Here, at the Western edge of the country, we have no hurricanes, only earthquakes. Except when Kennedy (The Artist Formerly Known As Nigel) comes around. He did tonight, allegedly to play the Brahms Violin Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony, and leaving a wide path of adoring rubble in his wake. I've been hanging out at Davies Hall since it opened, and I have never witnessed an instant, spontaneous, universal, loud, and unceasing ovation like this. Kennedy played a brilliant encore (not too many violinists follow the Brahms with something -- anything -- else), took more bows, finally asked the audience to let the Symphony have the overdue intermission. The Davies audience, rarely acting like this, gave the impression of celebrating a combination of Elvis and hometown boys Ricci, Menuhin and Stern. This, after all, is a town that knows from violin. Kennedy is no novelty in San Francisco: he has appeared here over the years, at first as "interesting" and strange -- combat boots, spiked hair, good playing -- then he disappeared for five years, and came back in glory two years ago, to play a heavenly Beethoven concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas on the podium. Those early tropical-storm appearances and the 1997 "comeback" had almost nothing to do with tonight. This was unique, even for him. It left me with a deep impression and serious confusion. The thing is that the "bad" part tonight was not just what Joshua Kosman so aptly describes as "Emmett Kelly chic." (For details, see below, if you must.) The confusing, disturbing part is that there were a few real *musical* problems: wrong notes, bad intonation, capricious dynamics, ugly sounds, an attempt to destroy the violin, and a terribly annoying skating/flamenco thing around the stage. Interspersed with all that were long passages of absolute purity, a voice heroic and lyrical in turn, music-making of the highest order. Very good and very bad all rolled into one, a bizarre, compelling, fascinating performance. But here is what is essential: Unless you read about it, you'd never know that this was Kennedy's fourth Brahms in as many days, and probably one of many during his career. There was nothing routine, rote, bored or boring about it -- this was a premiere, a debut performance. It was unsettling, exciting, memorable. To do that with a 120-year-old piece of music after rehearsals and three performances since Thursday takes a rare kind of genius. So forget the pants that are three inches short (all the better to display the mismatched socks), the jacket sleeves pulled up to the shoulders, the new mohawk-spiked 'do (clearly triumphing over whatever Peter Sellars can come up with), the spotted cravats wrapped around both as a belt and as a kind of vest -- forget all that. Try to get over the opening: very big, heated, and with as ugly a sound as you'll ever hear. Try to ignore his tearing into the instrument with such force that a string is broken, along with a piece of wood (from a distance, it looked like the bridge came off) -- and then admire the speed with which Kennedy trust the wounded instrument into concertmaster Mark Volkert's left hand, grabbing his violin from the right hand, and missing just a couple of notes. (Volkert did a fabulous repair job mid-concert, and returned the instrument in a few minutes. But why should it be the concertmaster who is taken out of action like this? Isn't he the most indispensable member of the section?) By the time Kennedy got to the cadenza, he settled down to some stunning work, and at the end of it, he produced timeless seconds of a sound as pure as I heard from any violin, ever. The Adagio sang with unsentimental lyricism, the closing Allegro was fabulously flowing with energy, not the all-too-frequent circus music. No Emmett Kelly stuff here. For the record, Andreas Delfs was making his conducting debut, but I haven't seen anybody in the audience or in the orchestra pay any attention to him. Even after the concerto, it was Kennedy who motioned oboist William Bennett for a well-deserved bow. And then the encore: the same Milt Jackson "Bags' Groove" with SFS principal bassist Michael Burr that the two performed in 1997, but this time in memory of the great MJQ vibraphonist who died a couple of weeks ago. This too was music-on-fire; an usher who heard the encore on all four nights said that Kennedy and Burr were "rocking" tonight as never before. Janos Gereben/SF [log in to unmask] http://mrichter.simplenet.com/files/calendar.htm