“The Captivating Saga of Crissy Field: An Audio-Visual Interpretation through Music and Art”
For the Commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of the Presidio on September 17, 2026, the Interfaith Center at the Presidio (ICP) is pleased to invite everyone to “The Captivating Saga of Crissy Field: An Audio-Visual Interpretation through Music and Art” Admission is free with RSVP to [email protected].
Introduced by members of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio (ICP) Board of Directors, the images depict historical events with intriguing drawings, paintings, photos and archival film footage, all collected by the ICP research committee specifically for the 250th Commemoration. The excellent recording by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, John McLaughlin Williams, conductor, was released on the Cambria album, “Dancing on the Brink of the World” in 2008.
The music, a tone poem for orchestra, was composed by Deon Nielsen Price in the early 2000’s in celebration of the vote by the City of San Francisco to re-transition the Presidio to its natural state. The interpretation pays homage to the First Peoples; arrival of Spanish padres and soldiers; filling in the marsh for the auto races at the 1915 Pan-American Exposition; the U.S. Army airfield, building the Golden Gate Bridge, a secret language school in an abandoned airplane hangar, and restoration of the marshland.
The project has been a labor of love for ICP Composer-in Residence, Dr. Deon Nielsen Price, who lived in the Presidio throughout her high school years when her father, U.S. Army Colonel W. L. Nielsen, was stationed there as Chief of the Dental Service at the Presidio Post Dispensary. She remembers spending Saturday mornings with her father on the abandoned runway at Crissy Field while he taught her how to drive the family Buick, with its classic stick shift.
