The Adventure Continues

It goes without saying that the Cabrillo Festival is going to win next year's ASCAP annual award for the most Adventurous Programming of Orchestral Music by a festival. It has won every year since the award was initiated in 1982. Some might argue that winning the ASCAP award does not signify cutting edge programming. Although the Aspen Music Festival came in second in 2008 and 2007, Cabrillo often has had no competition for the award. There are hardly any stand-alone festivals in the U.S. dedicated to contemporary orchestral music programming. In most years, the only way Cabrillo could have failed to win was if it had betrayed its new-music mission. And that has never been the case.

Award or no, Cabrillo’s achievement is sizeable. In the 45 years since composer/bassoonist Robert Hughes, composer and instrument builder Lou Harrison (whom Hughes came to Aptos to study with), and others produced the first concert on the Aptos campus of Cabrillo College, on August 21, 1963, the Cabrillo Festival has presented 84 world premieres, 52 U.S. premieres, 100 West Coast premieres, and a host of local premieres. This year’s festival, whose main events span two weekends (Friday, Aug. 1 to Sunday, Aug. 10), is no exception. The four main concerts and an anything-but-garden-variety family concert offer five world premieres, three U.S. premieres, and four West Coast premieres.

Coastal Drift

Under the leadership of Marin Alsop, who became the Festival’s sixth conductor and music director in 1992, the festival’s repertoire has taken a decided shift. “There were many festivals in the East when we began,” Hughes explained by phone from his Emeryville residence, “and their pull was always toward Europe. At a time when there was still a musical divide between the East and West Coasts, we wanted to create a festival that represented the variety of the West Coast.”

Photo by David Harsany

Harrison believed that the real California tradition started with Henry Cowell. As the inheritor of Cowell’s distinctly West Coast penchant for musical/ cultural exploration, Harrison saw that East Coast Festivals mainly concentrated on European-influenced composers like Babbitt, Davidovsky, and Sessions. “As I see it,” says Hughes, “the true West Coast spirit went from Henry Cowell to Lou to Terry Riley, who studied with Pran Nath over in India. Rather than favoring the Hebraic-Christian religion in Europe, which sets up a certain feeling and context in which East Coast composers compose, the pull is toward the Pacific and the different religions of the East, everything from Shintoism and Hinduism to Buddhism. The sensibility of looking to the East [Asia] brings in a whole other worldview — the vital spirit of a unified culture by the Pacific Ocean rather than the Atlantic Ocean.”

The festival encountered financial difficulties in the late 1960s that caused cancellation of one week of the 1968 season. When Gerhard Samuel subsequently left the Bay Area, the Cabrillo Festival administration asked conductor Richard Williams and his four-year-old, South Bay-based Amici della Musica Chamber Orchestra to replace the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra for the 1969 season. Williams was appointed music director for the 1969 season, with the knowledge that he had other commitments for subsequent seasons. This "marriage of convenience" allowed the Cabrillo Festival to regroup and search for a new music director while providing Amici's musicians with guaranteed work. Bob Hughes, who was leading the search for the next festival music director, pointed to Carlos Chávez, whom he called "the top 20th-century musician of Mexico — the Charles Ives of Mexican Music." Chávez accepted a joint commission from the Festival and the State of California to write a new work, the Symphony for Strings. The work was premiered at the 1969 festival, which Chávez attended at Williams' invitation. (Other works performed that season were by Mozart, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Bartók, Ravel, and Poulenc). The festival then invited Chávez to return in 1970 as the Cabrillo Festival's new music director and conductor. During his tenure (1970-1973), he added to the mix a good number of Mexican and Latin American works by himself, Ginastera, and others. Harrison already knew a lot of this music because of his work with Cowell in the Pan-Pacific Union of musicians, and he welcomed music from some of the West's early settlers. “As Lou grew and developed,” says Hughes, “he saw a unifying factor around the Pacific Rim. Instead of a Eurocentric influence, he wanted Cabrillo’s thrust to be pan-Pacific. It took him some time to develop his concepts and thoughts on that, and to get to know Asian composers as he traveled more to Tokyo, Java, Japan, Korea in particular, and Hawaii, where there’s a very good East-West Center.” Under Dennis Russell Davies (1974-1990), Pan-Pacific composers such as Cambodia’s Chinary Ung became more a part of festival programming. Davies also drew upon the wide knowledge he acquired from traveling back and forth to his opera and chamber orchestra duties in Stuttgart to expand Cabrillo’s range. Davies arranged the first West Coast performances of the music of Arvo Pärt, the fabulous Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Alfred Schnittke, and balanced their works with music from the 19th and earlier centuries. (Note: Other Minds has just released a CD: "Del Sol String Quartet, Ring of Fire: Music of the Pacific Rim." One of the composers represented is Chinary Ung.)

