VFW Post 2323, 17522 Chatsworth Street, Granada Hills
The "Screaming Clams" return to entertain you with classic rock 'n roll of the '60s and '70s - Live and In-Person, Indoors at this location.
Street parking and a lot behind the Post (accessed from Encino Avenue), are available. Entrance is via the front and back doors. Masks are required in the bar and restrooms.
Food for purchase will not be available; please feel free to bring your own (however please no coolers).
The band is looking forward to seeing you!
Free Admission/Two Drink Minimum
(soft drinks, juice, bottled water included)
The Orchestra is happy to announce our first concert of the 2021-2022 season, taking place on Sunday, September 26, 3:00 pm, at the Canoga Park Presbyterian Church. The concert will feature the West Valley Chamber Orchestra and the talented young piano students of Joanna Ezrin and Nara Petrosyan. All the performers are very excited to be performing again after being on hold due to Covid-19.
We look forward to seeing you at the concert, where applicable covid protocols will be observed!
(Click on the attached flyer for further information).
Donations, payable at the door, will be appreciated!
Please join us for the YouTube premiere of Maestro Domine's "Piano Sonata #13 in D-flat major," the last of the pandemic period performances of piano pieces produced in 2020-2021. The sonata is given the descriptive subtitle "Serenata Despedida" because the main melodic motive recalls a melancholy Spanish song that recounts the story of a romance long gone but not forgotten and never consummated with a final farewell. The premiere is scheduled for Sunday August 1, 2021 at 12:00 noon.
https://youtu.be/52EH8SQRXtQ
Live Jazz is back! Please join the Symphomaniax Jazz Ensemble (formerly the San Fernando Valley Symphony Jazz Ensemble) for Cabaret Night! The event will be held outdoors at the Shepher Community Center of the Israeli-American Council on Wednesday evening June 16, 2021. Entry and seating begin at 7:30pm; music starts at 8:00pm. Admission $10, make reservations at http://iac360.org/EVENT/JAZZ. See you there!
Please join us starting Friday, May 28 at noon (Pacific Time US) for the premier performance of three new works, presented on YouTube. Below are the links that will premier on May 28 at the times shown:
The “Romance for Piano Solo,” subtitled “Albumblätt für Nara Elyse” is the ninth in a continuing series of Pandemic Productions Premiere Performances of Piano Pieces that James Domine has undertaken during this year. (2021) The opening section is based on a delicate theme that suggests a gentle feeling of classical tranquility set in an “Andante cantabile” tempo. This mood of serenity is then juxtaposed against a contrastingly dramatic section that is in turn followed by a stormy episode suggesting an unspoken narrative that tells a story of Romance. After the famous motive of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” is paraphrased as a re-transitional quotation, the piano floats lightly suspended above an unfolding prismatic refraction of chromatic harmonic colors that lead us back to the opening theme bringing this charming movement to its conclusion with a grateful feeling of calm after a torrential period of turmoil. All is well that ends well.
The artwork for this Audio-Visual realization is by artist Kathi Flood, a long-time friend and collaborator of the composer.
You may visit her website at www.kathiflood.com for more information about her work.
Dear Friends,
I wish to invite you to the ninth consecutive Pandemic Productions Presents Premiere of Piano Pieces by James Domine. The piece entitled "Eulogy for Piano Solo" goes up this coming Sunday at 12 noon. Here is the link:
Program notes:
In April of 2010, the composer gave a quasi-autobiographical account explaining of the origins of the "Eulogy for Piano Solo" “My father enjoyed the great jazz artists of the day. Art Tatum, Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson were among his favorites. I have fond memories of my childhood when his friends would come over to our house, one of whom was quite an accomplished improviser at the keyboard. I remember the pleasant evenings spent playing and listening to the sentimental music of my parents’ generation. Later on, when I had begun to study music in earnest, the prevailing winds of composition dictated a kind of academic atonalism, a style that dad neither understood nor appreciated. He would always ask “why don’t you write something that people want to hear, not that modern stuff!” Of course I took this admonishment as uninformed and slightly annoying veiled criticism that I did my best to ignore. As time has passed, and I am no longer embarrassed by the sound of triadic harmony, my father’s words haunt me with a kind of truth that I failed to recognize at the time. Dad passed away in 2008, and I like to think that this "Eulogy," a nostalgic remembrance of those days, is a piece that he might have liked to hear.” The "Eulogy" is clearly a generic example of a jazz ballad for piano solo, and is a tribute to the great pianists of that generation.
