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Unknown: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming to the preview the festival preview for the 1997 Cabrillo Music Festival. I'm Tom Frederick's, Executive Director of the festival. And Hi there, somebody waved. It is so exciting. We

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just think about it. We have this magnificent orchestra that comes from comes from all over to make this the center of the universe this evening. We have a one of our nation's most wonderful and talented and accomplished conductors to lead

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them. And she brings with them the composers of our of our nation who give us our voice give us our voice our symphonic voice. And so this evening, I want you to join me in welcoming Marin Alsop. Back to the festival for her sixth season.

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And with her his composer Libby Larsen, and composer George Collins, really, please welcome all of them to the 1997 Cabrillo Music Festival. All right. Good evening, everybody. Nice to see you all beautiful night.

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Finally, and it's nice to be back. I always look forward to this all year. This is the not the only place I go to conduct where people say when I worry about Oh, gee, do you think that people sell tickets and they say who cares about selling tickets,

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we should just do something wild because our audience loves it. That's definitely a unique situation here. It's not quite the same in most places. One of the most exciting parts for me, of course, is having living composers. Join me for this

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experience. I think for you, too. I hope it is. And before I ask Libby and George, a few questions, I just want to say a couple words about the festival in general and how I came to the idea of the theme. You know, we we sort of have themes as you

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gather, right? Sometimes it's film, sometimes it's somebody said, I understand your what you're doing now, every year you do something either in front of the orchestra or behind the orchestra. So that's the theme this year. It's basically in

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front of the orchestra this year. So next year will be maybe above the orchestra, who knows. But the I picked a few pieces that I wanted to do one of them being Bernstein's age of anxiety. Another one a piece by a composer named Paul

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schoenfield. And I there was something Wow. That's interesting. It's the singing bicyclist contingent. Nice to see. A lot of them Wow.

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Do we have a drummer? drummer, I see. There goes our percussion section. Very funny. So um, with these pieces, I noticed that one of the biggest influences was American jazz. And I thought that that would be a nice theme,

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basically, to run through a lot of the music that we're going to do on this festival. And so it led me to programming pieces with by George kalindra, who's terrific composer, especially in the jazz idiom. And I knew that Libby Larsen, who has been here,

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I don't know if most of you remember was two, three years ago, two years ago. And I know that a lot of her work is influenced by jazz as well. And so basically all the concerts down here at the Civic have that theme. Of course, I can't ever

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stick with one idea completely. So there are few other influences. Like next Friday, we have some Haitian Voodoo drumming, and some Hawaiian influence, but, you know, just stretch it a little bit. What can I say they're short. So

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tonight's program that we kick off on, really, all three of the pieces, I think, are heavily influenced by jazz, or at least more popular music in that way. So I think I'll start with Libby since her piece was the opening piece. And maybe I should ask

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you some questions like, how did you do play jazz? or How did you, you know, get influenced by this style of music? Well, I was classically trained pianist, but whenever I wasn't practicing, I was playing strike Boogie piano in the evenings or five in the

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morning, right, right. I really love strike Boogie. And I love all kinds of jazz, and, and so paralleling, all the classical training that I, I had, and many, many, many years of it. I've always really loved jazz. So when it came time to find my

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voice as a composer, I chiefly am a classical composer composing for classical instruments, but I'm trying to, but I'm also an American. And jazz is that's our music, as is rock and roll. And so I'm I come at it from a more classical

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point of view. This particular piece is a is a collage of little Boogie licks from all the bogies I've ever played. And I was In her piece, which is called collage Boogie, there's the piano is probably the most featured instrument. So we've

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amplified the piano so that really comes out and I don't know there's I hear a lot of it's sort of like the boogie woogie You can't escape almost like you're trying to, to me anyway, it feels like it's a classical piece that has Boogie

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Woogie inside and it keeps, like alien, you know, keeps popping out. You can't. You didn't see that movie. Okay, well, whatever. But for me, it's really a fun piece of it's very virtuosic piece for the orchestra. And Libby is going to

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be with us for the whole two weeks. And next Friday night, we're doing your third Symphony as well. So I urge you, she's wonderful person. She's also I'm assuming we signed the contract between us, which went through love. She's gonna be my composer

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in residence in Denver, next year, as well. So I'm thrilled about that. Thanks, Lily. And now Georgia and Georgia met. Let's see, oh, gosh, I'm getting old George. You're not but I am. George. I met through Eddie Daniels actually, about

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13 years ago, New York. 1984 1984. Yes. And this was, um, I had this idea that I wanted to be a conductor. And nobody would give me a job. So I decided that the best thing to do would be to just start my own orchestra and

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need a little money. That was the only problem but I dug up some money and started an orchestra called Concordia, as you all probably know, and the very first concert we did, I wanted to do some jazz works on the concert. Of course,

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everybody, all the people in the serious music, serious music industry thought I was crazy. They said, Oh, you can play jazz at serious concerts. You notice nowadays, everyone does it. You know, New York Philharmonic does it all the time. And now it's

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great. But in 1984, it was pretty avant garde to do. And I needed Of course, a soloist and and the person that came to mind right away was the soloist that we have this evening. So phenomenal clarinet player, great jazz musician named Eddie

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Daniels. And I had met him in the studios I used to play for films and for jingles and TV, commercial stuff like that. And so Eddie, I guess, did Eddie come to you and ask you to write some pieces? Is that how that?

