Susan Waterfall remembers well her move to Mendocino from Chicago in 1970. “I was into the ‘back to the land’ thing. I played the piano and presented hundreds of recitals. But I’ve always been interested in the cultural aspects of music, as well as just playing.” Her husband, Allan Pollack, also originally from Chicago, was a jazz saxophonist who decided that the jazz performance life was too difficult and thus took a DMA degree from UC Berkeley — in composition. (Well, we were all young once.)
The couple runs the Mendocino Music Festival, now more than 30 years old and surviving nicely, despite economic depression. Allan conducts the pick-up orchestra in a couple of concerts, Susan does a multimedia “narrated chamber music” program on music and culture, and their son Julian Pollack, a jazz pianist shows up, usually with his trio, but this year with a full piano concerto he’s written.
It’s still remarkably family-friendly — there are afternoon events spread throughout Mendocino, and you can walk into any rehearsal in the big tent absolutely free of charge. Tickets are not expensive (top price is $44 and all children’s tickets are $15) and only a few events sell out early, so you can pick up tickets even on the day of the event.
The drive from the Bay Area may be long, but it’s a beautiful experience once you’re there. “The tent is right on this headland, almost a sacramental place. And the sun is setting over the ocean, and then you go in and you hear a fantastic variety of concerts,” says Waterfall. “A lot of our audience comes back year after year. And everybody’s talking about the music, because it’s a small place. People are seeing each other again and again. Even if you come up for three days you’re going to run into a lot of the same people. So there’s a feeling of community. You make connections with people.”
It’s kind of like the atmosphere of a 1970s folk festival, except that you can hear Das Lied von der Erde if you want (or you’re not careful.)
Waterfall’s interest in world music and culture, which led to her annual contribution to the festival, was catalyzed by a trip to India from 1976-79. “There was this phase when I was very attracted to sitting on the ground and playing this four-note tambura and singing.”
In India, I studied classical south-Indian singing. And I lived with this family of state-adoptees. They were [part of the tradition of] these temple courtesan women that sing [and dance] Bharata Natyam. I studied with the incredible family of Balasarasawati — she was one of the superstars of India, and I studied with her family and got to know them very well and learned a lot of songs and found out a lot about their amazing history and their caste.”
Thirty years later, Waterfall’s interest was piqued by China. “What surprised me most,” she said in answer to my question, “is that — you know, we love Han Chinese culture here, the meditative peacefulness, the Taoism. It’s such a beautifully refined culture. But there’s also the other 55 minorities of China that have incredible music as well. So I went in interested in the Han Chinese culture, but I took [the concert] into using these Chinese-American composers who have also been very influenced by minority cultures — Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Kui Dong.”
Wu Man, the world-renowned pipa player who agreed to join Waterfall for this concert, is a cultural anthropologist in her own right. While she started out mastering the classical pipa repertoire, when she got to New York she found out more about Chinese minorities, “and she has since gone back and done these incredible projects — you know, filming and playing music with people in Western China, the Uighurs and such. And she’s done curating and recording. And she seems to inspire people — A Chinese Home, the program she did with the Kronos Quartet [in 2010] was inspired by an exhibition she saw. [The concert also spawned a concurrent collaborative project at the University of Maryland, in which students constructed traditional Chinese “desire houses.”] I wrote to her with my idea for the project, especially because I wanted her to play some of the music that has been composed for her by Chinese-American composers.”
It’s no surprise that Waterfall is eagerly awaiting the performance of her son’s piano concerto. “This is a piece that is so direct and warm, every kind of musician that has heard it has loved it. It’s what people kind of love in a world like this.”
It’s the kind of music the festival has always promoted and performed. Which is what makes momma so proud.