Friday Night Soirées presents Matt Small's Chamber Ensemble, DJ Susan B Anarchy, City Opera SF, and closing reception for Artist-in-Residence Alexandra Blum

Matt Small’s Chamber Ensemble
7:00–8:00 p.m. An evening of original music drawing influence from the great works of French Impressionist music
City Opera SF presents "Soirée"
6:30–6:55 and 7:45–8:15 p.m Soprano duo Jennifer Muhawi and Sibel Demirmen will perform all-French selections
DJ Susan B. Anarchy
6:00–8:30 p.m. French pop confections from the ’60s
Closing reception for Alexandra Blum
6:00–8:30 p.m. Celebrate the August Artist-in-Residence in the Artist Studio
Hands-on art making for everyone, with Mademoiselle Kim
6:00–8:30 p.m. Design a pair of mod sunglasses

Closing reception for Alexandra Blum
6:00–8:45 p.m.
Artist Studio/Kimball Gallery
Join us for this closing reception of Alexandra Blum’s installation Silhouettes and Conversations: Articulating a Communal Vision. Refreshments available while they last.

Hands-on art making for everyone
6:00–8:30 p.m.
Wilsey Court
It's a mod revival with Mademoiselle Kim. Design your own mod sunglasses and dance to French ’60s pop. 

DJ Susan B. Anarchy
6:00–8:30 p.m. (with breaks at 6:30 and 7:45 for performances by City Opera SF)
Wilsey Court
French pop confections from the ’60s including, but not limited to, ye-ye covers of American hits and Serge Gainsbourg favorites. Think mini-skirts, mopeds, and free love finished off with Spector-style production, kitsch and camp.

City Opera SF presents "Soirée" with sopranos Jennifer Muhawi and Sibel Demirmen
6:30–6:55 and 7:45–8:15 p.m
Wilsey Court
Soirée's soprano duo will perform all French selections of opera and longtime classics including the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman, "La Vie en Rose," made famous by Edith Piaf, "Que rest-il de nos amours?" (“I wish you love”), by Charles Trenet, the Flower duet from Lakmé, and the Habanera from Carmen. Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as a "superb singer" with a “crystalline voice,” Sibel Demirmen is a versatile soprano praised for her charming stage presence and colorful coloratura sound. Jennifer Muhawi has been featured with opera companies around the Bay Area, while also recording and performing a wide range of classic, jazz and international pop music. Bringing local artists together, City Opera SF focuses on romantic, pop-opera repertoire for San Francisco Bay Area events.

Live music by Matt Small’s Chamber Ensemble
7:00–8:00 p.m.
Koret Auditorium
In celebration of the special exhibition Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, San Francisco bassist and composer Matt Small presents an evening of original music. The compositions in this program draw influence from the great works of French Impressionist music and intermingle those influences with modern musical aesthetics. The lush harmonies, innovative orchestrations, and novel compositional concepts pioneered by such Impressionist-era composers as Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel significantly affected the direction of music over the next 100 years. In this concert, Small discusses his music’s Impressionist inspirations, giving the audience a sense of how harmony and form have evolved since the time of the Impressionist movement, and how they inform his modern compositional perspective. In both art and music, Impressionism was the avant-garde movement of its day, and this performance by Matt Small’s Chamber Ensemble embodies that spirit as it performs a repertoire of multi-genre contemporary music.

This ensemble has been performing together since 2002, making its Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. Matt Small has been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gifted San Francisco bassist and composer whose alluringly original music draws on a rich range of classical, jazz, and indigenous music.” He has performed at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Center, at Carnegie Hall with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, and at other major venues throughout the Bay Area and on the East Coast. Small also has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and on Bay Area radio stations KALW, KPFA, and KQED, and has received commissions and funding awards from such organizations as American Composers Forum, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Please join us for this special concert, showcasing the connections between the artistic advancements of the Impressionist period and the vibrant frontiers of new music happening right here in San Francisco.