As the 49th season of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music opens this week, musicians and audiences are arriving from all over the world.
But meanwhile, as the crowd of 400 Sunday at the first rehearsal in the San Cruz Civic Auditorium demonstrated, this mighty festival — winner of 28 consecutive ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music — is still true to its local roots. In the 1960s, Lou Harrison pupil Robert Hughes organized new-music concerts in and around Aptos’ Sticky Wicket Cafe, and music lovers from the small town kept coming.
Lou Harrison and gamelan in Aptos: the old days of new music On Sunday, the same kind of audience thronged the rehearsal, while returning musicians had a homecoming day party. “The mood was electric,” says festival Executive Director Ellen Primack. Music Director Marin Alsop and orchestra players “greeted one another with hugs and smiles.” Alsop welcomed Japanese composer Shuko Mizuno, and from the very first downbeat “music-making had that incredible Cabrillo Festival sound. Young conductors from the Conductors Training Program were vying for their best vantage point to see Marin conduct. There was a great sense of ‘off to the races.’
“[Soviet-born] Elena Kats-Kernin returned from Australia and her Re-Collecting ASTORoids with its tango inspiration and tribute to Astor Piazzolla was romantic and sultry. You could already feel a bit of a swoon from the audience.
“The spirit has never been higher,” Primack continued, “and the power of the music and of how people hold a special place in their hearts for this festival was once again apparent.”
It’s somewhat contradictory, but veterans of this new-music-only event have some wonderful old memories, such as the days of Gerhard Samuel, Carlos Chávez, and Dennis Russell Davies leading world or U.S. premieres of works, or of Nicolas Slonimsky, in his 90s, playing the piano with an orange.
This season marks the 20th anniversary of Marin Alsop — the country’s first female music director of a major orchestra (in Baltimore) — leading the festival. During those years, she has invited some 100 composers to join her, participating in the rehearsals and performances.
Among the prominent composers Alsop has brought to Santa Cruz are John Adams, John Corigliano, Michael Daugherty, Philip Glass, Jennifer Higdon, James MacMillan, Christopher Rouse, and Joan Tower.
Alsop and the festival have given important support to young emerging composers, including Kevin Puts, Michael Hersch, Chiayu, Mason Bates, Avner Dorman, Mark O’Connor, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Greg Smith.
The festival also has one of the finest “pickup orchestras” around. Under Alsop’s baton, musicians from near and far, thrown together for only a few weeks each year, consistently become an ensemble that would make any concert hall proud.
The 2011 festival presents seven world premieres, including five short anniversary pieces dedicated to Alsop, two U.S. premieres, and nine West Coast premieres.
Fifteen composers — a festival record — are in residence: Bates, Margaret Brouwer, Chiayu, Anna Clyne, Daugherty, Tina Davidson, Robin de Raaff, Zosha Di Castri, Pierre Jalbert, Elena Kats-Chernin, Shuko Mizuno, Behzad Ranjbaran, Rouse, George Tsontakis, and Dan Welcher.
“Marin’s connection to the festival is so deeply rooted now, and her accomplishments are so meaningful and enduring,” says Primack. “And 20 years is really just a jumping off point for her to continue to build excellent programming, to cultivate strong relationships with artists, and to deepen her powerful relationship with this community.”
Guest artists include pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (recently inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame); Kristin Jurkscheit, principal horn of the Festival Orchestra; and electric guitarist D.J. Sparr.
On opening night, on Aug. 5, the featured U.S. premiere is MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (Mysteries of Light). This is the ninth work of the famed Scottish composer to be performed in the Civic Auditorium.
Among other premieres, on Aug. 6 the Iranian composer Behzad Ranjbaran’s Concerto for Piano will be performed, with Thibaudet as the soloist. The second weekend opens with the world premiere of ALBA, by Canadian composer and pianist Zosha Di Castri. The work is sponsored by Adams and his wife, Deborah O’Grady, in honor of Alsop.
Dutch composer Robin de Raaff’s Entangled Tales gets its West Coast premiere. The experience of this work is described as “ebb and flow of musical density and intensity, from active hyperactive tutti orchestra to transparent, chamber-music like passages and back again, with all entangled details sparkling.”
Recipient of both the Grawemeyer and the Ives Living awards, George Tsontakis is most often recognized for his use of large musical forms. In contrast, his work at the Cabrillo Festival, Laconika, is a 15-minute work that, true to its Grecian title, consists of five short, pithy, or “Spartan” pieces, each with an identifiable character.
Electric guitarist D.J. Sparr is featured in the West Coast premiere of Michael Daugherty’s Gee’s Bend. Inspired by the quilters in the Alabama town of that name, Alabama, Daugherty describes his composition as a “patchwork of various crosscurrents. I intertwine American guitar rock and southern folk music with contemporary classical music to create a colorful and unique tapestry of sound.” Daugherty also offers the world premiere of Fever, one of the anniversary “nightcap” tributes in honor of Alsop’s 20th year with the festival.
The Aug. 14 Grand Finale, held at 4:30 and 8 p.m. in Mission San Juan Bautista, opens with Taiwanese composer Chiayu’s world premiere of Xuan Zang, a commission written for and featuring festival principal horn Kristin Jurkscheit. The famed Chinese monk Xuan Zang lived in the Tang dynasty, and in this one-movement work the solo French horn represents the heroic monk on his 19-year journey across the culturally diverse regions of Asia.
Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms, for string ensemble, refers to the words of Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and pays homage to Clyne’s mother. Guggenheim Fellow Dan Welcher’s Bright Wings: A Valediction is called music of farewell and celebration of a life. Finally, Pierre Jalbert’s composition, Fire and Ice, is described as a work of contrasts between quiet passages and orchestral explosions. The concert — and the festival — concludes with the world premiere of Reflections, another anniversary “nightcap,” by Avner Dorman.