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August 11, 2005
Concert Review
A vivid, innovative Cabrillo Music Festival opens
By PHYLLLIS ROSENBLUM
SENTINEL MUSIC CRITIC
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music opened last weekend,
filling the Civic Auditorium with vivid, innovative music. Music
Director Marin Alsop led stirring Orchestra concerts Friday and
Saturday nights — both to near sell- out crowds. The renowned Kronos
Quartet took the stage Sunday evening.
The previous Wednesday listeners sampled music of three talented young
composers from the Festival’s Conductors Composers Project. Kids and
their families got to see players and instruments up close in an
afternoon concert, and experienced an orchestra piece, "All Around
Sound" designed especially for them by Libby Larsen.
Friday night’s concert, "Dazzling Dutchman," featured Marijn Simons,
visiting from the Netherlands, as both performer and composer. The 22
year old virtuoso violinist opened the program soloing first in his own
work, 2002 "Secret Notes, Violin concerto No.2," and again in James
MacMillan’s 2002 violin concerto, "A Deep but Dazzling Darkness."
"A Ti Te Toca," written in 2003, was a work for two pianos and
orchestra (not a "concerto," says Simons) and featured brilliant
soloists Paul Barnes and Emily Wong. The program also included Frank
Zappa’s delightfully humorous 1992 "Be-Bop Tango."
After his clever and intimate remarks, Simons wowed the audience with
his playing, simultaneously passionate and precise.
His own musically sensitive concerto layered varied sounds one atop
another to create complex sonic tapestries. Eric Bradler’s accordion
(yes, accordion!) with rhythmic chords and melodic fragments, blended
surprisingly well into the orchestra. Unusual pairings — such as
Kristen Halay’s sweet-toned piccolo with contrabassoon — created fresh
sounds.
"A Ti Te Toca" (It’s your turn) impressively portrayed five genres of
Latin music, from a dramatic variation of the song, "Sanduga," colored
compellingly by the pain and beauty in the life of Frida Kahlo to the
work’s final "Mambo," a rollicking romp, which was repeated as an
encore, and played again at the family concert Sunday.
In MacMillan’s "A Deep but Dazzling Darkness," Simons’ impassioned
playing gave his violin a human voice, a protagonist struggling in a
hostile world. The work, set mostly in somber moods, included a
chilling "march macabre," vividly portrayed by the Orchestra’s brasses.
‘River’s Rush’
Saturday night’s performance of works by Kevin Puts, Philip Glass, and
Steve Reich, demonstrated that contemporary music can be both
innovative and sonorous.
Kevin Puts’ melodious and powerful 2004 "River’s Rush" created images
and moods rivaling classical music’s "water literature" by Smetana,
Debussy, or Wagner, as it surged and rippled ahead.
Philip Glass’s 2002 "Piano Concerto No. 2, After Lewis and Clark"
showcased Paul Barnes’ keyboard flair and agility. The second movement,
"Sacagawea," featured renowned Native American flutist, R. Carlos
Nakai, playing recognizably Native American melodies. The instrument’s
small tone unfortunately failed to create a commanding presence in the
cavernous hall.
Despite the work’s often mesmerizing repetitions, the subtle shifts of
color and harmony within contrasting movements allowed for sustained if
not rapt interest.
The vocal ensemble, Tapestry, and the Orchestra’s supreme percussion
section highlighted Steve Reich’s 1981 "Tehllim."
The four alto-to-soprano-range singers, beautifully executed the
dauntingly difficult interval leaps and intricately overlapping
phrases. Percussionists’ precision drumming, hand clapping, maraca and
mallet playing admirably maintained the lively Hebrew/African rhythmic
ambience.
Sunday evening, the Kronos Quartet, including newly-permanent cellist,
Jeffrrey Zeigler, presented three works written in the past year as
well as two from the 1980s. Hubert Stuppner’s 2005 "Mahler Bilder,"
created a sonic collage of snippets from Mahler’s works. To achieve
thicker textures, a pre-recorded Kronos was over-dubbed, at times
muddying the outcome.
The over-dubbing of strings and other sounds, which has become a Kronos
staple, along with the instruments’ near-distorting amplification, may
subtract as much as it adds to the music of these exceptional players.
Steve Reich’s 1988 "Different Trains," which was played at the Festival
in 1989, fared better in the Civic than in its previous church venue,
though it still lacked the clarity of a superior-quality sound system.
The ensemble’s most successful offerings were two encores:
"Flugufrelsarinn" (Fly Freer) by the Icelandic rock group, Sigur Ros,
and Kronos’s deliciously iconoclastic version of our "Star-Spangled
Banner," our national anthem as played at Woodstock by Jimi Hendrix.
The Festival finishes this weekend with guitarist Marc Ribot on Friday,
and Orchestra music of John Mackey, Stewart Wallace, John Adams,
Dominick Argento, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Magnus Lindberg on Saturday and
Sunday.
Contact Phyllis Rosenblum at arozena@pacbell.net.
Thursday
Music in the Mountains
The evening views over the bay will be a spectacular setting for this
festival benefit. Enjoy wines and foods paired by local vintners and
restaurateurs, a silent auction and chamber music with concertmaster
Yumi Hwang-Williams and members of the Festival Orchestra.
WHEN: 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Hilltop Hacienda at Kennolyn, Soquel.
COST: $100.
Friday
Marc Ribot
The night before the premier of ‘Skvera’ — written for him and his
guitar prowess by composer Stewart Wallace — Ribot lights up the
Kuumbwa with a golden touch of New York avant garde jazz. This guy
(called ‘a guitar god’ by Wallace) steps all over music boundaries,
going from experimental to new to traditional, working with musicians
the likes of Elvis Costello, Don Byron, John Lurie, Albert Ayler and
Arsenio Rodriguez.
WHEN: 8 p.m.
WHERE: Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz.
COST: $20.
Saturday
Skvera
The title piece of tonight’s performance is the musical storytelling of
composer Stewart Wallace, who takes audiences to his grandparents’ pre
Russian revolution Ukranian village through the guitar of New York
avant- garde musician Marc Ribot. Warming up the evening will be a high
paced work — ‘Redline Tango’ — by John Mackey, and the program’s finale
is a three-movement work of minimalism and harmony by Pulitzer
Prize-winning composer John Adams.
WHEN: 8 p.m.
WHERE: Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, 307 Church St., Santa Cruz.
COST: $22 to $34.
Sunday
Transcendence: Music at the Mission
The resounding acoustics of the Mission at San Juan Bautista is the
center of a day of transformative and contemplative music, including
three West Coast premiers. ‘Reflections on a Hymn Tune’ by composer
Dominick Argento sets the tone, followed by Aaron Jay Kernis’ ‘Air for
Cello and Orchestra’ with solos by the Festival’s principal cellist,
Lee Duckles. Concluding the concert — and the festival — is Finnish
composer Magnus Lindberg’s rich and strange ‘Concerto for Orchestra.’
WHEN: 4 and 8 p.m.
WHERE: Mission San Juan Bautista.
COST: $30 to $35.
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