Mike Greensill & Friends

Celebrating Greensill’s 80th birthday and 40th anniversary of performing at Old First Concerts

Mike Greensill, piano

with special guests:

Roberta Donnay, vocals
Kellie Fuller, vocals
Gale Terminello, vocals
Noel Jewkes, saxes
Bill Klingelhoffer, French horn
Ruth Davies, bass
Brad Buethe, guitar

Acclaimed jazz pianist, arranger, and accompanist Mike Greensill will mark two milestones with a special all-star concert at Old First Concerts. The performance celebrates Greensill’s 80th birthday, which falls on September 5, as well as his 40th year performing in the Old First Concerts series.

A beloved figure in the Bay Area jazz community since arriving from England in 1977, Greensill is known for his decades-long collaboration as musical director and accompanist for his late wife, renowned vocalist Wesla Whitfield with whom he recorded 20 albums. Throughout his distinguished career he has played at many of San Francisco’s most heralded clubs, bars and honky tonks, including The Plush Room, Feinstein’s at The Nikko, Stars, The Washbag, Moose’s, and more, and has shared the stage and recording studio with an impressive roster of musicians, many of whom will join him for this special anniversary performance.

Featured vocalists include Roberta Donnay, whose recent CD Blossoming—a tribute to Blossom Dearie—was arranged and performed by Greensill; Kellie Fuller, a frequent collaborator with Greensill in performances at the Blue Note in Napa and Gale Terminello, whose latest recording with Greensill is titled I’m Old Fashioned.

The concert will also reunite Greensill with renowned multi-instrumentalist Noel Jewkes. In 1991, Mike and Noel recorded the critically acclaimed album American Lullaby. Together, they will revisit selections from that celebrated recording. A special highlight of the afternoon will feature French horn virtuoso Bill Klingelhoffer, principal horn with San Francisco Opera. Greensill famously incorporated a quartet of horns led by Klingelhoffer on Wesla Whitfield’s album Livin’ on Love, and Klingelhoffer will perform several selections during the concert.

Anchoring the rhythm section will be two of Greensill’s longtime musical colleagues: acclaimed bassist Ruth Davies and guitarist Brad Buethe, whose artistry and sensitivity have made them valued collaborators over the years.

For jazz enthusiasts and longtime admirers alike, this special event celebrates the beginning of Greensill’s ninth decade and forty years of appearances with Old First Concerts, offering a rare opportunity to experience a gathering of some of the Bay Area’s finest musicians honoring one of its most cherished artists.

Kevin Lee Sun, piano & Friends

Look to This Day

Kevin Lee Sun, piano
Hyo-shin Na, composer
Daniel De Togni, composer & shakuhachi
Wallis Lucas, soprano 

Daniel De Togni Death Poems (2025) for shakuhachi and piano West Coast Premiere
Hyo-shin Na Rain Study (1999) for piano solo
Hyo-shin Na Autumn Study (2023) for piano solo
Daniel De Togni Songs of Becoming (2024) for soprano and piano West Coast Premiere

Kevin Lee Sun is Assistant Professor of Piano at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. In 2021, he was the sole pianist to be named Finalist of that year’s Berlin Prize for Young Artists in Germany. A native of Sacramento and an alumnus of Stanford and SFCM, Sun returns to California for this concert.

Sun’s program Look to This Day presents music by two living composers—Hyo-shin Na and Daniel De Togni—who will be in attendance. The program is centered around the difficulty, ephemerality, and cherishment of life. “Lord let me suffer much / and then die / Let me walk through silence / and leave nothing behind not even fear.” So begins a Polish poem by Anna Kamieńska that inspired Hyo-shin Na to compose her Autumn Study. Na’s other piece on the program, Rain Study, was inspired by a Korean folk song: “The sun that sets will rise again tomorrow. A life that passes will never return.”

Complementing Hyo-shin Na’s music are the West Coast Premieres of two duo works by Daniel De Togni. Death Poems for shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and piano was inspired by Japanese haikus that act as momento mori. The composer himself will perform on the shakuhachi. For the program’s second half, Pittsburgh-based soprano Wallis Lucas joins Sun for Songs of Becoming, a 30-minute song cycle that sets De Togni’s original text and an ancient Sanskrit poem. Partially in response to his experiences and feelings while living in San Francisco, De Togni’s six songs explore themes of personal growth, dreaming, homelessness, depression, and the preciousness of each day.

Noël Wan, harp

Les fleurs du mal

Sergei Rachmaninoff, transcr. Wan Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5
Gabriel Jenks Stalk (2008)
Gabriel Fauré Une chatelaine en sa tour …, Op. 110
Clifton Callender Arches and Strings (2024-26)
Giacomo Puccini, transcr. Katz/Wan Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums)
Per Nørgård Consolazione: Flos ut rosa (2002)
Richard Wagner, transcr. Blassel Isoldes Liebestod 

“Did you spring out of heaven or hell, O Beauty?” (Baudelaire) 

One of classical harp’s most distinctive emerging soloists, Noël Wan brings together her unique artistic voice and intellectual imagination in an all-new solo program, Les fleurs du mal. Pairing pieces by beloved late Romantic composers with exquisite twenty-first century works, she and her harp conjure a tangled, efflorescent world of decadence, perversion, and beauty.

Lauded as “a huge talent with hidden power and amazing maturity” (Bart van Oort) and “not [a harpist] to be slept on” (The Globe and Mail), Taiwanese-Canadian-American Noël Wan 萬依慈 commands a remarkably fresh creative voice, bridging charismatic artistry and intellect in her work as an international prize-winning solo harpist and interdisciplinary scholar.

Unparalleled in her musical versatility and technical virtuosity, Noël has garnered top prizes at major competitions, including the Astral Artists National Competition, USA International Harp Competition, Prix Orford Musique, and World Harp Competition. Her solo work spans classical repertoire to jazz transcriptions to experimental improvisation and has been supported by the Chimei Arts Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and Florida State University.

Recent seasons include debut solo recitals in Chicago, Auckland, Hong Kong, China (Fuzhou, Wuxi), and Atlantic Canada; performances of Pull No More, Liliya Ugay’s award-winning solo electroacoustic harp work, at the Chicago Electro-Acoustic Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, and CAMPGround Festival; and the premiere of The Angel of Death, an electroacoustic harp-sculpture designed by installation artist Tra Bouscaren. In July 2026, she will make her Elora Festival recital debut and give the world premiere of Jovian and Telluric, op. 54, Caroline Lizotte’s new work for flute and electroacoustic harp at One Harp World in Toronto.

An alumna of the University of Illinois (BM, DMA) and the Yale School of Music (MM), Noël is currently the Assistant Professor of Harp and Entrepreneurship at Florida State University and harp faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music.