Diminutive new-music giant Julie Steinberg played heck out of York Holler's "Daydreams" tonight at the Yerba Buena Center, and then mentioned casually in a conversation that she never even heard of the German composer before (making me feel a lot better about my own ignorance). Both "Daydreams" and the other Holler on the SF Contemporary Music Players concert, "Ex tempore," were US premieres. Both are accessible, complex, good works. At 62, Holler should really be known here more... or at all. His bio says his best-known work in Germany is the opera "Der Meister und Margarita," composed in the 1980s, performed in Paris and Cologne - "takes its text from Holler's own drastic abridgment of the last novel of Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov... Combines his interest in electronics with directly expressive vocal lines and an intricate orchestral fabric reminiscent of Wagner." That sure doesn't sound like the Adriana Holszky type trash Stuttgart and some other German houses foist off on opera fans. Has anyone heard this or other Holler operas? (And what kind of a German name is "York" anyway?...:) Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]