CABRILLO: EXEMPLARY, CONTEMPORARY
            Marin Alsop Risks Quakes---and Nearly Unleashes Them 
<>                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Aug. 15-22, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 122  
            SAN JUAN BAUTISTA, CA—When he founded his mission church in this tiny settlement in 1797, little did Junipero Serra  suspect that the ground would be shaking on and on. Just a year later, the earthquakes became so severe that the missionaries slept outdoors  for a month. Those subsided, but now, one day a year, the mission is a center for new orchestral music-----a shake of a much more welcome kind. And the premieres keep  popping like July 4 firecrackers.
            Every year, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music devotes its final day to concerts in this historic 394-seat chapel, bristling with new creations. While the bucolic colonial-era town is all around, with roosters still crowing in yards,  the music inside is cutting edge, playing to sold-out audiences that adventurous orchestras elsewhere are dying to acquire and  inspire.
            Abetted by the resonance within, the concerts are inevitably among the year’s most vibrant anywhere in the environs of Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Jose. The one of Aug. 14 was the grand finale for the 49th season, with most of the composers emerging figures under 40 years of age. The season was the 20th under the baton of popular and efficient Marin Alsop, who had foresightedly been engaged to debut here as music director when she was only 34.
            Alsop not only talks up the music engagingly; she also attracts the featured composers en masse. This year, a record 15 composers came personally to their concerts from many directions, among them luminaries like Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, George Tsontakis and Christopher Rouse. Their in-person appearances, along with Alsop, are the vital catalysts to the concerts’ great success.  At the same time, international maestra  Alsop pulls in orchestral musicians nationally, this year representing 20 states and three foreign countries.
            Apart from trying to squeeze the ensemble into the confined sanctuary space, the festival’s main problem has been achieving eloquence within the limited rehearsal time. Over the two weekends there were 18 premieres, with a stunning seven world premieres among them. One thinks back to the days of Beethoven, when his premieres were at best spotty, hardly comparable to the mature later performances. The pieces are put effectively on display, but usually without the depth that later performances might elicit.
            One notable exception this year however came from the British composer Anna Clyne, the youngest of the group. Her “Within Her Arms” for string orchestra breathed and sang, never rushing, in a somber mood impinging on threnody. There were muted  low strings in minor keys, with haunting pedal points in the basses, resulting in an easy ebb and flow, reflective to the core. Its bundle of eloquent enigmas left us with food for thought as the strings were richly divided and subdivided, as if reaching for the subatomic particles in order to produce the richest harmonies. The piece right away brought to mind multi-voice music of Tallis, and of Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosen,” with a tinge or two of Vaughn Williams. But I dearly want to hear more of Clyne, 31, currently in residence at the Chicago Symphony; her opus crowned the MSJB finale.
            Poetry dominated three of the five works on the program---verses by the monk Thich Nhat Hanh, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, by Robert Frost, all of them quasi-inspirational, not literal references. And all the works were tonal---seemingly the preferred direction of American composers and conductors today.
            The Israeli Avner Dorman, currently among the most performed of the under-40 composers, launched a new work “Reflections,” touching on many musical eras and styles: renaissance, Gabrieli-baroque, perpetuum mobile, and modern minimalism. It’s an engaging five-minute venture, with some dense counterpoint, and a strong role for winds.
            A Taiwanese woman named Chiayu wrote a cautious 17-minute piece for horn and orchestra, “Xuan Zang,” after a famous 7th-century globe-wandering Buddhist monk. Chiayu shared Xuan Zang’s fascination with diverse cultures, quoting here a folk song of the valiant Uyghur minority, whose massed demonstrations this year have been suppressed by the Chinese government.
            The work appears to depict the uncertainties of the monk’s voyages, with much unresolved. While the piece too consciously separates the roles of orchestra and horn soloist (Kristin Jurkscheit), it is best when the sounds are tumbling amiably atop one another, reflecting jumbled images and variety of inpirations. Like much Chinese music today, it is basically programmatic, and could well serve as a film score for a travelogue.
            The Texan Dan Welcher’s “Bright Wings: A Valediction” (also a premiere) was a cordially rambunctious opus with colorful orchestral effects, using a trio of trombones essentially as a backbone. It’s jubilant and extroverted, and not without humor, as percussionists ran back and forth in their limited space, passing off scores and mallets, risking a trip in every possible sense within the context of their play.
            Pierre Jalbert is a well-known mid-career figure with some Québécois heritage. His “Fire and Ice,” which we had reviewed at its Oakland world premiere four years ago, is a skilful selection by a post-Debussy figure immersed in sensual orchestration.  It’s a 19-minute crescendo piece, going from delicacy to vehement volcanic effects and furious, take-no-prisoners climaxes, shaking the floor stones enough to recall that epic 1798 set of MSJB quakes. Jalbert knows his medium and exploits it with bold strokes. No, the walls didn’t come tumbling down; but the resonance of the church builds up the sonics to a level of intoxication even for the teetotaling listener.
            Alsop & crew did evoke the subtle moments of the Jalbert, and she led the program with accustomed efficiency. To discuss the fine points of the orchestra however was impossible; we’d need to hear them back in the festival’s Santa Cruz home base, where the sounds are much much leaner, devoid of all that gravy.
            The 2011 concerts will be broadcast and webcast, on a delayed basis, on KUSP 88.9 FM.
             THE FIFTIETH--- The dates for the 2012 festival---the big Five-O---are July 28-Aug. 12, which will feature a world premiere by the eminent Scot James MacMillan, no less. Among others.
                Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Marin Alsop, music director, July 31-Aug. 14. For info: (831) 420-5260, or go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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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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