Old First Concerts Festival Gala 2026

Just like last year, we will have three sets of amazing music, two intermissions filled with food and beverages, and admission is free! This year, we are excited to welcome the 2025 Opera America Composer of the Year Jake Heggie, who debuted his work at Old First Concerts nearly 30 years ago! The program also includes performances by pianists Przemek Winnicki, Thomas Schultz, Robert Schwartz, Jeffrey LaDeur, Keisuke Nakagoshi, Sarah Cahill, and Monica Chew, as well as chamber ensembles Sixth Station Trio, Broderick Ensemble, Strobe, and a special performance by composer Sahba Aminikia, who has had numerous works of his premiered on our series over the years.

Admission to this event is FREE! However, if you would like to sponsor the event, please make a donation in any amount. All donations made before November 1 will be included in our program acknowledgements! Donations help keep Old First Concerts going!

Works to be performed include:

Hyo-shin Na’s Autumn Study (2023) and an excerpt from Ninety Days Study (2026, work-in-progress), performed by pianist Thomas Schultz

Frédéric Chopin’s Impromptu in A-flat major, Op. 29 & Ballade in G minor, Op. 23, performed by pianist Robert Schwartz

Jake Heggie’s Songs & Sonnets to Ophelia, performed by Jake Heggie, piano and Morgan Wolfe, soprano

Samuel Adams’ Études (2023) performed by pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi

Robert Helps’ 3 Hommages and Monica Chew’s Cleave performed by pianist Monica Chew

Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Trio de la Chambre du Roi, LWV 35 and excerpts from W. A. Mozart’s Divertimento performed by members of the oboe quartet Strobe (Laura Griffiths, Elizabeth Prior & Krisanthy Desby)

Composer Sahba Aminikia performs an improvisation on the piano.

Lieder Alive! presents

Olivier Zerouali, baritone
Ji Youn Lee, piano

A program of Schubert, Strauss, and Fauré

Olivier Zerouali, a current Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera, where he was featured soloist on their recent chamber music recital. He will also make his debut with LIEDER ALIVE! Zerouali completed his undergraduate studies at SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music, is currently completing his master’s degree at Yale University, and has received training with the Merola Opera Program, Glimmerglass Festival, Young Artists Vocal Academy of Houston Grand Opera, Highlands Opera Studio, and Berlin Opera Academy.

First-year Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera, Ji Youn Lee, also making her debut with LIEDER ALIVE!, is an accomplished pianist who recently completed her Master of Music degree in Collaborative Piano at The Juilliard School. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory (NEC), graduating with honors in 2020. While at NEC, she was awarded first place in the Concerto Competition and performed with the New England Conservatory Symphony at Jordan Hall.

Praised by Bachtrack for his “warm, rounded baritone voice” and by San Francisco Classical Voice for his “scene-stealing charisma,” Olivier Zerouali is emerging as a compelling performer, earning recognition for his artistry across both traditional and contemporary repertoire. In the 2026–27 season, Zerouali will continue as a member of the Adler Fellowship at San Francisco Opera. During the season, he will perform the roles of Morton in Mary, Queen of Scots and Innkeeper in Manon, while also covering the role of Pietro in Simon Boccanegra.

During the 2025–26 season, his first as an Adler Fellow, Zerouali made both his house and role debut as the 2nd Trojan Man in Idomeneo. He also covered the role of Schaunard in La bohème and performed Marullo in Rigoletto, the Motorcycle Cop in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, and Schaunard in San Francisco Opera’s touring production of Bohème Out of the Box. Additionally, he appeared as Fiorello and covered the title role of Figaro in The Barber of Seville.

In 2024, Zerouali joined the renowned Merola Opera Program, where he appeared as a featured soloist in the recital The Song as Drama, sang Silvio in the passionate love duet from Pagliacci, covered Masetto in Don Giovanni, and performed as Malatesta in a scene from Don Pasquale in the Merola Grand Finale. The previous summer, he made his Glimmerglass Festival debut as the spirited Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette, earning recognition for his vibrant artistry.

On the operatic stage, Zerouali has performed a diverse repertoire of roles, including Slook in Rossini’s Il cambiale di matrimonio and Robert in Iolanta with Yale Opera Theatre, as well as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Pandolfe in Cendrillon, Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, and Zaretsky/Captain in Eugene Onegin. A passionate advocate for new music, he has also collaborated with Highlands Opera Studio on world-premiere workshops of Olivia Shortt’s The Museum of the Lost and Found and Ashley Au’s Inertia.

