American Mavericks

As part of its 100th anniversary season, the San Francisco Symphony is presenting a month long transcontinental American music tour, “American Mavericks”. The programs explore the many of the more individual and independent voices of 20th and 21st-century American music. The composers who have works included in the festival are those who have often challenged the concept of what music is and can be, and expanded the way we can perceive sound. Composers included on the program docket include John Adams, Mason Bates, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, David Del Tredici, Morton Feldman, Lukas Foss, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, Meredith Monk, Harry Partch, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Carl Ruggles, Morton Subotnick, and Edgard Varèse.

The programs include some of the more searching and inventive contributions from these composers. Copland, a composer better known for his more populist sounding scores such as Appalachian Spring or Rodeo, is represented in the festival by his steelier sounding Orchestral Variations (a transcription of the early Piano Variations). The same program includes Charles Ives’ magnum piano opus Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840–60”, but here, it too has been orchestrated (in this case by composer Henry Brant). Several of the programs are dedicated entirely to the works of John Cage, while others focus on specific genres like chamber music and vocal works.

The festival does not rely solely on 20th-century works, but also several from the 21st. Mason Bates, the 2011-12 guest composer in the SFS Project SanFrancisco initiative, and composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is one such composer whose work is included. Bates leads a kind of double life, on the one side he is a composer of “concert” music, and on the other he is a DJ (known as DJ Masonic when he is spinning at clubs), and the two sides often collide. His music is known for exploring innovative sounds from the orchestra coupled with electronics. Last year, Tilson Thomas commissioned Bates to write a new work for the YouTube Symphony, and this year, his new work Mass Transmission, will be premiered as part of the “American Mavericks” festival.

Presenting the works of these compositional mavericks are performers of equally impressive stature. The entire festival is led by the San Francisco Symphony’s music director (and artistic director of the New World Symphony Orchestra), Michael Tilson Thomas. Artists joining the maestro include Jessye Norman (singing selections from Cage’s Song books), Meredith Monk, and Emanuel Ax. Once the festival reaches New York, they will be teaming up with other professional new music groups such as SO Percussion (in a mostly Cage program), the JACK Quartet, and Alarm Will Sound (also with a mostly Cage program).

The migrating festival begins on March 8th in San Francisco and ends in New York City, with stops in Ann Arbor and Chicago along the way.