After finishing up work, I zoomed across town to visit with Grandma Read for awhile. When I arrived, she was all dressed up to go out, so it was time to go cruisin! We drove down Geary to the beach, then back up through Golden Gate park, stopping in a few places to take in the sights. All too soon it was time for me to meet up with folks at the Soli Deo Gloria concert, so I dropped Grandma back off at her place and then drove over to St. Mark's Lutheran Church.

St. Marks's is an impressive edifice, located kitty-corner from St. Mary's and St. Ignatius at the hilltop intersection of O'Farrell and Franklin. Rushing in with only a few minutes to spare, I found plenty of room up in  the pews up front. Apparently, folks were worried about getting too close to the performers or something. Try as I did, I couldn't convince TC & Kaoru to leave their seats and come join me in the front row....their loss!

The show was really quite intense. The first half consisted of the Holocaust Cantata, a series of songs written and performed by prisoners in the Nazi Concentration Camps. The songs varied in feeling from joyful optimism (in the face of desperate conditions, of course) to melancholy. Each sung was punctuated by a reading of some kind-- a fragment of a letter or memoir. It was a terribly emotional and quite moving performance.

In contrast to my previous experience seeing Soli Deo Gloria, when the chorus was accompanied by an entire early-music chamber orchestra, the accompaniment for this show was quite spare: just piano and cello. Sitting in the front row on the center aisle, I could have reached out and whacked either musician with my program, but I restrained my mischevious urges. I especially appreciated sitting that close for the chance it gave me to listen to the throaty overtones of the cello, but it didn't hurt that I was also getting blasted by the thirty-odd members of the choir.

The second half of the show consisted of mainly of spirituals drawn from the African-American tradition, accompanied by historical readings from the Civil War era. This set was quite fun, in contrast to the first half of the show, and it also gave Gev Sowa a chance to show off her declamation skills as she read part of the Dred Scott decision. Talk about a tough assignment! Just how do you interpret a legal document for presentation as entertainment?

Unfortunately, I was so wrapped up in the music that I took only a few photos, and being a hack, the few that I took were pretty awful. Consequently, you get only the neon-filtered image of the choir; the rest is up to your imagination (extra credit if you can spot Gev or Sulana in the image!)!

I bid a hasty adieu to the Sowas and other friends, then zoomed home to Oakland so as to meet up with Ting and drive down to Berkeley for the evening's entertainment, a performance by the world-reknowned Burhan Ocal and the Istanbul Oriental Ensemble over in Hertz Hall. Over the course of two hour-long sets, Ocal captivated us with his skill on assorted Turkish percussion and stringed instruments, while his ensemble provided excellent backing. My only complaint about the show is that the sound was poorly mixed (and unnecessarily amplified). With the attentive and respectful audience that had gathered for the show, an acoustic performance would have worked much better, not in the least by completely precluding the possibility of feedback. Of course, Ting has less baggage and thoroughly enjoyed the show!