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Unknown: Yes. Good evening. Hello everyone. Thank you for being here. I would first like to take a moment. It is my honor to introduce the executive co director of Cabrillo Music Festival, Tom Frederick's.

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Thank you very much. And it is now my honor to introduce the executive co director of Cabrillo Music Festival, Ellen Primack. And it is really very wonderful to welcome you here tonight for

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our opening night of our 37th season and a very ambitious 37th season it is it involves more people than you can imagine. And you are surely as audience members as donors as supporters, as family of all of the cast of hundreds that we have this

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season part of that. And so we're really very, very pleased to have you here on this is quite an undertaking. It only begins with mass. And we have a full festival season. And Tom is going to tell you a little about that.

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On Sunday night. I know most of your subscribers at least half of your subscribers on Sunday night is an amazing concert that will get back to the core of what cabrio music does, which is new music for orchestra. And in this case, we'll we'll showcase

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four of four of America's leading and greatest composers. It was called giants in concert because they are giants of American music. And you probably know the program. I'll go quickly. It's Steve Wright. It includes Steve Wright, Aaron

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Copeland, Chris helped me Alan. Now I don't want to say Chris Rouse yet. Oh, john adams, of course. And and then Christopher Rouse. And the the exciting thing about this program for me is when I heard the Rouse work played by Carolyn sends the

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guest artists. This is truly an amazing moment in the concert. And, and I really look forward to you're experiencing that moment on Sunday night. So this is August 8. And then we come back on next Saturday at Civic Auditorium with some romantic

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evening. And all I'm gonna say about that is there a surprise and it involves Las Vegas. It's really it's a fun concert. And and I think you'll be delighted with the surprise we have. Then we go to the mission and this is the 25th anniversary of Cabrillo

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Music Festival admission San Juan Bautista and Marin, I think Marin has programmed the most sacred and most beautiful and, and most compelling music for the mission that we've experienced so far in the nine years that I've been here. So

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I'm really looking forward to that, too. So that's the next that's life after mass. And I'm hoping to see all of you there and enjoying it with me. And so now with all of the truly hundreds of people who have to

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do with the festival, it's a pleasure to introduce the person at the helm of America's contemporary music festival, our brilliant music director and conductor Marin also. Well, thank you all very much. It's great to see so many of you

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here and you'll be really happy once we're all packed inside that the weather is like this. I know you're not that happy right now. But believe me when when we get going and since the show is sold out tonight, I'm happy to say and all the performances of

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mass are sold out. Yes. So the and that combined with the upwards of 150 people on the stage makes it really hot in there. So we'll be happy that

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it's cool outside. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about what you're going to see tonight. This is a very special piece to me in many, many ways. The history of the piece just a little bit of history is that Bernstein was asked to write a

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piece that would open the john F. Kennedy Center in Washington. And Jackie Kennedy at the time wanted Bernstein to write the piece. And so when he was thinking about the piece, it's really interesting. The thing that struck him was that JFK was

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our first and to this point, only Roman Catholic president. And that's what struck Bernstein. And so he picked the mass not as a literal mass, but mostly as a well, it's on many levels, but it's mostly used as a structure for the piece. So it

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indeed has all the sections of the mass, the Curia a the song to see the unused day, all the all the sections, but it's really just used as a structure and not literally as a ceremonial experience. Although the experience is ceremonial,

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and it's so many things on so many levels. And you have to remember Bernstein wrote the piece in the early 70s. It was premiered in 1971. And he uses, it's probably one of the first pieces that uses some sort of mixed media, the piece opens

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with what they call it the time quadrophonic tape, I think it was quite advanced, it was tape that came out of four different speakers. And of course, we don't even have a tape player anymore that plays something like this. So we had to have it

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transferred to CD, so that we could you know, digitize everything in this new age. But what you hear at the beginning is a Curie A that is a tonal it's on all different keys coming out of all these different speakers is very

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disconcerting, and very, I think disorienting. And Bernstein wants that to happen. And then from this crazy opening, I mean to us today, it might not be that crazy. But from this really, almost cacophony. We meet the main protagonists of

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the mass, and that, of course, is the celebrant or the priest. And he sings a piece called the simple song, which couldn't be further from the cacophony of what we just heard. I mean, it's just a beautiful, simple song about God and how he feels about

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his faith. And so this is a story. I mean, it is a story piece. But it's more of a journey piece. And it it takes the celebrant, we meet him at the beginning, when he's, you know, he's really very, I think he's very content, very

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satisfied in his beliefs, not questioning too many things. And we go from that, and, and then we meet all these other people that come into his life. There's a group called the st chorus, and they're they number 1516 people. And we have some

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fabulous people in that and they're all very individual. And they each question the celebrant, you know, well, why should I? Why should I believe in one God? Oh, you want me to believe in three? That's right. Oh, okay. I'll believe in 20.

