New Century Chamber Orchestra presents Holiday Lights featuring David Krakauer and the San Francisco Girls Chorus
2015-12-19
Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA
8:00 PM, Saturday, December 19, 2015
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[8:07 PM lights down]
[9:20 PM lights down, NCCO with DK]
Suffered a bit of parking trauma on my initial pass through the West Oakland BART parking lot circus, but hit the jackpot on my second try, following arrival of an eastbound train that disembarked a ton of homebound shoppers. Whew! Sometimes the trick is to be persistent! Watch an SF train pull up as I exited the car but refrained from running: past experience suggests that the harder I hustle, the more unforseen obstacles will arise! Sauntered leisurely up the stairs and arrived at the platform to note the headlights of the next train. Perfect! No waiting. My joy was short-lived when I realized that the inbound train was packed to the gills – so full, in fact, that I had to wait for non-disembarking passengers to off board and let out those who actually wanted off. So I inhaled, the squeezed into a small space by the door. Good enough!
Arrived in SF to find Civic Center deserted except for the homeless, and so put up my guard and hustled over to Beer Hall for a pre show nip: a tulip of Prairie Artisan Ales: Christmas BOMB! 2015 Imperial Stout. My first impression: Delicious caramel malty goodness! Very smooth mouth feel, but with slight carbonated tingle on the palate. Aftertaste is not particularly distinguished, but the good news is that it's not bad in any way either. Yum! So then the question comes up: another? Or maybe something completely different? Safest choice is to sit pat…so I do (but only after researching the other tap choices, and weighing my interest in more tastes against the dwindling free time)!
Enjoyed a crisp walk to Herbst, then entered to take my seat. Awful nice of the NCCO folks to reseat me in such good location: 3rd row center – can't complain about that!
The first set is fine – it fulfills my obligatory quota of Holiday Music with an overdose of cherubic caroling from the SFGC. Sometime a pinch is all you need! The tunes with NCCO are a bit less sticky sweet – not to cast any sort of aspersion against the orchestra – somehow the strings add a bit of leavening substance to balance against the choir. Must have something to do with the lower register instruments. Bass is the place!
The choir plays cute for the encore and offers a non-standard from PDQ Bach, Good King Kong. Yuckin' it up! That's my kind of holiday music!
The second set is great fun – David Krakauer is a genius! – but clocking in a barely a half hour, I feel let down. It seems odd that they didn't come up with a couple more pieces to extend the show a little.
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!