Our latest virtual production featuring a collaboration with the San Jose Symphonic Choir in a complete performance of Vivaldi's Gloria.
On Sunday Decmeber 6 at 12pm, the Cal Arte Ensemble will be appearing at the Five Wounds Portuguese National Church in San Jose playing classical works by leading Portuguese composers from the Renaissance to the modern era. Because of the pandemic, attendance at the church will be very limited but the concert will be livestreamed here. The concert will feature among other works, Carlos Seixas Harpischord Concerto in A, Piano Quintet in E flat by João Domingos Bomtempo, and String Quartet No. 2 by Joly Braga Santos. Sponsored by the Instituto de Camões, Lisbon, Portugal
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, many concerts and other events particularly with larger groups such choirs and orchestras have been cancelled indefintely. The Cal Arte Ensemble has also not appeared live since March 2020 but we have been busy working on a range of virtual productions. Our most recent was premiered on November 1 2020, featuring a collaboration with the San Jose Symphonic Choir in their performance of the Requiem by Gabriel Fauré.
Cal Arte's concert with San Jose Symphonic Choir in March 2020 was to have featured works by Mozart, Beethoven and Hummel. In its place, we created a virtual performance of Beethoven's little known gem, Opferlied Op 121b, performed here by members of SJSC and Cal Arte each recording themselves at home.
In another virtual performance, see our "furry companions" edition of this famous work by Bach.
Available in 2021 from Divine Art Recordings
2020 was to have been a big year for Beethoven enthusiasts as December will mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in 1770. Although the coronavirus has put many Beethoven concerts on hold, we can look forward to Tamami Honma's spellbinding new recordings of the complete 35 Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Based on the critical edition of Beethoven's scores edited by musicologist and renowned Beethoven specialist, Dr Barry Cooper, these recordings will include both the neglected first three sonatas Beethoven wrote in his youth and hundreds of corrections revealed by Dr Cooper's meticulous research. These recordings will set a new standard for both being truly complete and in their faithfulness to Beethoven's intentions.
2pm Sunday, March 15
Old First Concerts, 1751 Sacramento Street, SF, CA 94109
A special 3-hour concert with movements from piano sonatas, arias, and short instrumental works performed by some of the Bay Area’s leading performers. More details here.
7:30pm Saturday March 21
Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, 80 S. Market St., San Jose
Following the highly successful collaboration of Cal Arte with the San Jose Symphonic Choir last year, we present an exciting new concert for 2020 with choral masterpieces by Mozart, Beethoven, and Hummel.
7pm Saturday February 22
Prince of Peace Church, 12770 Saratoga Ave, CA 95070
At 7pm Saturday, February 22, the Cal Arte Music Foundation, in conjunction with the Prince of Peace Church, will present a recital of performances by the piano students of Tamami Honma. The recital will feature short student presentations including excepts from Dvorak's Dumky Trio, Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata, and movie anime music. For younger students it will be their very first recital experience while for others it will be the precursor to competition level performances. Come support their efforts to raise funds for a good cause run by the Prince of Peace Church in Saratoga (12770 Saratoga Ave, CA 95070). Cal Arte Music Foundation is sponsoring this concert to foster the musical experiences of the younger generation.
7:30pm Saturday March 23
Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, 80 S. Market St., San Jose
Hummel (1778-1837) is much less known today than Beethoven (1770-1827), but in their day they were both well known, as well as being friends and rivals. Hummel, like Beethoven, was a piano virtuoso, although his self-confidence was said to have been shattered by Beethoven's arrival in Vienna where both composers spent most of their lives. Hummel, nevertheless, eventually succeeded Joseph Haydn in the role of Kapellmeister in the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II, after Haydn's death in 1809. Two years earlier Esterházy commissioned Beethoven to write a Mass for his wife - the Mass in C. Hummel subsequently wrote his Mass in D a year later. In this concert, SJSC has paired the two masses, allowing comparison of the styles and gifts of these two important classical contemporaries.
7pm Sunday March 17
Lincoln Glen Church,
2700 Booksin Ave, San Jose, California
3pm Sunday January 27
Free admission
McAfee Performing Arts and Lecture Center,
20300 Herriman Avenue, Saratoga, CA 95070
In a rare performance of Rachmaninoff's fourth and last piano concerto, we get to hear the composer operating in a new more jazzy and experimental style. Partly because the work was quite different from the much more famous second and third concertos, audiences were slow to appreciate it. Rachmaninoff felt obliged to revise the concerto several times over many years significantly cutting it in length. Modern thinking suggests Rachmaninoff may have overcompensated with the later versions. This performance will feature one of the early versions, itself a rarity among rarities, as when this work does infrequently get an outing, players often opt for the shortened and perhaps less satisfying final version.
4pm Sunday October 21
7:30pm Saturday October 27
Good Samaritan United Methodist Church 19624 Homestead Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014
When Schumann wrote his Piano Quintet in E flat the idea of combining a string quartet with piano was new. With this magnificent composition, considered to be one of the finest musical works of the 19th century, Schumann opened the way for a whole new genre of chamber music. Edward Elgar's Piano Quintet, written in 1918 at the end of the Great War came just a year before his famous cello concerto. It is a similarly powerful and expansive work and widely considered to be one of the composer’s finest chamber works.
