Tackling Difficulty in Renaissance Music by Jesse Rodin What makes a piece of music difficult? Answers can range all over—from unexpected melodic leaps to technical challenges that arise from bad composing. What’s impossible for me might be a piece...
New College Choir to Perform in Rare Bay Area Appearance SFEMS is delighted to welcome the Choir of New College Oxford in a special, joint presentation with San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The choir, under the direction of Robert Quinney, will...
This season’s Sunday Afternoon concert series at the California Jazz Conservatory concludes on March 31 with “Bach and Sons.” Celebrate Johann Sebastian Bach’s 334th birthday with four works by Bach and two of his sons, played on...
The Renaissance Singers’ Retreat will hold its spring session the weekend of April 6–7, 2019, once again in the city of Albany, in the East Bay. The Saturday session will be held at the all-purpose room at Cornell Elementary School, 920 Talbot...
Derek Tam has been appointed Executive Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society. He succeeds Harvey Malloy, who served from 2009 until his retirement last fall. His appointment to the top leadership position with SFEMS will be especially...
Ensemble Caprice Returns with Musical Love Stories Montreal’s Ensemble Caprice has appeared frequently on the SFEMS concert series over the past 20 years, each time looking at historical music with fresh eyes and performing it with a different...
The 2018 Berkeley Festival was a milestone—the first time a major early music festival made a strong case for applying the principles and practices of historical performance to music of the 19th century, up to and including Debussy, as demonstrated...
John Prescott, Ph.D., will present another in his series of early music lecture courses in March—an entirely new series focusing on music in the North American colonies, especially during the 18th century. The course runs Monday, March 4, through...
The San Francisco Early Music Society is pleased to announce the award of grants from the California Arts Council to four of our Affiliate groups. Each of these organizations’ projects is closely aligned with SFEMS’s goal of strengthening...
When Harvey Malloy stepped down this past October, after almost 10 years as SFEMS Executive Director, he had both helped the Society meet and overcome major challenges and done a tremendous amount to modernize it, put it on sounder footing, and give...