Dr. Palmer studied at the University of Vienna as the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and has since worked at UC Berkeley, University of San Francisco and San Francisco Opera. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sonoma State University Department of Music, which has recently moved into its new home in the Green Music Center.
Laura Stanfield Prichard is a conductor, musicologist, and vocalist specializing in choral music and modernism. She is a lecturer and writer for the summer Berkshire Choral Festival, teaches courses in Musicology for the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and is the Director of Fine Arts for the Arlington, MA public schools. Since moving to the Boston area in 2003, Ms. Prichard led the Boston-based Sharing a New Song Chorus on collaborative concert tours of South Africa and Vietnam and conducted the Yale Alumni Chorus in Moscow and the Netherlands. She lecturers regularly for the Boston Baroque and directs the music program at the First Parish UU Church in Arlington, MA, which has led significant relief efforts and reconstruction trips to the UU churches of New Orleans. An alumna of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, she performs regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. From 2003-2006, she conducted the award-winning Sängerchor Boston, the oldest German-language choir in the US, and is the Assistant Conductor of the New World Chorale, the choir-in-residence for the Longwood Symphony and the Boston Ballet. She taught music and dance at California State University-East Bay (Hayward) and San Francisco State University for eight years, and has presented lectures at the San Francisco Symphony since 1996.