An accomplished recital artist, Zerouali has appeared in a wide range of recital and chamber music performances. His credits include Rising Stars of Opera, a recital featuring celebrated operatic arias with full orchestral accompaniment by the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra; Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch, a collection of 46 German songs set to texts adapted from the poetry of Paul Heyse; Still Life, After Life chamber music performances with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra; Mercury Soul at the Asian Art Museum; and the Schwabacher Debut Recital. He will also perform in the Autumn Opening Concert of the Fifteenth Annual Liederabend Series during the 2026–27 season.

Gaining recognition from prominent organizations, Zerouali was named the San Francisco District Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition in 2026. In 2025, he won the Schwabacher Recital Competition through the Merola Opera Program. Zerouali earned a Bachelor of Music from Purchase College and a Master of Music from Yale University. His training includes participation in Merola Opera Program, Glimmerglass Festival, Houston Grand Opera’s Young Artists Vocal Academy, Highlands Opera Studio, and Berlin Opera Academy.

Adler Fellow Ji Youn Lee is an accomplished pianist who recently completed her Master’s of Music in Collaborative Piano at The Juilliard School. She earned a Bachelor’s of Music in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory (NEC), graduating with honors in 2020. While at NEC, she was awarded first place in the Concerto Competition and performed with the New England Conservatory Symphony at Jordan Hall. She was on the San Francisco Opera music staff for Simon Boccanegra, Elektra, La bohème, Dead Man Walking and Bohème Out of the Box. Lee has previously collaborated with the Brockton Symphony, the Broad Street Orchestra and the Hawaii Symphony. Other notable achievements include prizes from the Duo Competition at the Music Academy of the West,the Ke’alohi International Piano Competition and the Jacob Flier International Piano Competition.

Ensemble for These Times

Exile | Banishment | Home

Nanette McGuinness, soprano
Megan Chartier, cello
Margaret Halbig, piano

joined by Grace Wahlen, conductor
Carina Kahane, soprano
Melinda Martinez Becker, mezzo-soprano
Alex Malinas, narrator
Aria Shum, violin
Taylor Robinson, flute/piccolo
Zoe King, clarinet
Eddie Virtgaym, percussion

This concert is co-presented by KlezCalifornia

Dmitri Shostakovich From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79 (selections)
Alex Malinas Skazka World Premiere
Andrea Casarrubios Armadura
David Garner Unter dayne vayse Stern (from Vilna Poems)
Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby Stories of My Mother
Mary Bianco new work for cello and piano World Premiere

Please join us for a pre-concert talk with composers Alex Malinas and Mary Bianco at 3:30

Award-winning new music group E4TT explores this duality musically with Shostakovich’s From Jewish Folk Poetry, (selections, sung in the poetry’s original language of Yiddish),  the World Premiere Skazka (a multimedia work of twisted Russian folktales reinterpreted and narrated in Russian) by Alexander Malinas, Armadura by Andrea Casarrubios (inspired by writings of Frida Kahlo), Stories of My Mother (a narrative of a woman’s escape to freedom) by  Stella G. Gitelman Willoughby, Unter dayne vayse Stern by David Garner to poetry by Avrom Sutskever, and a World Premiere for cello and piano by Mary Bianco.

Winners of The American Prize for Chamber Music Performance, Ensemble for These Times focuses on underrepresented and unheard musical voices, particularly women composers. The group has performed internationally at the Krakow Culture Festival (2016 and 2022), Conservatorio Teresa Berganza in Madrid (2017), was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest (2014) and made its international debut in Berlin (2012). E4TT has released five award-winning albums, The Guernica Project, Surviving: Women’s Words, Once/Memory/Night: Paul Celan, and The Hungarians: from Rozsa to Justus, and Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood, with a sixth album, El Tiempo Latine, music by today’s Latine composers, just out on Aerocade Music in May 2026, and produces a weekly podcast of conversations with women and BIPOC creatives, “For Good Measure.”

Lands End

Claudio Sanna, piano

This concert is co-presented with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and the Francesco Venezze Conservatory of Music in Rovigo

all works by Luciano Chessa
Lands End
Louganis (with video by Terry Berlier)
Wordsworth’s Daffodils
Inkless Imagination III – For Fedele Azari

The imaginary of finis terrae is an archetype found in many cultures. It evokes a poetic triad of liminal spaces, oscillating between the realms of physics and metaphysics, alchemy and anarchy. This is the place where the immanent structure of the world, the physis of the landscape, encounters the vastness of the sea. This encounter evokes something beyond our comprehension. It is the place where the hidden comes to light and where the fixed and stable is transformed into fluid and immense, echoing the alchemist’s goal of uniting opposites – matter and spirit, finite and infinite – into a higher, harmonious whole. And at the edge, the order of things is lost and carried by the melodies of Lands End, revealing a new anarchy.

