A seasonal trip around the world and through the centuries, exploring music sacred and festive, peaceful and noisy, intimate and celebratory. Celebrate the holidays with our beloved candlelight concert, where the choir surrounds you with light and music. And join us on your favorite carols!
Including the world premiere of Jean Ahn’s new carol, Roasted Chestnuts, based on a Korean folk song and commissioned by SFBC for this concert.
with
The Whole Noyse
and featuring Steven Bailey, piano
Concert run time: about 1.5 hours (includes 15-minute intermission)
The Whole Noyse has been one of the country’s leading early brass ensembles for over thirty years. Specializing in performing music of the Renaissance and early Baroque, The Whole Noyse focuses on the combination of cornetts, sackbuts, and curtal, instruments that made up the primary professional wind group of the 16th and 17th centuries. In keeping with the versatility expected of wind players of the period, the ensemble also doubles on recorders and flutes and often mixes in the sounds of shawm, slide trumpet, gittern, violin, and viola.
Concerts by The Whole Noyse in Europe and across North America have been enthusiastically received. The group has collaborated with some of North America’s most respected early music ensembles, including Magnificat, The King’s Noyse, The Newberry Consort, and Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, as well as a number of choirs, including the Vancouver Cantata Singers, Pro Coro Canada, San Francisco Choral Artists, and AVE. In 2010 the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, The Whole Noyse was invited to participate in more than fifteen performances of that monumental work in cities around the US and Canada, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Vancouver, Calgary, and Honolulu. The group has performed alone in concert series of numerous early music societies and in other venues. Its solo recording, Lo Splendore d’Italia, is available on the Helicon label. The group can also be heard on recordings by Magnificat, the San Francisco Bach Choir, and the Vancouver Cantata Singers of major works of the seventeenth century; the Vancouver Cantata Singers’ CD Venetian Vespers of 1640 was nominated for a Juno Award and won the Outstanding Choral Award from the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors.
Pianist Steven Bailey regularly performs in and outside the San Francisco Bay Area as soloist, chamber, and collaborative keyboardist. He is a full-time staff member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he has taught since 1993. Mr. Bailey has appeared as concerto soloist with Symphony Parnassus, Diablo Symphony, UC Davis Symphony, San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, and Magnificat Baroque Orchestra. He regularly performs with American Bach Soloists as guest soloist and continuo organist and has collaborated in chamber performances with members of the Alexander, Arlekin, and Sausalito quartets. He has accompanied and performed with the San Francisco Bach Choir since 1992.
As a founding member of the vocal chamber music repertory group CMASH, Mr. Bailey often performs and premieres works by such noted composers as Jake Heggie, Vartan Aghababian, and Liam Wade. He is featured on CMASH founder (and SFCM alum) soprano Ann Moss’s debut CD “Currents” and her most recent CD “Love Life,” both recorded at Skywalker Sound and produced by Leslie Ann Jones.
Mr. Bailey holds a B.M. in Piano Performance from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.M. in Piano Performance from Boston University, where he was a student of Anthony di Bonaventura.
Born in Korea, Jean Ahn finished her B.A. and M.M. at Seoul National University and Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. Her creative output includes works ranging from solo instruments to full orchestra, as well as choral, dance and electroacoustic music. Her collaborative work “Saltdoll” has won 2019 Isadora Duncan Award. Jean was the finalist for 2018 Women Composers Commissions by the League of American Orchestras and her music was performed by Oakland Symphony, Earplay, Left Coast Ensemble, Volti, Diablo Symphony and UC Davis Orchestra. She was featured at New Music Miami, New American Music Festival, Women Composers Conference(Australia), Aspen Music Festival, June in Buffalo, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Etchings Festival, IAWM Beijing Congress, SEAMUS and New York City Electronic Music Festival among others. She was the composer-in-residence with SF Choral Artists last season and she is currently working on a piano quartet for Ensemble ARI funded by Intermusic SF. Jean’s music brings Asian traditional elements into western music. Her “Folksong Revisited” and “K-Folksongs” are ongoing projects that show her vision to introduce Korean songs and techniques to professional performers in the US.