Program
San Francisco Opera Orchestra
Dawn Harms*, conductor
Shinji Eshima**: ButterflyYY (2023)
Pietro Mascagni: Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana (1890)
Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88, B. 163 (1889)
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Allegro con brio
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Adagio
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Allegretto grazioso — Molto vivace
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Allegro ma non troppo
*Member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra First Violin section since 1996; Principal Viola 1995–96
**Member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra Bass section since 1980
The members of our orchestra have personally experienced the power of music to change lives. In the silence of 2020, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit was born with a hunger to help share the magic of music with our community. Since then we have performed for hundreds of hospice patients, senior homes residents, and veterans. Donations are tax-deductible and will go towards our nonprofit to continue these free performances in our community.
About the music
ButterflyYY was created for San Francisco Ballet principal ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan and choreographed by Yuri Possokhov. It quotes the ballet RAkU, gives a nod to my favorite moment in the Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and ends with a quote from He Zhanhao and Chen Gang’s The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, which was adapted from the popular Chinese legend; this last quote was by request of Yuan Yuan Tan.
Dawn Harms' diverse career ranges from being a chamber musician, violin soloist, and concertmaster, to being a music director and conductor. She is a first violinist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and Co-Concertmaster with the Oakland Symphony. She also records regularly at Skywalker Studios for movies and video games. She teaches at Stanford University, and is the conductor of the pre-college string orchestra at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Dawn has just stepped down after 11 seasons as Music Director and conductor of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony.
Harms was chosen as a Fellow at the exclusive American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival, and has gone on to conducted the San Francisco opera orchestra, and regularly conducts as a clinician for high school honor string orchestras.
A strong advocate for music education, Dawn has designed her own family show and has performed it throughout the United States, New Zealand, Japan.
She has performed chamber music with Lynn Harrell, Jake Heggie, Frederica von Stadt, and Nadja Solerno Sonnenberg
Dawn plays on her cousin Tom Waits' CDs "Alice," "Blood Money, and Bad Is Me.
Dawn also has two solo CD's, "The Black Swan" and "The Hot Canary" that can be found on cdbaby.com or www.dawnharms.com.
Shinji Eshima, born in Berkeley, has been a double-bassist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra since 1980. He joined the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra in 1982 and holds the position of Associate Principal Contrabass. His instrument is the 1843 Charles Plumerel bass that is seen in the Edgar Degas 1870 c. oil on canvas painting The Orchestra at the Opera which hangs at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Eshima earned a Bachelor in Music degree from Stanford University and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. His primary teachers were his first bass professor, Charles Siani (Stanford University), and David Walter (The Juilliard School). As a composer, he studied with Heinrich Taube.
His career highlights as a composer include Yuri Possokhov’s RAkU, which San Francisco Ballet commissioned in 2011. The score was recorded by the SF Ballet Orchestra and released the following year. Swimmer, which was also commissioned by SF Ballet, was his second ballet collaboration with Possokhov. A vinyl recording of that score was released in 2023. In 2019 Carolina Ballet set his composition Bariolage (for double-bass and cello), which was choreographed by Robert Weiss and Zalman Raffael. This led to a commission by that company for a full-length Snow White ballet which premiered in 2022. His next full-length ballet for Carolina Ballet, Jekyll and Hyde, premieres in October 2024. His most recent major commission as an opera composer is Zheng, about the late mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao. It had a successful workshop with Opera San José in 2023 and included Frederica von Stade as herself, in the role inspired by her deep friendship with Zheng.
He has served on faculty at San Francisco State University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
He was the recipient of the Stanford Humanities Award and was honored by the city of Berkeley with a declaration on December 6, 2011, "Shinji Eshima Day," for his contributions to the arts.