A concert of music by Czech and Russian composers

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Program
To be announced
About the Artists

John Smalley, baritone, is a native of San Francisco. He received his B.A. in Classics from Santa Clara University and holds an M.A. and M.Phil. in Historical Musicology from Columbia University in New York, where he taught for six years.  He has lectured and performed as soloist throughout the Bay Area, including Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, numerous Bach cantatas, and Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together. He was awarded a prestigious 2009 Shenson Performing Arts Fellowship.  In 2009 and 2015 he premiered Fred Adler’s Lorca Songs, Celan Trilogy, and Joyce Songs. In 2014-2016 he starred in David Cox’s three-part Rocket Opera. With Janis Mercer, John Smalley has given recitals featuring the music of Russian and Armenian composers, as well as the music of 20th-century composers Hanns Eisler, John Cage, and György Kurtág.

Janis Mercer is an American composer/pianist living in San Francisco. Her musical activities as composer, and pianist are closely interwoven. Her compositions range in size from 8-piece chamber ensemble to digitally realized fixed electronics; utilize timbres from voice to drum set; and employ styles from 12-tone technique to structured improvisation, microtonality to field recordings.  Ms. Mercer holds artist residencies at Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts, Ragdale, Centrum, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods.
As a pianist, Ms. Mercer has a keen interest in the music of the Second Viennese School but also performs music by living composers and commissions solo and chamber works. She has performed music by such diverse composers as Anthony Braxton, Anton Webern, Bela Bartók, Brian Belét, Pablo Furman, Paul Rudy and Sever Tipei, and has commissioned works from Zack Browning, Erik Lund, and Jim McManus, among others.