Feel the energy as the great San Francisco Symphony welcomes its music director Esa-Pekka Salonen with its post-pandemic 110^th season Reopening Night, filled with jazz and dance from special guests.

To kick of the evening, ‘Slonimsky’s Earbox’ is a virtuosic piece composed in 1995 by Bay Area hero John Adams. The orchestra played the cascading phrases of minimalist patterns with remarkable precision and energy.

Alonzo King’s choreography for the four movements of Alberto Ginastera’s Ballet Suite ‘Estancia’ is a joyride, from the breathless opening of ‘Los trabajadores’ to the weaving performance of the ‘Danza del trigo’ and ‘Los peones de hacienda’. The nine dancers of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet excelled themselves at athletic jumps and limber, airy movements within the explosive last dance of the suite, the ‘Malambo’.

‘Gaia’, a 27-minute opus by the jazz legend Wayne Shorter forms the centerpiece of the evening and features the extraordinary bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding. spalding is joined by Ravi Coltrane on saxophone, NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and pianist Leo Genovese. spalding introduces the piece as "an invitation to travel” with mother earth “through the veins and hair and passageways”, as the music slides forwards and backwards between the orchestra and the jazz quartet. This evening evolves into a night of enchantment with ‘Noche de incantamiento’ by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas who wrote a percussion extravaganza with his music to the film ‘La noche de los Mayas’ in 1939.

John Adams
Slonimsky’s Earbox

Alberto Ginastera
Four Dances from Estancia, Op. 8a

Wayne Shorter
Gaia

Silvestre Revueltas
La noche de los Mayas
IV. "Noche de encantamiento"

San Francisco Symphony
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

Alonzo King LINES Ballet

esperanza spalding, vocals & bass
Ravi Coltrane, saxophone
Terri Lyne Carrington, drums
Leo Genovese, piano