The "Eulogy" won first prize the Composers Today competition of the Music Teachers’ Association of California and was first performed in concert by pianist Joanna Ezrin with the San Fernando Valley Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer in May, 2010.
It is included in this group of Sunday afternoon premieres because even though it has been performed as the second movement of Domine's Third Concerto, the "Eulogy" has never been publicly presented as a piano solo. As a character piece the "Eulogy" fits very nicely in the YouTube playlist as a companion to "On the Walls of the Wonderful White Wash Waltz," and the "Silent Movie Rag," each representing a stylistic genre: the waltz, the rag, and now the jazz ballad.
Piano Sonata #12 in C minor - Quasi una Fantasia (Reflections on Water)
Dear Friends,
You are invited to witness the world premiere of the Piano Sonata #12 in C minor - Quasi una Fantasia (Reflections on Water) on March 28, 2021 at 12 noon. This is the eighth in a series of Sunday afternoon YouTube premiere performances of Domine’s solo piano pieces. The link is:
The Piano Sonata #12 in C minor - Quasi una Fantasia (Reflections on Water) is one of the pieces for solo piano that James Domine composed during the lost pandemic year of 2020-2001. The music of this sonata comprises a labyrinthine confluence of nature and art, as it reflects certain moods and feelings experienced while hiking along Malibu Creek in the Santa Monica Mountains, a popular pastoral refuge frequently visited by the composer. The subtitle Reflections on Water refers to the onomatopoeic representation of ripples that appear on the surface of parts of the stream that slow to form ponds where deeper waters suggest hidden mysteries. Waves expanding in concentric circles create patterns that stir a dreamlike pageant of changing colors as beams of sunlight refract to form a prismatic kaleidoscope of images.
The Piano Sonata #12 in C minor is given the additional descriptive subtitle Quasi una Fantasia because it is literally a daydream set metaphorically to music. A cascading, almost restless opening theme sets in motion a sequence of passages that suggest the inexorable flowing waters of a stream as it sparkles and splashes onward through rocky pools and open meadows. The music of the creek tells a murmuring tale of moods and emotions ranging from carefree playfulness to melancholy sadness punctuated by moments of quiet solitude as the stream runs along its course.
Through the dark green thicket on the far side, ruins of an ancient adobe testify of distant memories, of times long past and forgotten. A stonework chimney towers in the shade of trees, where welcoming fires once warmed the hands of children who played on the banks, who caught bluegill and catfish with their bare hands and waded in the pools to catch pollywogs and crawdads…They are all dead and gone long ago as the stream meanders through the dense overgrown underbrush, singing a secret song etched in the crevasses of hillsides and vales. Finally the music reaches a celebratory crescendo, the waters pass through a massive gorge where tall rocky spires flank both sides of the stream, standing like gigantic silent sentinels, forbidding further passage to the profane onlooker or those too faint of heart to brave challenges that guard the unrevealed treasures that lay beyond. The tops of these monumental stone monoliths are illuminated by a transcendent glow as the sun sets behind distant rugged peaks, the last flickering rays of twilight mirrored on the never-still, ever-flowing waters.
From start to finish this sonata is permeated with a sense of searching, as though in pursuit of the elusive source of the spring that seems always to lay just beyond the next bend of the trail that twists and turns through the canyon.
