CABRILLO: TWO WORLD PREMIERES, AND A KERNIS KERNEL 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Aug. 13-20,  2007
                                                                  Vol. 10, No. 5
          SAN JUAN BAUTISTA---Aaron Jay Kernis sets a high standard indeed for his fellow composers.
            The compact New Yorker once again showed the mettle that had won him both the prestigious Grawemeyer Award and the Pulitzer (the youngest ever to do so, at age 37). On the final day of the Cabrillo Festival, he inspired the sellout throng with his ardent out-of-season song cycle “Valentines.”
            He has an intriguing way of linking the old with the new. The vocal line was as sympathetic to the soprano voice in its long phrases and high-arching lines as those of the master of the lied, Richard Strauss. His orchestration meanwhile veered closer to Debussy (a path rarely taken by American composers since World War Two), all without parroting the predecessors. He created many moods in his love songs on texts by Carol Ann Duffy, from the violently unsettled to the sublime.
            The third of his four songs was longer than all the rest put together. But that was in part because of the resonant acoustics in the historic  Mission San Juan Bautista  (church), forcing conductor Marin Alsop to slow the overall pace (from 25 to 29 minutes) for intelligibility. Susan Narucki’s singing was exquisite in its brio, full of exclamation points.
            There were not one but two world premieres, the longest of them the Symphony No. 4 by Kevin Puts.
            A product of the Eastman School and now a faculty member at the Peabody Institute just up the road from Alsop’s Baltimore Symphony, Puts is back here for the fifth consecutive year. His symphony attempts to capture the ambiance of the early Mission San Juan Bautista   and its Mutsun Indians around the year 1800. After a bucolic opening prelude, Puts moves into a lively quasi-Indian dance with some beautifully intertwined woodwind lines as well as robust brass fanfares. A skilled orchestrator, Puts sets the moods well, even when the violins are playing unaccompanied.
            Only in the finale is there a stubbing of toes in clichés. There is a rambunctious, brassy processional on imagined Indian themes, leading to a gigantic climax that nearly tore the wooden roof beams off the church, along musical paths previously very well trod by the likes of Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Respighi.
            East Coast composer Kenneth Fuchs, the only composer of the group to have reached the half-century mark, contributed a concert overture, “United Artists,” a lively and exuberant exercise that dances along at high speed with numerous “echoes” of a four-note theme.
            Featuring these East Coast composers is eminently instructive and broadening, and in no way assailable. It’s unfortunate however that, with the exception of John Adams, the West Coast composers do not get commeasurate attention on the East Coast, or in sites  between.
            Music festivals rarely end up in Catholic churches, but this one, a staple for each festival’s final day of concerts, seems like a marriage made in heaven. Because of the visceral acoustic environment and the tight space, audience and musicians seems welded together as one, and the effect is supremely intoxicating---yet without any of the risks of ingesting controlled substances. This enthusiast will take it in every time, heading off to that remote El Camino Real location some 100 mi. south of San Francisco, teetering right on the escarpment of one of California’s biggest earthquake faults.
            My steadfast contention regarding the San Juan Bautista concerts: no risk, no gain!
          Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Marin Alsop, music director, Aug. 3-12 in Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista. Delayed broadcasts and webcasts on KUSP 88.9 FM and its web site. For info: (831) 426-6966, or go online. <>
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2007
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          Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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