It might have been well anticipated, but the big news is that the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is being honored today with a 2012-2013 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. It's the 32nd consecutive annual award for the 51-year-old festival.
The awards ceremony is being held at the League of American Orchestras’ 68th annual conference in St. Louis. The honor goes to orchestras of all sizes for programs that "challenge the audience, build the repertoire, and increase interest in music of our time."
The next Cabrillo Festival, under the direction of Marin Alsop for the 22nd year, will take place in Santa Cruz, Aug. 2-11, featuring world premieres by Sean Friar and Kevin Puts, U.S. premieres by Brett Dean and Philip Glass, West Coast premieres by Christopher Rouse and George Walker, and a special 40th anniversary celebration of the Kronos Quartet.
Alsop is presenting works by 13 composers, with nine in residence: Friar, Puts, Walker, Derek Bermel, Enrico Chapela, Anna Clyne, Thomas Newman, Andrew Norman, and Gregory Rians Smith.
Tickets for the festival go on sale today. In case you were holding off, awaiting word from ASCAP, now it's safe to proceed.
Modern-music scribe Jeff Dunn says he is looking forward to Cabrillo especially because of Rouse's Third Symphony on Aug. 2.
Emblematic of the world-class stature of this composer, it was commissioned by the St. Louis, Stockholm, and Shanghai symphonies. Inspired by the form of Prokofiev's Second Symphony and Beethoven's last piano sonata, it was characterized by one critic as an "aggressive mix of wild cacophony and surprising lyricism." It received a standing ovation at its premiere in St. Louis in 2011. Rouse is now completing a Fourth Symphony for the New York Philharmonic, to be premiered next season.But I'm also anxious to hear the U.S. premiere of Brett Dean's Fire Music the following night; it represents the composer's take on the devastating conflagrations that hit Australia in 2009. California has already had a hefty dose of the same, and more may be in store. An Australian critic called it a "towering masterpiece," or was he thinking "towering inferno"? In any case, Dean is one of the greatest composers writing today, essential listening for anyone claiming to be abreast of contemporary music.