Please join me for the seventh in a festival series of Sunday afternoon Pandemic Productions Presents Premiere Performances of Piano Pieces that I have composed recently. Each of these pieces is distinctly different from the others as by now you know if you have been following the trajectory of the sequence. Some of you have asked where the pictures and graphics come from. The answer is that I simply do a general search for images on a given prompt and voilà, there are many to choose from. To make these piano compositions known and available is the main objective that motivates these YouTube premieres. The graphic obligato accompaniment of pictorial imagery exists only to enhance the initial encounter with the music. Click on this link:
PROGRAM NOTES: The Piano Sonata #11 in F# minor (Habañera) is one of the many pieces for solo piano that I composed during this lost pandemic year. Cast in sonata form, the piece is given the subtitle Habañera because the music suggests a romantic narrative in a certain evocative mood. If Carmen could play piano, this is what the music might sound like. Habañera or contradanza is the feminine form of the Spanish word habañero that designates a particular style of Cuban popular dance music of the 19th century. The music for this dance has a duple meter and a rhythm that resembles a tango. Ordinarily the tempo of the habañera is relatively slow and sultry, as in Carmen’s aria from Act I of Bizet’s opera. The tempo is accelerated in this sonata to achieve an overtly more passionate effect by contrast. The lyrics to Carmen's aria might help to create a dramatic background for the new piece and provide a poetic flourish to the atmosphere surrounding the premiere.
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
Et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle, s'il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière. L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait.
Et c'est l'autre que je préfère, il n'a rien dit mais il me plaît.
The Piano Sonata #11 in F# minor (Habañera) will have its Premiere on March 21, 2021, at 12 noon, as the seventh in a festival series of Sunday afternoon Pandemic Productions Presents Premiere Performances of Piano Pieces by James Domine on his YouTube channel, for an audience of invited listeners.
PROGRAM NOTES: The "Silent Movie Rag" by James Domine is exactly as the title implies, a carefully crafted piano solo modeled after the early 20th style of the ragtime dance music exemplified in the compositions of Scott Joplin and other popular American composers. Written initially in response to a special request for a ragtime piece that a young piano student of Joanna Ezrin wanted to play, the first draft was called "Caitlyn's Rag" and this part of the music remains as the second theme of the finished work. The piece is subtitled "Tarzana Tune" because the composer played regularly for a period of time in a jazz ensemble at a bar located in Tarzana, California. This west San Fernando Valley community was once the home of Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan novels, and the town bears the name of that jungle-dwelling hero as a tribute to its most celebrated resident.
The opening melodic motive is an onomatopoeic representation of Tarzan's famous yell, or call that he used to summon his friends and allies in the animal kingdom to his aid when he needed their assistance in dangerous situations fraught with peril and times of trouble. The original Tarzan movies were silent, and were accompanied in this early period of cinematic entertainment by a piano score. The "Silent Movie Rag" is intended to emulate such music and embody the ragtime style and spirit of early 20th century dance music. The "Silent Movie Rag - Tarzana Tune" made its public debut on March 14, 2021 as the fifth in a series of Sunday afternoon premiere performances of Domine’s solo piano pieces on his YouTube channel for an audience of invited listeners.
ABOUT THIS PIECE:
As the title implies, the piece is set in a straightforward sonata form opening with a four-bar introduction that intones the “stairway” motive consisting of a triad in the minor mode over a chromatically descending bass line. It is this motive that gives the sonata its subtitle “La Scala” because it represents the stairway to heaven. The "Piano Sonata #8 in B-flat minor – La Scala (The Stairway)" was composed during the Fall of the lost pandemic year of 2020. The sonata is dedicated to pianist Marsenne Cabral who has been associated with many of Domine’s compositions including the second performance of the "Piano Concerto #2 in C minor."
The opening motive has been the subject of recent controversial and somewhat amusing litigation. It should be noted that many musical examples using this simple harmonic formula exist in virtually every genre and style ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary popular music. Some of the song titles that come immediately to mind that employ this device are “Michelle,” by Paul McCartney, “One,” (is the loneliest number) by Harry Nilsson (covered by Three Dog Night), and most obvious and egregious of these being “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. At the end of the debate, one concludes that an harmonic progression cannot and indeed should not be copyrighted, nor should misguided attempts be made to prohibit others from using what by rights is the community property of the entire musical world.