Praised by legendary pianist Lazar Berman for his “natural musical talent, great virtuosity, distinctive artistic personality, and genuine sense of artistry,” Italian pianist Claudio Sanna has developed an international career distinguished by his commitment to contemporary music, chamber music, and innovative artistic projects. For this concert he performs works from his recent Col Legno recording of solo piano music by Luciano Chessa, well-known to Bay Area audiences. (In fact, Chessa premiered his work Louganis on our series in 2007.)

About the recording ‘Lands End’:

A rugged, windy trail winds through redwood groves and over foreboding cliffs. Occasionally you’ll find small shelters (dens?) made of Pacific madrone branches, so polished they gleam like bones in the sun. But in a climactic moment, the land suddenly ends, and then… only the sea: a vast green horizon full of imponderable possibilities. Along the way you can experience the incandescence of a green rock, reflect on the failures and successes of falling heroes, the evolution of mores, the reality of psychedelic flashbacks, the ’Resistenza’, King Herod’s rage, and finally, how grounding it is to build art structures and then watch them gently collapse. Masterfully interpreted by Claudio Sanna, this album is dedicated to the optimism of the aforementioned walk: its unmistakable energy. A sense of frontier pervades these pages, many of which were created on the Pacific.

Lands End was composed at the Caldwell-Blaney residence in San Francisco and is dedicated to Ugo Rondinone; Wordsworth’s Daffodils was commissioned by New Keys; Inkless Imagination no. III, for Fedele Azari, was written as part of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Claudio Sanna has collaborated with musicians from the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Teatro alla Scala, and Arena di Verona, performing at prestigious venues including the Vatican Museums, Vienna’s Ehrbar Saal, and numerous international festivals.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Sanna has premiered numerous works and maintains close artistic collaborations with composers. Among his most significant performances is the world premiere of Luciano Chessa’s Casinópera at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. His extensive discography includes recordings for Hat Hut Records, Stradivarius, and col legno. His most recent album, Lands End, released by col legno, is entirely dedicated to the piano music of Luciano Chessa.

Sanna graduated in Piano from the Conservatory of Sassari and in Composition from the Conservatory of Brescia, under the guidance of composer Paolo Ugoletti. He pursued advanced studies with Andrea Lucchesini, Pietro De Maria, and Enrico Stellini, as well as chamber music studies with Carlo Fabiano at the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Luciano Chessa is an interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of media art, audiovisual performance, music and history. He is known for major installations such as A Heavenly Act and Piombo and frequently collaborates with other esteemed artists and institutions. In particular, Chessa has received numerous awards and has participated in high-profile exhibitions and festivals around the world. His significant contributions to the arts also include scholarly research on 20th-century Italian art, particularly Luigi Russolo and the Futurist movement, underscoring his multifaceted role in both the creative and academic spheres. In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times as one of the best art events of the year; Chessa has presented this project throughout the U.S. and internationally at sold-out venues including Rockefeller Center in New York, REDCAT in Los Angeles, New World Center in Miami, Radial System / Maerzmusik-Berliner Festspiele, ArtScience Museum in Singapore, and Lisbon’s Municipal Theater. He has collaborated on this project with Joan La Barbara, Mike Patton, Lee Ranaldo, Ellen Fullman, Blixa Bargeld, Pauline Oliveros, and others. Between September 2023 and October 2024, Chessa was artist in residence at the Direction des Affairs Culturelles in Monaco to create Monaco Mobile, a new installation for artmonte-carlo (July 2024) and Monaco Veloce, a new performance produced by the Théâtre Princesse Grace in collaboration with the Automobile Club de Monaco, the Pavillion Bosio and the Médiathèque de Monaco (September 2024). In Il Corriere della Sera, Francesca Pini praised Monaco Mobile as an “installation that acts as a kind of mantra”, with its “intricate design of vibrating cables and iridescent lights”.

Lux Aeterna: Carols by Candlelight
Young Women’s Chorus of San Francisco

Matthew Otto, Artistic & Executive Director
Molly Langr, harp

The Young Women’s Chorus of San Francisco, joined by Molly Langr on harp, performs the California premieres of Lux Aeterna by Oliva Sparkhall (UK) and Ushās – Goddess of Dawn and Priestess by Shruthi Rajasekar (USA). The program also features beloved holiday favorites and festive works for choir and harp celebrating the themes of light, dawn, and hope, including the timeless Silent Night.

Carols and Candlelight

Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Silicon Valley

Kent Jue, Artistic & Executive Director

GRAMMY Award-winning Ragazzi Boys Chorus, Silicon Valley, provides outstanding musical education and performance opportunities for boys and young men ages 5 to 18. The largest boys’ chorus in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ragazzi serves more than 200 choristers in six tiered levels. Under the leadership of Artistic and Executive Director Kent Jue, Ragazzi shapes the lives of boys from diverse backgrounds, developing tenacious and confident young musicians who pursue choral arts of the highest caliber together.

