COMPOSER

Events

Upcoming Events

Past Events

Lockerbones/Airbones, a setting of poems by Ursula Le Guin, will be performed by the Los Angeles composer collective Synchromy, under the direction of Jason Barabba, at an event honoring Le Guin, at Monkspace:
Tuesdays@Monkspace
As part of the Alumni Concert Series, Armer’s Nocturnes  will be performed in the San Francisco Conservatory’s Recital Hall by the Persephone Ensemble: Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano, Ilana Blumberg, violin, Wendy Clymer, viola, Amy Brodo, ‘cello, and Lois Brandwynne, piano. Texts are by Rilke, Tennyson, Dawn  McGuire, and William Carlos Williams.
Armer’s Nocturnes  will be premiered at Old First Church in San Francisco by the Persephone Ensemble: Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano, Ilana Blumberg, violin, Wendy Clymer, viola, Amy Brodo, ‘cello, and Lois Brandwynne, piano. Texts are by Rilke, Tennyson, Dawn  McGuire, and William Carlos Williams.
SFCM Faculty Centennial Concert includes a performance of Armer’s Interior Range by cellist Jennifer Culp.

Further information at SFCM Faculty Centennial Concert.
E4TT pianist Dale Tsang presents a solo recital including this dazzling and quirky work excerpted from the first movement of Armer’s ‘Promptu’.

More information:
www.56x54strings.eventbrite.com
SFCM Faculty Centennial Concert to feature Armer’s magnum opus on the life of Da Vinci, for combined period and modern instruments under the direction of Corey Jamason; Adam Cockerham returns as archlute soloist. “It’s wonderful! The sonorities, the imagination with which the whole piece soars—I love it!” — Jeffrey Thomas, Director, American Bach Soloists
Just back from their exciting tour to Madrid, Ensemble For These Times performs music by two local favorites, E4TT co-director David Garner and Elinor Armer, including Armer’s ‘Promptu’, a Schubert send-up performed by pianist Dale Tsang. (There are nine quotes from Schubert’s piano repertoire in this homage to the composer; How many can you hear?) More information here:56 x 54 + Armer & Garner: The Beat Goes On
Cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau and pianist Steven Bailey perform Armer’s ardent, playful companion pieces originally composed for Bonnie Hampton and Nathan Schwartz—an homage to their partnership both marital and musical. The event takes place in the San Francisco Conservatory Concert Hall. Admission is free, no tickets or reservations required. More information: sfcm.edu/events/new-music-ensemble-concert/
As composer-in-residence for the Magen Solomon’s San Francisco Choral Artists, Armer is composing three new SATB works for a capella choir. The third of these, California Wine, will be premiered on the ensemble's East Meets West program on Sunday, June 4 at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco, with follow-up performances at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto (June 10) and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Oakland (June 11). For further information: sfca.org.
As composer-in-residence for the Magen Solomon’s San Francisco Choral Artists, Armer is composing three new SATB works for a capella choir. The third of these, California Wine, will be premiered on the ensemble's East Meets West program on Sunday, June 4 at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco, with follow-up performances at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto (June 10) and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Oakland (June 11). For further information: sfca.org.
As composer-in-residence for the Magen Solomon’s San Francisco Choral Artists, Armer is composing three new SATB works for a capella choir. The third of these, California Wine, will be premiered on the ensemble's East Meets West program on Sunday, June 4 at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco, with follow-up performances at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto (June 10) and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Oakland (June 11). For further information: sfca.org.
As composer-in-residence for the Magen Solomon’s San Francisco Choral Artists, Armer is composing three new SATB works for a capella choir. The second of these, “She Who Continues,” a setting of a text by Judy Grahn, will be premiered on Sunday, March 19 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland. The performance will be repeated on Saturday, March 25 in Palo Alto and Sunday, March 26 in San Francisco. For details and tickets, please visit Choral Artists' website at sfca.org.
As composer-in-residence for the Magen Solomon’s San Francisco Choral Artists, Armer is composing three new SATB works for a capella choir. The first of these, “Druid Prayer” will be premiered on Saturday, December 10 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto. The performance will be repeated on Sunday December 11 in Oakland and Sunday, December 18 in San Francisco. For details and tickets, please visit Choral Artists' website at sfca.org.
Mariya Kaganskaya sang the premiere of Armer’s Summer Garden with violist Cynthia Ryan and pianist Alla Gladysheva at SFCM’s Concert Hall. The text, a poem by Anna Akhmatova, was sung first in Russian, then in English using Kaganskaya’s own translation. On October 3, 2016 the piece was repeated with Jodi Levitz on viola and Robin Sutherland on piano, for Levitz’s Faculty Recital at SFCM.
The Left Coast Ensemble premiered Armer’s Sacred Forest for English Horn and string quartet, featuring Tom Nugent on English Horn. Also performed: Armer’s Taking the Waters on Oling Island. The program was repeated at the San Francisco Conservatory on Monday, February 1 at 8 p.m.

