[From the 8/22 SFCV.org Music News] Money, to be sure, is important, especially if you don't have it, but it's no substitute for brains and guts in musical leadership. Big budgets do not equal high standards of programming excitement and excellence. As reported here last week http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/music_news_8_15_06.php), small, "regional," fiscally-constrained California Symphony (on a budget of $1.65 million) is offering more American and commissioned works than mighty San Francisco Symphony, with its $56 million annual budget. The good folks in Davies Symphony Hall may be playing better than ever, and serve well hundreds of thousands among "mainstream" listeners, but a season of six American works from a major American orchestra? Tsk, tsk. The pleasant task of reporting "good news" from the world of musical little giants today brings up the case of the Del Sol Quartet's next season, on an operating budget of about $100,000. Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, and Hannah Addario-Berry want you to hear (whether you want to or not) "Premieres without Borders" and "Women and Motherhood" during the quartet's home season in the area. The first program, Nov. 5-10 - in San Francisco, Berkeley, Point Reyes, and Mountain View - includes (get ready for this!) Marc Blitzstein's unpublished 1930 Quartet for Strings, Iranian-born Reza Vali's yet-untitled work written for Del Sol, the American premiere of New Zealander Jack Body's Epicycle, and - I quote - "Hopkin and the Wired Night by Eric Lindsay of Los Angeles, America's most promising composer under 30; he composed the work for Del Sol in response to seeing hand-drawn posters by a Seattle child looking for his lost frog." Yes. Program 2, May 27 - June 3 (in the same locations, but also including a concert in de Young Museum's Koret Auditorium), offers the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Julia Wolfe, Linda Catlin Smith, Sally Beamish and Teresa Carreno, all about motherhood (and nary a piece about apple pie). The first two are Americans, Smith is Canadian, Beamish works in the U.K., and Carreno was a 19th century Venezuelan composer. Speaking of rampant internationalism, Del Sol's many collaborations include performances of Hyo-shin Na's work in the Music on the Hill Concert Series (Oct. 22, St. Kevin's Church, S.F.), of Kui Dong and Duo Huang, with Melody of China, in the Festival of New American Music (Nov. 11, CSU, Sacramento), Concerts4Kids (Nov. 12, Mountain View), Other Minds Festival XII - works by Per Norgard, Maja Ratkje, Peter Sculthorpe and Ronald Bruce - (Dec. 8-10), and many others. On the road, the Bay Area's foursome of new music go to Canada next week, for a concert at Soiree Lane, in Sooke, British Columbia, with Jack Body, Per Norgard, Arturo Salinas, R. Murray Schafer, Ron Bruce Smith, and Astor Piazzolla; concerts in Monterrey and elsewhere in Mexico with the music of Arturo Salinas; then a residency at Northeastern University, performing George Antheil, Marc Blitzstein, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Ronald Bruce Smith. Del Sol is taking the music of Curtis Cacioppo, Richard Hermann and Hyo-shin Na to a composers' symposium in Albuquerque; then in the same city's chamber-music festival: George Antheil, Jose Evangelista, Gabriela Lena Frank and Lou Harrison. How do they do it?! Not with (or even for) money, for sure. Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]