Article of the Day

San Francisco Chronicle
Joana Carneiro has proven herself at Berkeley podium

By Joshua Kosman

BERKELEY, Calif., April 23, 2014 – For more than 30 years, Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony were practically synonymous, both locally and on the international music scene. So it must have been somewhat daunting to step into the shoes of the man who did more than anyone to shaped the character of this musical organization.

But if Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro has any trepidation about the assignment she took on, she doesn't show it.

And really, why should she? As she prepares to conclude her fifth season as music director, Carneiro, 37, can point with pride to a string of achievements.

She's commissioned and premiered music from some of the Bay Area's leading composers - including Edmund Campion, Gabriela Lena Frank, Paul Dresher and Samuel Adams - and introduced a series of works by such contemporary masters as Esa-Pekka Salonen andKaija Saariaho (both of whom are represented on Thursday's closing concert). She's sustained a high level of musicianship in the standard orchestral repertoire - no mean feat for an orchestra that plays only four programs a season - and forged a close bond not only with the orchestra but also with the community that supports it.

"We have really grown together as an organization," Carneiro says during a recent interview. "It's amazing that we only meet a few times a year, yet we understand each other more and more. The musical values are starting to be very clear.

"And coming from a European tradition, I find the community involvement in the arts in the United States is so different here. Having the close integration with the Berkeley community is just fantastic."

Carneiro's serenity is all the more striking when you consider that the Berkeley post was her first appointment as a music director, after four years as an assistant to Salonen at theLos Angeles Philharmonic.

"I had a very non-realistic idea of what being a music director involves," she confesses with a laugh. "I mean, I'd seen in L.A. a wonderful example of what an orchestra could be in the 21st century, but I had no notion of how I could be a music director myself."

Quick learnerClearly, Carneiro is a quick learner. Within a year, she had managed the tricky balancing act of imposing her own artistic personality on the organization while maintaining a perceptible link to its long and distinctive history. No one could mistake her programming, with its carefully curated balance of new music and standard repertoire, for the more unpredictable choices of her predecessor; yet there's an obvious affinity there as well.

"When I speak about this orchestra elsewhere, it has a legacy and identity that is very clearly defined, and I wanted to make sure that identity was maintained," she says. "I've tried to embrace that tradition and build on it."

Carneiro grew up in Lisbon, the third of nine children in a culturally attuned family. Both her parents were politicians - in different parties, she adds - although they consider that a sidelight to their teaching careers. All of the siblings were taught to play musical instruments, but only Joana, who began as a violist, made a career of it - and even that happened only after she'd turned her back on her medical training.

"I had always been attracted by the idea of conducting. I was 9 when I asked my parents for a baton as a Christmas present," she says. "But it wasn't until I was 18 and in medical school that I had the chance to lead an orchestra for the first time. And right away it was obvious that that was what I had to do."

Since her Berkeley appointment, Carneiro's career has ballooned. In January, she conducted her first concert as music director of the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa in Lisbon, and her guest appearances are multiplying throughout Europe. She's trying to do more work in Europe, she says, to stay close to her husband of two years, a surgeon.

'Very grateful'"I'm very grateful for these new opportunities - it's a privilege - but one thing they don't teach you in conducting school is that when things happen in a positive way they can make your personal life very difficult."

Still, Berkeley stands to figure prominently in her career for the foreseeable future (her contract runs through 2017).

"In Berkeley and the Bay Area, anything is possible, really," she says. "For a young artist to come here and try out a lot of ideas that in other communities might not be possible - that's something I don't take for granted. We really do live in a sort of paradise here."


Berkeley Symphony: 8 p.m. Thursday, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. $15-$74. (510) 841-2800, www.berkeleysymphony.org.

Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicle's music critic. E-mail:[email protected] Twitter: @JoshuaKosman

---

Recent Articles

San Francisco Classical Voice
Nicole Paiement: The Bright New Force of Opera Parallèle

SAN FRANCISCO, April 1, 2014 – At a time when many performing organizations are struggling to stay afloat, and others are closing their doors altogether, there’s a young company in town gaining momentum: Opera Parallèle (or OP). It has found that audiences appreciate the opportunity to see modern works that are rarely performed or brand new, with high musical standards and casts composed of world-class singers. (read full article)

---

San Francisco Chronicle
Salerno-Sonnenberg has added zest, power to NCCO

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2014 – When the New Century Chamber Orchestra signed violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg as its new music director in 2008, no one on either side of the agreement was really sure what they were getting into. Salerno-Sonnenberg's long career as a soloist had established her as one of the more dynamic and unpredictable artists on the concert stage, and she brought a dose of star power to an organization whose stature had never quite measured up to the scale of its artistic achievements. (read full article)