Please note: there is a $3 per ticket discount for advance on-line orders!

Rejoice and Be Merry
Aeternum

California’s Professional Vocal Ensemble
Bailey Cooke, conductor

Described by San Francisco Classical Voice as “The Bay Area’s latest and greatest master chorus”, Aeternum is a professional vocal ensemble of the top choral singers from across the US and the UK. Experience Christmas favorites from the English choral tradition alongside wintery works and dazzling arrangements of beloved carols from the renaissance to today!

Program:

Adrian Peacock Venite, Gaudete!
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Magnificat primi toni
Robert Parsons Ave Maria
Cecilia McDowall Now we may singen
Eric Whitacre Lux Aurumque
Anton Bruckner Virga Jesse
Francis Pott Balulalow
Francis Poulenc Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël
Edward Naylor Vox dicentis
Peter Warlock Bethlehem Down
Bob Chilcott The Shepherd’s Carol
Hans Leo Hassler Verbum caro factum est
Peter Warlock Benedicamus Domino
Ralph Vaughan Williams Wassail song
Christopher Robinson Rejoice and Be Merry
Traditional, arr. Adam Brett Ward Joy to the World

KITKA
Wintersongs: Comfort & Joy

Shira Cion, Executive Artistic Director
Kelly Atkins, Music Director
Stacey Barnett, Penina Biddle-Gottesman, Leslie Bonnett, Barbara Byers, Alex Ianchenko, Erin Lashnits Herman, Elizabeth Setzer, Talia Young-Skeen, and Abi Tenenbaum

Acclaimed women’s vocal ensemble Kitka returns to Old First Concerts for its annual Wintersongs concerts. This year’s program is a tribute to the power of music to bring comfort and joy during the darkest days of the year. Showcasing seasonal music from a wide variety of Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions, the repertoire ranges from rousing Slavic folk carols to lush meditative Eastern Orthodox sacred choral works; from Baltic pagan incantations for the return of the Sun Goddess to Caucasus Georgian alilos (hallelujahs); from Yiddish songs to secular Sufi odes; and much more.

“A Kitka concert is a sacred exchange between singer and listener, between the Old World and the New, between spirit and body, the past and present,” says Kitka’s Music Director Kelly Atkins. “We feel the urgency for human connection and healing, and the collection of songs we’ve chosen for this year’s program is designed to answer this call. Audiences will hear timeless favorites from years past as well as many new songs, including one we learned on our most recent tour to the Republic of Georgia from Aznash Lamaan, a group of women from the Kist minority community of Sufis who reside in the region bordering Chechnya.”

Kitka’s Wintersongs concert series is supported, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alameda County Arts Commission. For more information visit kitka.org.

Inspired by traditional songs and vocal techniques from Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Kitka has earned international recognition for its distinctive sound, exploring a vast palette of ancient yet contemporary sounding vocal effects. Kitka’s commitment to presenting traditional song as a living and evolving expressive art form has led to adventurous collaborations with some of the world’s most exciting indigenous musicians and contemporary composers ranging from Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares to Meredith Monk. Currently celebrating its 46th season, Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who shared a passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, and resonant strength of traditional Eastern European women’s vocal music. Since its informal beginnings, the group has evolved into an award-winning touring ensemble known for its artistry, versatility and mastery of the demanding techniques of regional vocal styling, as well as for its innovative explorations in new music for women’s voices. The ensemble’s wide-ranging performance, teaching and recording activities have exposed millions to the haunting beauty of their unique repertoire.

 We recognize the challenges that we still face: the slow return of live audiences after the pandemic, a shift in the funding landscape by major Foundations, and the economic uncertainties brought about by inflation, conflict and climate change. When you give to Old First Concerts, you invest in the local arts community and stand with us as we overcome these challenges together! 

 Your donation to Old First Concerts:  

• Helps keep our prices incredibly affordable – you might have to pay twice as much to hear the same artists at another venue. We also provide $5 tickets for low-income seniors and students to nearly every concert. 
• Supports local musicians and keeps them in our community. Our series has hosted many first post-pandemic performances. 
• Ensures a safe space for music by women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) composers. Performers of this music seek out Old First Concerts as the venue of choice for this programming.   

 This year, we hope you would consider of gift of $125 or another amount that feels right to you. We deeply appreciate all gifts and acknowledge them in our printed programs and on our website.

If you would prefer to mail a check, please send it to:
Old First Concerts
1751 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94109

Old First Concerts is a registered 501(c)3 Charitable Organization (Tax ID#:94-2898233).