San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra gave American violinist Simone Porter free rein to curate and conduct a unique program.
“It really started with some wish list pieces I wanted to try and perform, and guest leading of a string orchestra is not something that I get to do very often. I presented my ideas and it actually worked with their seasonal theme,” says Porter, 29, a Seattle-raised soloist who made her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13.
This weekend in performances with NCCO and students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Porter heads up “Enlighten Me,” a concert of seven pieces spanning the 12th to 21st centuries that depict different types of light: light from nature, light that inspires or clarifies and light that generates joy.
NCCO, a unique ensemble founded in 1992 that has no permanent conductor, has been working with SFCM since 2024 in a partnership that SFCM Music Director Edwin Outwater calls “a great collaboration for many reasons, including that orchestral playing without a conductor will be a new experience for many of our students.”
Simone Porter. (Elisha Knight via Bay City News)
Outwater adds, “They’re often taught to ‘watch the conductor’ or ‘follow the conductor’ above all, but the reality is different. In the best orchestras, listening and feeling the music together as an ensemble comes first. Playing with the New Century Chamber Orchestra will teach them to ‘tune in’ to their colleagues onstage, which is just as, if not more, important than following the conductor.”
Describing Porter, Outwater adds, “To have the opportunity to collaborate with one of the most exciting soloists on the scene is an opportunity we’re excited to provide here at SFCM.”
Porter adores the solo violin version of Andrew Norman’s “Sabina,” a composition about watching the sun rise on a visit to 2006 to the ancient church of Santa Sabina in Rome. A string orchestra arrangement for 23 musicians, a new experience for Porter, opens the concert.
“I liked this idea of a concert that brings light and looks at different musical depictions of light, so Andrew Norman’s ‘Sabina’ is literally about a sunrise,” she says of the pensive and high-energy piece. “It’s something I’ve studied a lot, it’s so texturally, sonically interesting, and I wanted to hear it in this enlarged form.”
Also on the program is Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’ 1945 “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9,” a prelude and fugue from a nine-piece series inspired by Bach that blends Baroque and folk music; it’s followed by Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major, sparking, what Porter says, is a dialogue between the composers.
Porter says, “The way that Villa-Lobos and Bach shed light on one another, and hopefully, even though Villa-Lobos was referencing Bach, hearing Bach right after Villa-Lobos will also unlock a new understanding of that architecture.”
Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th century visionary German abbess and polymath, composed “O virtus sapientiae” (“Oh Devine Wisdom”) as a chant; the version in “Enlighten Me” is scored for string orchestra, transforming what was essentially one vocal line into many voices expressing an evocative gaze upward into the heavens.
“It really is just a drone and a single vocal line, so that is what we’ll be doing: the orchestra will be the drone and I will be the single vocal line,” Porter says, noting that the arrangement allows room for improvisation and slightly different harmonics.
New Century Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble founded in 1992 which often plays without a conductor, is collaborating with violinist Simone Porter in Bay Area concerts this weekend. (Scott Chernis via Bay City News)
New Century musicians suggested “Cathedral of Light,” a string quartet by Hong Kong-raised Indian composer Juhi Bansal commissioned during the pandemic for the Uncertainty of Fate Festival presented by the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Porter says, “There are elements of the ‘Sabina’ and there are symmetries I like. It’s interesting that the two 21st century composers depict light using similar extended techniques. It does feel like they are capturing with sound what it’s like when light is transmitted onto an instrument.”
Porter characterizes Heinrich Biber’s 10-minute, 1673 opus “Battalia à 10”— which includes foot stomping, a passage evocative of a rowdy pub, a march, an aria and more — as an “illumination of understanding.”
“The thing I wanted to express and explore with this piece is how light clarifies, and Biber’s work was a response to witnessing violence and war. He wrote this to explain it and how to deal with it,” she says. “The different movements alternate between street music and programmatic music — it’s a wild piece — there’s left-hand pizzicato, some crazy violin virtuosity, and we’re going to shake the building down with foot stomping.”
Mozart’s buoyant Divertimento in F major closes the program. Porter says, “I wanted to finish with this piece because we’ve been looking at all of these different reflections of light, and for this one there’s no filter. The emotions this divertimento calls to mind are bright, saturated and glittery, and it invites everyone to be part of its brilliance and radiance.”
New Century Chamber Orchestra’s “Enlighten Me” is at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 in Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University, 327 Lasuen St., Stanford; and at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 in Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak St., San Francisco. Tickets are $16-$80 at ncco.org.
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