About Elinor Armer

Born, raised and educated in California, Armer creates music that blends wit and cosmopolitan influences with West Coast inspiration.

Composer Elinor Armer comes from a family of writers, artists, and inventors. Born in Oakland in 1939, raised in Davis, and educated in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has spent her life on the West Coast and closely identifies with Northern California. Early influences on her style include radio sound effects, 40s jazz, classical 78s, and piano/ear-training lessons starting at age 8. Armer earned a BA at Mills College, studying composition with Darius Milhaud and piano with Alexander Libermann, and an MA in composition from San Francisco State University, working with Roger Nixon.

Widely performed throughout the U.S. and abroad, Armer’s music reflects her persona in its high-hearted originality. It includes solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal and choral works, and is marked by harmonic beauty, strong narrative line, rhythmic energy, sensitivity to language, emotional expressiveness, and humor.

As a music educator Armer is legendary. For all of her adult life she has taught piano, theory, composition, and music history at every level, in schools and at her home studio in Berkeley. For decades she has been affiliated with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where in 1985 she established the Composition Department which today enjoys a world-class reputation. Armer continues to teach composing at the Conservatory, which has recently endowed the Elinor Armer Scholarship in Composition, offered for the first time this year.

To celebrate her 75th birthday, Armer produced a nine-concert Diamond Jubilee season in 2014-15, kicked off by a Festschrift of works by former students, plus a new Armer love-song to the Conservatory, ‘I Left My Heart’ (sub-titled ‘Rube Goldberg Variations’), under the direction of Nicole Paiement. Also premiered during this season: ‘Romantic Duo’, written for violist Don Ehrlich and pianist Lois Brandwynne; Will You, Won’t You?, a six-song cycle composed for mezzo-soprano Mariya Kaganskaya; Leonardo’s Riddle for the San Francisco Conservatory Baroque Ensemble, with Adam Cockerham, archlute soloist, under the direction of Corey Jamason. Other performances included three one-woman shows in various Bay Area venues, Call of the West with Dawn Harms conducting the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, and Armer narrating “The Great Instrument of the Geggerets” (From Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts, created in collaboration with Ursula Le Guin) performed by Symphony Parnassus under the baton of Stephen Paulson.

Armer’s Sacred Forest (a Le Guin-inspired fantasy) was premiered in 2016, with repeat performances, by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, featuring Tom Nugent on English Horn.

A recording of Child on the Shore, one of the songs from ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’, was included in the June 13, 2018 tribute honoring Ursula Le Guin, who died on January 22, 2018. The tribute was live-streamed and is available at literary-arts-tribute.org.

Contact

Follow Elinor Armer at her Facebook page. For direct inquiries, please email armusic@earthlink.net

Friends and Collaborators

Ursula K. Le Guin
Lois Brandwynne