The Atlantic Beckons

“With Marin Alsop,” says Hughes, “who is a native New Yorker, I slowly saw programming re-center on East Coast composition. Christopher Rouse is a prime example. He and John Corigliano have probably been played more than any other composers since she came on board.” (Both are programmed this year, along with Corigliano’s student Mason Bates.)

Photo by Kym Thomson

“Aaron Jay Kernis, another Alsop favorite, is a very fine composer, but he doesn’t represent what’s going on on the West Coast. John Adams, whom she represents very well, and who served as Music Director in 1991, is not really to my mind a West Coast composer. He lives here, and was out here early on with the San Francisco Conservatory, but he was born in the East. He’s become an 'international' composer. “Basically Cabrillo has returned to the pole of the East Coast and European ethnocentricity. The West Coast has taken a back seat. While Marin programs contemporary composers, and does a pretty incredible job with young composers, oftentimes they’re East Coast, like Kevin Puts.” Even as Hughes explained why he has withdrawn from involvement in the festival, he acknowledged that Alsop has few alternatives. Composers with a “West Coast spirit,” he asserts, have by and large turned away from orchestral writing. Not only do they identify it with earlier periods, but they have also been discouraged by the incredible expense and lack of rehearsal time. Nor are most orchestras equipped to work with electronics. Instead, today’s West Coast pioneers have turned to electronic music. They congregate at three different centers in the Bay Area: Stanford, where linearly generated computer music based upon scientific theory reigns; the far more experimental center at Mills College where “spontaneous interaction with irrational systems, the use of indeterminate factors, and experimental fusion” are encouraged; and the not quite as experimental Center for New Music and Audio Technology at UC Berkeley.

Alsop’s Freshness

During a recent discussion at the Music Critics Association of North America conference in Denver, Alsop noted that while critics in the U.S. associate her primarily with Bernstein, Barber, and contemporary composers, European critics know her far more for conducting Brahms, Mahler, and Dvořák. Her new recording of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World” (on Naxos), which BBC Magazine honored as its July 2008 “Disc of the Month,” certainly enhances her reputation for versatility. It also strengthens Hughes’ case for her Eurocentrism. If Dvořák’s Ninth isn’t an example of bringing the European influence to the Americas, I don’t know what is. Regardless, Alsop has only strengthened the festival’s overarching mission. Her allegiance to programming both well-known and budding contemporary composers reigns supreme. “I try to bring new composers every year,” she told me by phone. “Some of those new composers, like Mason Bates, become regulars. I try to listen to everything I get. Occasionally, I’ll pick a couple of pieces that just came to me out of the blue.” This year’s opening concert, which culminates in a Cabrillo-commissioned world premiere by Rouse, includes three composers new to the festival. She describes Stephen McNeff as a “very interesting” Brit in his 40s who was her Composer-in-Association when she conducted the Bournemouth Symphony. Eric Lindsay (b. 1980) and David Sanford, on the other hand, are new to her. Someone sent Alsop the score for Lindsay’s Darkness Made Visible, and she was so taken with its drama that she placed its world premiere on opening night. “I was interested in the music, and said, ‘Oh great. Let’s give that a try.’ It has an explosive opening that is not derivative. It also pays tribute to older romantic styles — it’s got an actual theme — so it’s pretty traditional in that respect. Since it’s only about nine minutes, I thought it would be a good introduction.” Sanford’s Scherzo Grosso, with Haimovitz on cello, is a different animal. “It’s very edgy,” she says, “and something for the people who really want challenge.” August 2 brings another composer new to Alsop, Dorothy Chang. Provided with several pieces by the Women’s Philharmonic Commissioning Initiative, she picked Chang’s Strange Air. “It’s very atmospheric,” she says. “While it does have a fast section in the middle, it’s more impressionistic than anything else, as you can imagine from the title.” Although Alsop’s enthusiasm for returning young composer Mason Bates is not unique — Michael Tilson Thomas has also commissioned a piece from him — I have found his integration of computer-generated electronics with full orchestra rather tame. As Hughes pointed out during our conversation, Gerhard Samuel featured Stockhausen doing far more adventurous stuff several decades ago. Regardless, Alsop finds Bates’ work “really appealing because of its fresh, young approach. I love the idea of the computer and electronica incorporated into the staid symphony orchestra,” she says. “It’s still pretty rare, because the technical hurdles are a bit too much for a lot of emerging composers.” The world premiere of young Matthew Cmiel’s Sneak in a Window, written at Alsop’s request, opens the August 9 concert. Cmiel took the name from advice Alsop often gives young people: If the front door is locked and no one will let you in, go around the side and sneak in a window. Once inside, Cmiel finds himself in the company of no less than Mark-Anthony Turnage, John Corigliano, and John Adams, whose Doctor Atomic Symphony should pack Santa Cruz Auditorium. To the final concert, in the extraordinary acoustic of Mission San Juan Bautista, Alsop brings four composers new to the festival. “Golijov is something of the flavor of the day,” she acknowledges, “but I’ve never done a piece of his before. It’s for expanded string orchestra, and it’s going to be fantastic.” Composer Chiayu came to Alsop through Cabrillo’s Composers Forum. Another woman, Alla Borzova, was recommended by Corigliano. Avner Dorman first entered Alsop’s consciousness when he sent her his Variations Without a Theme unsolicited. “It’s really engaging, with tremendous vitality,” she says. “This idea of variations without a theme is so inventive to me. The piece searches for a theme, sort of grabs onto something, and then skips away again. It’s very dynamic with lots of percussion, and should make a huge impact in the Mission.”