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Gods if they'll believe in me, you know, and this, each one of them has a soliloquy in the form of a rock song, or a blue song, or an angry song, a lot of anger going on. It's the early 70s. You have to remember, it was very hard to very hard to get

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people who really I guess they weren't, were they even born in the sun. I'm getting so old. But you know, they It was hard to get them angry enough in the 90s. It was interesting. That has been a struggle, but I think we're almost there. And so each

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of the street people, they act as individuals questioning the celebrant, and they act also as a group, a little bit of a Greek chorus in responding to the celebrant, and what's going on, but they're constantly pushing him. And then we have a 60

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voice, liturgical choir, it's they sing some corrals, they sing this incredibly difficult. This will I'll give you a little bit of insight too, because they're part in some ways is the hardest musically, it's very rhythmically, it's very hard to

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put together and so we have a beautiful set inside. But unfortunately for us, the chorus is about a couple football fields away from me. So we struggled for a while to figure out how to do that. So finally, they have some monitors back

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there. That was about the only thing we can figure out to do. And they're doing a fabulous job and Milton Williams put this course together from scratch, we had no chorus. And they've been rehearsing for about six months and they're just doing a great

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job and they comment also and they act as a as a choir would during the mass service as well. Then we have dancers and Gary masters has choreographed the dancing and they usually they're related to the tape is quadrophonic Tape. And they come

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in and comment on the experience. But it's mostly the street course and the celebrant, and what happens between them. So it's a journey where he keeps getting pushed and why why why should we believe in these things? And don't you ever

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question and they keep pushing, keep, keep pushing. And finally, it breaks into I should mention also, the orchestra is an amalgam like I think, was rare certainly rarely seen in 1971. And even today, it's unusual to have four electric guitars in

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your orchestra. And I won't say anything else. It's maybe I will say want to thank these guys are great, but it's, it's you can find a great electric guitar player, but it's really hard to find great guitar players that can also read music that's in

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five, four time, so not a lot of rock and roll is in five, four time. So we have that going on. And they act as the rock band and the blues band. And there's a catharsis finally where the chorus breaks into singing don't a no BS, no BS patcham give us

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peace. And but it's not a calm give us peace thing. It's a really, it's a driving kind of donut, no BS, no BS podge and it goes on and on and on, then the street course starts singing, you know, we're not down on our knees weren't really screaming,

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hopefully, if they're doing it right tonight, they should be. I'm trying to get them angry. Every time I walk by him, I give him dirty looks. And so they're screaming and this thing is building. And then finally, Bernstein says the guitars can

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start improvising. So they're going crazy. And then the choir comes out finally from behind the scene and they sort of spill into this thing. And they're going crazy. Everybody's going wild. And the this is the really the cathartic moment where the

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celebrant has is pretty much pushed over the edge. I mean, he just can't take it anymore. And this is a mon I just want to point out because for me, this is a piece of music that is unlike any other piece of music, as you can tell it has so many

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diverse styles in it and different concepts. But it's incredibly held together. And when the celebrant has his it's basically his mad scene or his complete breakdown. He, he finally begins speaking, and the way he speaks, I mean, he's

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singing, but there's no orchestral accompaniment. It's just like a stream of consciousness. And he sings every single tune that you've heard in the whole show, in some way, these little snippets. But even more importantly to me is

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the way Bernstein uses language. And, of course, part of the pieces in Latin, because it's the mass, the old math. And then part of the piece is in Hebrew, because of course Bernstein and his Jewish heritage. He wanted to bring that in, in the song

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twos instead of song Tuesday goes to Kadosh. And then part of it Paul Simon wrote, he wrote one verse called half the people, and his half the people are drowned. And the other half is looking. Oh, I can't remember it. Cheese. I'll remember it.