Tickets: The performances are all free admission with a suggested donation of $20.
Space is limited so please reserve your seat by booking
on the appropriate link above.
The Cal Arte Ensemble presents L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale) featuring a full cast of narrator, actors, dancer and musicians in this major work by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and his literary collaborator Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz based on a Russian folk tale, The Runaway Soldier and the Devil. In a modern twist on convention, the performance of the soldier will be played by a woman, singer-actor Katie Ahman, a two-time National YoungArts Winner.
The musical performance tells the story of a wayward soldier, who while on leave makes a Faustian bargain exchanging her violin (and soul) with the devil for a book that predicts the future. While the book makes the soldier immensely wealthy, it comes at great cost to her relationships with friends and family. In the hopes of making a new life she pursues a chance at winning the hand of a sleeping princess (Dian Meechai). The devil (Khris Sanchez), though, seemingly outplayed for a while eventually thwarts her plans.
The music has the unmistakable rhythmic and tuneful dazzle of Stravinsky featuring a lively concoction of jazzy figures, dance forms and marches for a small group of players. Besides narrator, and actors playing soldier, princess and the devil, the music will be performed by a seven-piece ensemble of musicians conducted by Cal Arte's artistic director Tamami Honma.
As an appetizer to each performance, Ms. Honma will be playing the piano with Cal Arte’s resident violinist and co-director, Julian Brown in Stravinsky's neoclassical Suite Italienne for violin and piano, a work based on the ballet Pulcinella which in turn was based on the delightfully ear catching melodies of 18th century Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi.
3pm Sunday May 13
The performance will include a complimentary wine reception.
Tickets available here
Triton Museum of Art,
1505 Warburton Ave.,
Santa Clara, California
7:30pm Sunday March 11
Tickets available here
Lincoln Glen Church,
2700 Booksin Avenue
San Jose, California
3pm Sunday January 21
Free admission
McAfee Performing Arts and Lecture Center,
20300 Herriman Avenue, Saratoga, CA 95070
3pm Sunday December 10
Free admission/suggested donation $20
Triton Museum of Art,
1505 Warburton Ave.,
Santa Clara, California
8pm Saturday December 9
Tickets $10-22
Cubberly Theater, 4000 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto
7:30pm Saturday October 14
7:30pm Saturday November 4
7:30pm Saturday November 18
Free admission/suggested donation $20
Good Samaritan United Methodist Church,
Cupertino, California
3pm Sunday November 12
Free admission/suggested donation $20
Triton Museum of Art,
1505 Warburton Ave.,
Santa Clara, California
3pm Sunday October 1
3pm Sunday October 15
Free admission/suggested donation $20
Ladera Community Church,
3300 Alpine Road,
Portola Valley, California
Saturday July 29 7:30pm
Saturday August 12 7:30pm
March 19
April 23
May 14
June 18
March 5
April 2
May 7
After performing together in a number of classical groups, Tamami Honma and Julian Brown founded the Cal Arte Ensemble in 2015. Since then they have sought to present many of the great chamber masterpieces in concert halls around the Bay Area. In 2016 & 2017 they presented nearly 100 different programs including the Beethoven Odyssey I series, featuring Tamami Honma's performances of the complete 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and Beethoven Odyssey II, featuring all 10 of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas with Julian Brown and Tamami Honma. Last year they expanded the Cal Arte Ensemble to include a small orchestra and presented Beethoven Odyssey III, featuring all five piano concertos and the violin concerto. Besides these performance, the Cal Arte Ensemble have performed numerous other chamber concerts featuring piano trios, quartets, and quintets by composers from Arensky to Shostakovich. Earlier this year they presented a full performance of Mozart's Requiem bringing together four distinguished vocal soloists, a 30 member choir, and the Cal Arte Chamber Orchestra. The Cal Arte Ensemble were nominated this and last year in San Franciso Classical Voice's Best of the Bay poll.
Cal Arte is the Triton Museum of Art's ensemble-in-residence, putting on its popular Sunday Gallery chamber concerts within the gallery's beautiful spaces. To make this possible, donations at Cal Arte's concerts were used to purchase a piano hosted at Triton. The concerts have attracted large, often capacity audiences, and have helped increase foot traffic into this secluded gem of a museum.
Cal Arte regularly perform at venues across the South Bay including the Triton Museum of Art, St Andrew's Episcopal Church in Saratoga, the Ladera Community Church in Portola Valley, and the United Methodist Church in Cupertino.
Cal Arte's objective is to bring great chamber music to a wider audience especially in areas where people may not have access to a wide diversity of classical music. The Cal Arte Music Foundation is a 501(c)(3) registered charity so please consider making a tax-deductible donation. Your support will go toward continuing our mission in putting on more programs and reaching out to the community.
SF Classical Voice review of the Cal Arte Ensemble
Tamami's world premiere performance of Luis Andrei Cobo's piano concerto chosen as Best New Music Performance in San Francisco Classical Voice's Best of the Bay 2016-17
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