Alsop’s Bottom Line

To criticism that she favors accessible composers whose music fails to challenge listeners, Alsop has a strong response. “I don’t approach programming asking how challenging and inaccessible I can make it. My motivation is always, what music really speaks to me emotionally? What music takes me on a journey, and transforms me in some way? That’s the music that I program.

“I personally can relate to the music of Chris Rouse. I’m sorry if that is upsetting to some people. (For a lot of people it’s very exciting.) I feel very connected to this particular composer, so it’s natural for me to program his music, especially when he writes something new and of today, specifically for the festival. And I do a lot of other composers besides Corigliano and Higdon. I do a lot of Tom Adès and Jimmy MacMillan; I don’t find their music particularly easy listening. “Composers with very distinct world views, at least for me, intrigue me and get my creative juices going. They’re people that want to say something about the world that we live in. For me, that’s what's great about music and art; it stimulates a thought process and an emotional response. “Everything we do makes a statement. How you and I live our lives makes a statement about our sense of community, of responsibility, and of environment. Art is heightened awareness and a heightened state of consciousness. Art is always about the world we live in. Perhaps it’s seen through our own individual lens, or the composer’s lens. “For me, the emotional spectrum of a composer like Chris Rouse is reflective of the emotional world that I inhabit. His music ranges from immense desolation — that existential loneliness — to complete, over-the-top, violent exhilaration. That is the world as I experience it. That he’s able to tap into this range of emotion really makes me feel that I’m part of the moment we live in. “It’s a crazy world we live in, totally crazy. When I think about it a lot, I get very, very despondent. And then sometimes I’m extraordinarily optimistic. That’s what his music represents for me. “Cabrillo is also about relationships. It’s about the relationships of the musicians with the composer, the host families they live with, and me and the audience. Having creators who come back and become better known and develop more intimate relationships with our audience and musicians is only a win-win. Even if you don’t particularly care for someone’s music, getting to know them on a deeper level gives you much more dimension and breadth to view their art in context.”

Coming Full Circle

If ever there was a composer whose pacifism, long-term homosexual relationships (including one with an African-American), internationalism, and embrace of the “other” transcended division, it was Lou Harrison. Lou told me in 2002 that he was glad he wasn’t born one minute later than he was. “If you think about what’s happened between 1917 and the present, it’s enough to give you the shakes!” he said. “It’s pretty rough. If so-called civilization behaves this way increasingly, there’s not going to be any planet to live on.” That sure sounds like something Alsop might say. As the most publicized woman conductor on the planet, Alsop’s global and personal concerns seem very much in line with Harrison’s. But for her, geography, lineage, or spiritual affiliation are not primary concerns. While she certainly wishes to give women composers an opportunity to showcase their work (and brava for that), what new music has to say, and its ultimate power to stimulate, enlighten, and transform, guides her tenure.