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But tonight, don't worry. I don't. Where are you? Yeah, they're looking in the wrong direction yet swimming in the wrong direction. But something about the election too. Anyway. It's an angry time and waiting for the next

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election. Good. Who's talking to me? Where are you? Somebody is good. And so, um, what happens with the celebrant, and this is what's so incredibly interesting to me is that during these musical snips, the language also changes. So he goes from, I

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don't I, I don't know. No BS, patch em. Me, hate me. He's singing the word me. And he's actually singing the word me on the note. He which is me in dough Ray me. He says Me, me alone. Then Me, me with so that's me. And so those are the

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notes. And also me will solve. And it's unbelievable. You know, I don't know if one can even grasp it the first time you hear it because every single word, and every single note is a play on itself and just captures the entire piece in this solo

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soliloquy. And I guess having known Bernstein a little bit, I studied with him for a few few years near the end of his life. One of his favorite things to do, he travelled always, as you know, he traveled quite a great deal and he always insisted that

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the definitive Dictionary of the English language be packed. And you know, before you could get it on your computer, and so they carry around this huge bag that and the complete Shakespeare. He took that everywhere with him and his favorite thing was to

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stay up all night and try to find out In the dictionary, and all he found many, many, many, and he would be in such a good mood when he found one of those. But I mean, it was his love of language and interest in language. And I had the joy of

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going to Japan with him. And he of course didn't know a word of Japanese, but he, he felt compelled to speak Japanese all the time while we were there. And no one understood a word. He said it was fantastic though because he had the accent and

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every all the so but, you know, hearing this piece, and we're hoping that the, we've worked very, very hard on the miking to try to get that just so that so that you can grab some of the lyrics. But

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if you have time, you know, take the take the libretto home and look it over because this too is such a stroke of genius. And for me, the mass is really a microcosm of who Bernstein was it. For me, his genius wasn't the fact that he was a great

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composer. He was a great conductor, he was a great thinker, he was a great communicator, you know, great TV, personality, all these things. But to me, he was one of the few people I've ever met in my life that could connect all

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the dots to all these things. You know, I've met so many brilliant people, and they're brilliant in one, one area, you know, and you're just stunned by that. But here's a guy who is brilliant in every area. And somehow he could connect it all

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together. And this is a piece like that it brings every style of music that you could think of certainly at that time. Together. There are three meditations in the in the mass. We're just the orchestra plays, and those are based on

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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, he uses a theme from Beethoven's Ninth but of course, it's not all that recognizable. But for him Beethoven's Ninth Symphony represents the brotherhood of man. And Bernstein said to me always that, you know, he said,

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I think that every composer, just like every author spends his entire life writing the same piece, because they're trying to answer the same questions for themselves in different guises. And every piece of Bernstein's that I've done deals with the

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same issues, he's trying to figure out, what, of course, why we're here, what's this meaning, but what is faith? And for him, I think faith has really no denomination, he always believed in the goodness of mankind, he always stood up for what he

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believed. And this concept of the Brotherhood of coming together was his. I think that was his reason for being. And so Beethoven ninth, you know, which speaks of the Brotherhood of in the last moment, you know, and coming together and, and

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connecting. And so I think that's why he quotes Beethoven ninth, throughout this piece, as well. And another byproduct, which is so fascinating on another level, is that, by requiring so many people to be involved in the production, he

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naturally requires that you become connected to people that you wouldn't know, so that we already have our own universe in there, you know, I mean, we were 100 some odd people. I mean, with the orchestra, it's got to be about 180 people. And we've

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been working together in different guises for four months. And somehow, there's a family that's been created. And also we've had been able to draw on so much talent from this area's a very small area. And I can't tell you, the level of

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performing and the level of commitment of everyone in the show, it's been really impressive. And I think you'll, you'll be very proud, you know, to be part of this kind of community. But I think Bernstein knew that having to galvanize

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these kind of forces would also create unto itself some kind of brotherhood and sharing experience. So I also before I and is I wanted to also thank the Cabrillo Music Festival for undertaking something like this. This is no small experience. And

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even though they said yes, before they really knew what it was, and then I held them to it. No, they didn't really, they're much more responsible everyone else that I everyplace else I did did that. But I'd like to thank Tom and Ellen and the

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board and everybody in the community who really came forward and donated more money, but also donated time and all the performance, you know, because that's the only way we could do this kind of project. It's a piece that's only been

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played maybe, maybe performed, I don't know, a dozen times since its premiere and 28 years ago. So I know that there are people coming from throughout the United States to see this performance because it's almost never done. And I hope that we

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can keep the tradition of being able to do things that other people are afraid to do alive. And I thank you all very, very much and I hope you enjoy the show tonight. Thank you