SF Performances sees founder off in style
When she started San Francisco Performances in 1979, Ruth Felt had just a handful of artists in her corner — most notably the pianist André Watts, who donated his services to give the organization’s first musical event the following year. By the time she stepped down in September after 37 years at the helm, she had dozens upon dozens.
Several of those artists were on hand to see her off on Friday, Sept. 30, with a gala dinner and concert in Felt’s honor, and countless more were surely wishing her godspeed from afar.
After all, without Felt and San Francisco Performances — which grew steadily from its modest beginnings to become the city’s leading independent arts presenter — the Bay Area’s cultural life would have been immeasurably poorer.
“I’m a huge fan,” said San Francisco Symphony Executive
Director Brent Assink, one of the nearly 500 attendees at Friday’s shindig in City Hall. “She combines great business sense, a risk-taking sensibility and the ability to recognize talent. That’s why she’s been able to make this work when frankly, so many comparable organizations fail.
“What I do is easy by comparison.”
Randall Kline, the founding executive and artistic director of SFJazz, said he looked to Felt as a role model in establishing an arts presenter in the often challenging landscape of the Bay Area.
“She sets a high standard,” he said. “Ruth has been an inspiration for anyone in this field, and she continues to be.”
It’s no exaggeration, certainly, to say that the success of San Francisco Performances over the decades has been an outgrowth of Felt’s particular combination of talents — her steely dedication and hard work, her expansive artistic tastes, and her devotion to forging a community of artists and audiences that is both homey and venturesome.
The roster of performers who have come under her wing, from Yo-Yo Ma and Thomas Hampson to Wynton Marsalis and Paul Taylor, reads like a catalog of international achievement in the fields of classical music, jazz and dance. And because Felt has always emphasized fostering ongoing relationships with artists, most of them return again and again to what feels like a welcoming artistic home.
That theme reverberated throughout Friday’s Herbst Theatre Concert, with jazz singer and composer Luciana Souza serving as emcee. It amounted to a survey of the multifold ways in which Felt has transformed the musical life of San Francisco.
Her advocacy for jazz was embodied in a suave set by trumpeter Sean Jones — currently the organization’s artistin-residence — pianist Edward Simon and bassist Marcus Shelby, and by a surprise encore appearance from violinist-composer Regina Carter, who played a piece titled “How Ruth Felt.”
From the world of new music came pianist-composer Philip Glass, who gave his first solo appearances in the area under Felt’s auspices, and violinist Jennifer Koh, who tore through three varied solo works that Felt had helped commission for her.
And the endangered world of the art song recital — for which Felt has been an ardent and increasingly important champion — blossomed in the hands of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and pianist Jake Heggie. “She’s unapologetic, undiluted, totally the real deal,” Cooke said before inserting a few newly crafted words of praise into a Poulenc song.
It wasn’t just artists and her peers who turned out to pay tribute to Felt, either. Among the evening’s attendees were Jeanne Newman of San Francisco and Alice Corning of Mill Valley — neither of them board members or personal acquaintances, just longtime audience members who had reaped the benefits of Felt’s leadership.
“I love her, “said Newman. “We’re losing a wonderful, original part of San Francisco. Those are going to be tough boots to fill.”
Filling those boots will fall to Melanie Smith, who worked under Felt for nine years before going off in 2006 to head the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
As for the guest of honor herself, she professed herself a little overwhelmed, at 76, by the new world of retirement.
“This is my third week of not going into the office every day,” she said, “and I won’t pretend it’s not a challenge. But I’m adjusting.”
In characteristically methodical fashion, Felt says she’s already lined up a series of “frivolous activities” with which to fill her hours. She’s joined a bocce team, lined up a tango instructor, and scouted out a bar near her Hayes Valley home with a pool table where she can practice her caroms.
San Francisco Performances will continue without her — financially strong, artistically vigorous, but with its ebullience and glamour just a bit dimmed without Felt’s impassioned presence.