The San Francisco Symphony kicked off its re-opening gala concert on Friday night with an unusual piece of music: Slonimsky’s Earbox, composed in 1995 by Bay Area composer John Adams. In new music director and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen’s capable hands, the whimsical work kept listeners on edge through each dynamic twist, with spiraling melodies that unfurled like fern fronds, blossoming percussive chimes and strings swaying like reeds.
The vertigo-inducing composition was off-kilter in the best way: it reflected the past year and a half of the world’s own dynamic twists, and set the tone for an evening, and a season, that expands the orchestra’s explorations of modern and contemporary work.
The centerpiece of the program, which the orchestra performs again at Davies Symphony Hall tonight, Oct. 2, was jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter’s Gaia (composed in 2013), starring powerhouse bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding. Taking the stage in a casual, all-white ensemble, spalding was joined by Ravi Coltrane on saxophone, NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and pianist Leo Genovese. Calling Wayne Shorter her “mystic,” spalding spoke about the earth mother reverence at the core of the piece. “It’s an invitation to travel with her through the veins and hair and passageways, and remember our infinite connection to Gaia,” she told the audience.
spalding intoned Gaia with an explosive energy and vocal range radiating from the depths of her diaphragm. The jazz trio’s steady rhythm, and punches of drama from the orchestra, conveyed a visceral feeling of nature’s constant cycle of creation and destruction.
Featuring spalding so prominently in the concert hinted at the role of the San Francisco Symphony’s eight collaborative partners, an interdisciplinary cohort of artists that Salonen appointed when he joined the Symphony in 2020, and the orchestra’s deepening relationship with genres and cultures that lie beyond the typical Western classical repertoire.
