San Francisco Contemporary Music Players

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presents five concerts each year featuring the music of 20th century composers and commissioned works. Since 1971 SFCMP has brought together leading local musicians and nationally and internationally acclaimed composers to present pieces of adventurous music that are frequently so logistically challenging that few other ensembles in American can perform them. To make the obscure (if not entirely unknown) music accessible to its audiences SFCMP precedes each concerts with a "Contemporary Insight" lecture/performance the day before each work is performed. At these sessions eminent musicologists, the group’s music director and the artists themselves walk audience members through a featured piece of music. One of seven contemporary music organizations supported by the Hewlett Foundation (since 1980), the $350,000 organization has been managed effectively by executive director Adam Frey since 1990. Mr. Frey, who will be leaving SFCMP in 2009, will hand off an organization which has a 160 subscribers, an annual audience of 1,500 and runs an artist residency program at Lowell High School in San Francisco. With renewed funding SFCMP will conduct a search for a new executive director, add sound and video content to its website and continue to expand the audience for serious, difficult contemporary music.