Shifting Grounds

Name: Shifting Grounds
Start: 2026-06-06T20:00:00-07:00
Location: Old First Presbyterian Church

Schedule

Sat, 06 Jun, 2026 at 08:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Old First Presbyterian Church | San Francisco, CA

Nothing holds still for long.
Forms stretch. Familiar sounds return in unfamiliar ways. What once felt settled begins to move.
On June 6, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra presents an evening shaped by change—where music slips between past and present, structure and freedom, memory and invention. Across seven works by six Bay Area composers, familiar forms are bent, refracted, and reimagined, creating a landscape where the ground never quite settles beneath your feet.
This program moves through contrasting worlds: a moonlit stillness that seems to glow from within, a march driven by turbulence and resolve, echoes of 18th-century forms reshaped through a modern ear, and fragments of a familiar story transformed into something vivid and theatrical. Each piece approaches change differently—but together, they form a single arc of movement, instability, and renewal.
As a collective of composer-performers, SFCCO creates space for living composers to hear their work realized with artistic care—something still rare in orchestral music.
Guided by conductor John Kendall Bailey, the music unfolds in real time, balancing precision and risk as each work finds its shape in performance. This is music that thrives on immediacy—where the energy in the room becomes part of the experience.
Program
John Bilotta – Moonlit Night on the Dnipro
A nocturne inspired by a moonlit landscape so luminous it once seemed to glow from within.
Geoffrey Colton – String Quartet No. 1
A simple idea unfolds through a chain of transformations, with the original theme emerging only at the end.
James W. Cook – String Quartet No. 1, Movement 2
A humorous set of variations on a catchy jingle-like tune.hemselves.
James W. Cook – Absolute Music No. 2
Music with fixed parameters yet infinitely varying form.
Alan Crossman – Earth March
A restless, driving work shaped by the intensity of our global movement forward through uncertainty.
Vance Maverick – Quasi all’antica
An 18th-century overture reimagined—familiar gestures refracted through a modern ear.
Michael Orlinsky – Snow White Ballet (excerpts)
A vivid retelling of a familiar tale, full of character, color, and theatrical energy.