The first theme marked “Ben marcato,” stated in the lower register, is a slightly quirky and eccentric kind of march that reaches an half-cadence on the dominant flat-nine/seventh chord followed by an episodic passage marked “Tranquillo" leading to a contrastingly more passionate and energetic second theme appropriately marked “Appassionato.” This section drives forward moving gradually and inexorably upwards to the codetta marked “Maestoso” that concludes the exposition in the serene upper reaches of the harmonic realms. The ensuing development is a bipartite sequence that unfolds in a bemused hand-over-hand dialogue between the upper and lower registers marked “Poco animato” followed by a demonstrative “Grandioso” transitional passage. The episodic “tranquillo” element from the exposition is then deployed as a re-transitional bridge leading us back to the return of the principal theme in the recapitulation, this time given first in the upper register before reverting to its original position in the lower register. The “appassionato” subordinate theme, then returns ascending by degrees upwards into the clouds until finally the coda is reached in the stratosphere of the harmonic realms, where the stairway idea is suggested one last time by an ascending arpeggio built on the tonic key that brings the sonata to a transcendent conclusion.
The "Piano Sonata #8 in B-flat minor" makes its public debut on March 7, 2021, as the fourth in a series of Sunday afternoon premiere performances of Domine’s solo piano pieces on his YouTube channel for an audience of invited listeners.
The Woodland Hills Rotary Club
and
The San Fernando Valley Symphony Orchestra
present "Rotary Recital Festival" featuring
the Nine Award Winners of the 2021 Rotary Music Scholarship
(Admission Free - Please click on the following Zoom Link or on the flyer below)
https://zoom.us/(PastEvent_NoLongerActive)
Piano Music Recital - featuring music composed by James Domine. This will be a live performance presented online via Zoom.
From Maestro Domine's notes: Beginning late in 2019 and continuing through the Winter of 2020 James Domine experienced an extraordinary outpouring of piano compositions. Like a stone tossed into a pond causes ripples across the water, these pieces reflect a transcription of vibrations emerging from the personification of what dwells in the void on the other side of the piano strings. These pieces flowed in an almost supernatural stream of musical consciousness through Domine who, in turn, arranged to give them to these students to learn and perform at this recital.
Performers are from the Studio of Joanna Ezrin
Recital Tickets $10 per adult (children and parents of students free)
Two master classes are scheduled for consecutive Sundays in October -- on October 4th and October 11th, at 3 pm. To register for this class, please go to our secure Tickets page at: https://sfvsymphony.com/buy-tickets-merchandise and make payment, Your payment will cover you for both classes. You will receive instructions for the event shortly thereafter.
Piano pieces composed by James Domine will be featured in these performances. Interested observers may contact Roberta Hoffman at ladybirdysue@aol.com for Zoom links. There is no fee for auditors.
Two master classes are scheduled for consecutive Sundays in October -- on October 4th and October 11th, at 3 pm. To register for this class, please go to our secure Tickets page at: https://sfvsymphony.com/buy-tickets-merchandise and make payment, Your payment will cover you for both classes. You will receive instructions for the event shortly thereafter.
Piano pieces composed by James Domine will be featured in these performances. Interested observers may contact Roberta Hoffman at ladybirdysue@aol.com for Zoom links. There is no fee for auditors.
The SFVS Chamber Orchestra with Rebecca Ray & guest soloists perform audience favorites plus some surprises. This will be a Live Outdoor Concert - Social Distancing Will Be Observed. Please RSVP using this link if you will be attending: https://forms.gle/qQhHabXu36NQ9GuN7 (If you need to cancel later, please use this same link) Attendance is free. Donations are appreciated using the Donate button on this page.
PROGRAM:
Domine Silent Summer Suite: A Pandemic Diary Inaugural Performance
Beethoven Romance in F major Ruth Bruegger, violinist