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No, what happened was that I had been commissioned to write the clarinet Concerto for it already, I think, oh, by the new American orchestra, foundation for new American music. So I was writing the piece and I think has been already premiered in

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Los Angeles in 1984. When you told me about the writing something special for the Concordia Chamber Orchestra. And was there when we decided to do the solfege or metamorphosis, which is the solfege letter that CPE Bach wrote, like 250 years

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ago, and the metamorphosis I wrote about 13 years ago. Okay, so that that came out to be the sole fidgeter with a Morphosis. And he was premiered by by. So we're giving away that we have an encore, so you better

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clap a lot, because otherwise you won't hear the solfeggio it's not in your program. But we're playing it what do you clap or not? We don't care. I'm sorry. Give it away? No,

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I don't mind. I don't mind being there or dear the insiders here. So. Excellent. So what for the clarinet concerto I hear all kinds of

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influences in that. I mean, my favorite moment is for me the Rite of Spring or Minsky moment, suddenly the Rite of Spring breaks out and, and there's what there's a clarinet going crazy over the changes in the Rite of Spring, I think Stravinsky would

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have loved it. But that was one of my biggest influences. When I when I heard I think it was 14 when I first fell in love with the Rite of Spring. And I mean, I have this fantasy all my life. And when

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you got to compose a solo, a background for Eddie, I thought that would be great to use that that strumming skin texture, but in in the in the kind of in a form in a blues form. Because it's like a I think it's 32 bars, right? They just keep

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repeating, right. So the rhythmic pattern is totally, very much like service can was done purposely. But the chords are more just so I mean, I just kind of merged all my loves all the people. I've always loved Ravel that so you're gonna find

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a little Ravel Stravinsky, a little bar, and koplin and I don't know everybody that I love and whatever I could put from me and the rest is me. Oh, it's a wonderful, wonderful piece. And I think you'll be incredibly amazed by Eddie Daniel. So he

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sounds wonderful and your orchestra sounded great in the rehearsal so I'm sure he's gonna be a lot of fun. Hopefully tonight will sound

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even better. That's the goal. We hope to get the orchestra especially sound right from the first rehearsal sounded like they've been playing together every day. So probably all downhill from here. No, just kidding. They really did sound

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great. And the Let's see, what else can I tell you? I think they've done some a few more acoustical improvements on the hall. So it's we're coming along, it's coming along. The seats are still uncomfortable. Sorry about that. Maybe you

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should take those chairs and um and i I think it's going to be a very exciting festival the know how many of you were able to hear the opening event last night where they played all blue Harrison's music. It was really very lovely and, and that's the

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other component of the festival even though it's a sort of the theme is jazz. It's really Lou Harrison jazz sandwich because Lou opens the festival and he closes the festival as well at the mission and on that concert Sunday. Hope you all can make

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that too. I invited Joe Swanton her back. He was here a few years ago as well. And I wanted to do we're doing to have loose pieces, one with the cabrio choir, called strict songs they record is really a beautiful piece. And also, I thought it

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would be a nice idea to try to be make it a very inclusive concert because it's the 200th anniversary of the mission. I'm not sure you all know that at San Juan Bautista. And so I thought maybe we could somehow get all the music directors from

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the past involved. So I programmed a piece by Chavez. And I did invite Dennis to come I don't know if he'll show up. And the piece that we're doing by Joe swaner is called New morning for the world. And it's based on many of the texts of

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Martin Luther King's speeches, and Milton, who, who you all know, actually you'll hear him tomorrow night is doing the narration. And that just felt like a tremendous some closure for me. I also just want to invite you tomorrow night to the

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concert where we're doing. If you like things in front of the orchestra, this is the concert for you. If you like the orchestra tonight is the right concert you should come to but tomorrow night, there's a lot of distracting stuff going on in

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front of the orchestra. We're doing two small operas. The first one is by Samuel Barber. It's called the hand of Bridget rarely performed piece. It's about how long does it have to take eight minutes, I guess it depends how it's going eight or

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10 minutes depending on who's doing the bidding. And basically though these four characters, you know, two couples that in between the you know, Ace of Hearts, two clubs, blah, blah, whatever they're saying. They say they ruminate about all

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their rather lewd fantasies about all these various people. I don't want to give too much of it away. And so it's rather a surreal hand of bridge. And then we're following that with a piece by Gershwin, a chamber opera that was written 12 years

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before Porgy and Bess. And this is a piece that I did the first recording of with Concordia really was not known at all. It was included in a review show, originally, but it was considered too serious to bring to Broadway so they can the

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opera before it got there. But the music is fantastic. The book is a little silly. But you can really hear all these great tunes that Gershwin is going to use throughout his career. And then the second half is going to be the West Coast premiere of a

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Copeland score, believe it or not, from 1929 to the first dance score he wrote called here he here you never performed on the west coast. And there's an original choreography that is extremely interesting. I'm not sure I get it yet, but it's

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really wild. And I think I have the I think I got the concert last night. So I don't know maybe you want to come to the rehearsal tomorrow too. So you can get up to speed. But this phenomenally talented choreographers have done a great

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job with us. And there's all kinds of things, lots of shopping carts. So I noticed I mean, I can't really see it because my back to them. But every time I turn around, there's something very frightening going on. And but

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the score is really neat. And it was originally a story about a woman that killed her husband very, very loose story and the trial that ensued. But of course, that theme in 1929 was quite taboo. And so I think they've taken it looks generally

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to be more about conforming versus non conforming, something like that. Anyway, let me know what you think. And we'll check in with each other. So that's tomorrow night. And of course, I hope you come to all the events some and and meet everybody in

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the orchestra if you don't know them, because this is a phenomenal group of players. They're really, really great. And they're here just because they want to be here and be part of the community. And so we thank you for listening to us

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tonight and hope you enjoy the concert and look forward to seeing you all over the next two weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.