---

San Francisco Classical Voice
The Digital System That Fixes Concert Hall Sound

ROHNERT PARK, Calif., March 9, 2014 – The frisson that greeted soprano Leah Crocetto and tenor David Lomelí when they and their superb pianist Mark Markham took to the stage for their joint recital on Sunday afternoon could be felt throughout Weill Hall. It was, after all, Lomelí’s first regional performance since a stomach ailment forced him to stop singing 18 months ago, and left many questioning whether he would ever sing again. Could he could possibly return in the same glorious form that, in 2006, won him two top prizes in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition and, five years later, swayed stickler critics in his New York City Opera debut as Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore? (read full article)

---

San Francisco Classical Voice
The Digital System That Fixes Concert Hall Sound

BERKELEY, Calif., February 4, 2014 – Does it represent the new paradigm of concert hall sonics, or does it spell the death of “live” acoustic sound as we have grown to know it? The answer, as it turns out, is hardly as black and white as the question implies. But one thing is certain: In less than a decade, Meyer Sound’s Constellation Acoustic System, a flexible, digitally based, acoustic enhancement system that was birthed in Berkeley and Canada, has transformed both our understanding of what is possible within the confines of the concert hall environment, and the nature of those environments themselves. (read full article)

---

Huffington Post
New on CD: As Long As There Are Songs by Stephanie Blythe

BERKELEY, Calif., December 12, 2013 – Live and unplugged is the closest way to describe the sound of the newly released CD, As Long As There Are Songs by Stephanie Blythe and pianist Craig Terry. Recorded in the Pearson Theatre at the Berkeley headquarters of Meyer Sound and using its much-acclaimed digital system, Constellation, the CD provides an "In Person" experience that is virtually miraculous. As a fan of non-amplified solo recitals, the sound environment of this recording is like sitting in down-center Orchestra in a world class concert hall and having eye-to-eye contact with an artist whose big guns vocals penetrate clear to the soul. (read full article)

---

Nob Hill Gazette
Opera Parallèle Fundraiser

SAN FRANCISCO, December 2013 – Opera Parallèle held its first major fundraising event at the General’s Residence at Fort Mason. The evening included an exclusive, private performance of At the Statue of Venus, written by Jake Heggie together with librettist Terrence McNally. More photos online at www.nobhillgazette.com. (read full article)

---

Opera News
Aidan Lang Appointed to Seattle Opera 

SEATTLE, September 2013 – Aidan Lang, general director of New Zealand Opera, has been named Seattle Opera's third general director, effective September 1, 2014. Lang succeeds Speight Jenkins, who has led the company for more than three decades.
Photo by: Rick Dahms

---

Gramophone
More Beethoven from SF, Now on Period Instruments

San Francisco Examiner
An Operatic Honeymoon

SAN FRANCISCO, July 18, 2013 – Among the young artists of the 2013 Merola Opera Program making their San Francisco debut at this week's Schwabacher Summer Concerts is mezzo-soprano Zanda Švede from Latvia. (read full article)

---

East Bay Express
Rhys Chatham: Many Guitarists, One Chord 

SAN FRANCISCO, June 12, 2013 – In November, composer Rhys Chatham will perform "A Secret Rose" at Craneway Pavilion — and he needs one hundred local guitarists to pull it off.

---

BBC Classical Music Magazine

Wall Street Journal
All Strings Attached

By: David Littlejohn

SAN FRANCISCO, January 21, 2013 – The 19-member, San Francisco-based New Century Chamber Orchestra started a tour of nine Southern and Midwestern cities on Friday—its third national tour since 2011. Almost every classical-musical group that can manage it, from large symphonies to small chamber ensembles, tours. But the NCCO is different. (read full article)

---

San Francisco Government Television
Culture Wire: New Century Chamber Orchestra

LA Times
Review: Teatro ZinZanni zips 'Love, Chaos & Dinner' to the table

COSTA MESA, Calif., November 9, 2012 – Federico Fellini and Toulouse-Lautrec meet Garrison Keillor and Wolfgang Puck by way of Bricktop and Bob Fosse in Teatro ZinZanni's "Love, Chaos & Dinner,” now catapulting its way around the collective id of Costa Mesa. This latest high-concept spectacle from the iconoclastic company serves up an immersive, uniquely enchanting theatrical repast.This is only suspiciously evident on arrival at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where the plaza has been overtaken by an antique spiegeltent (mirror tent). After entering this fabulous Belgian artifact, any doubts that we’re in another dimension evaporate. (read full article)
Photo by: Tracy Martin

---

New York Times
Big League Music in the Wine Country 

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. October 2, 2012 — Most of the important music centers at American universities resulted from an academic imperative. A school’s thriving music program could no longer be served by its buildings, so new and expanded facilities simply had to be created to foster further growth. (read full article) 

---