San Francisco Contemporary Music Players

All Music Guide:

Studied piano with Madame Maurina-Press, comp. with Wallingford Riegger, Stefan Wolpe. Was Edgard Varése Professor at State University of New York at Buffalo. Began graphic works, with open pitch and rhythm, and music "free from a compositional rhetoric" in early '50s, eg. Structures for string quartet (1951). Music with pitches given but with freedom of rhythm, eg. The Swallows of Salagan (1960). Later, fully notated works, mostly quiet (in order to perceive timbre and overtone material) with non-dramatic gestures, eg. Piano and Orchestra (1975). Last works of long durations up to six-hour String Quartet No. 2 (1983).

Wikipedia:

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is an ensemble of classically trained instrumentalists that commissions, performs, and records innovative new music, including music that integrates electronic and acoustic sounds.

History

In 1971, composer Charles Boone began organizing a series of avant-garde music concerts in San Francisco art galleries. He called the series BYOP (Bring Your Own Pillow), because audience members sat on the floor. Three years later, his colleagues, harpist Marcella DeCray and oboist/conductor Jean-Louis LeRoux, reorganized the concert series as a nonprofit corporation and began to recruit musicians to form its core ensemble.

A ten-time winner of the national ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players has performed more than 1,100 contemporary works, including many U.S. and world premieres, and has commissioned new pieces from such composers as John Adams, John Cage, Fred Frith, Liza Lim, James Newton, and Julia Wolfe.

Artistic collaborations

In 1983, Frank Zappa led the ensemble in performing music by Edgard Varèse. The concert, which was emceed by Jefferson Airplane vocalist Grace Slick and held in the San Francisco Opera House, attracted an audience of more than 2,000 people. In 1997, electric guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Joey Baron appeared as soloists with the ensemble, performing Steven Mackey’s concerto, Deal. Later the same year, vocalist Dawn Upshaw appeared with the ensemble in a performance of George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children.

Principal conductors/music directors

Recent discography