Music at the Mission
By Mark Flegg
Our final concerts of the 2008 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: (4:00pm SOLD OUT) Mission San Juan Bautista Tickets: $35 / click here to order Chiayu: Feng Nian Ji (Harvest Festival) (World Premiere) Osvaldo Golijov: Last Round Alla Borzova: To the New World (U.S. Premiere) Avner Dorman: Variations Without a Theme (West Coast Premiere) Four composers new to the Festival, each with voices rooted in lands far away, will be honored in the storied setting of the Old Mission sanctuary on a program aptly titled To the New World. Born in Taiwan, Chiayu will join us first for the World Premiere of Feng Nian Ji (Harvest Festival), which she has written expressly for the Festival. Based on the traditional harvest festival of Taiwan’s largest aboriginal tribe, her music follows the progression of this dramatic ceremonial occasion. Born in Belarus and now a U.S. citizen, Alla Borzova is well suited to articulate the immigrant experience. In To the New World which receives its U.S. Premiere today, Borzova tells of an imaginary ship that brings immigrants of various nationalities to the shores of America—Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, African, Latin American and Chinese—during the waves of immigration that began in the mid-19th century. The work reflects the ethnic musical styles brought by these immigrants to their new world. MacArthur Fellow and Grammy Award-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in Argentina, surrounded by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla. Last Round for string orchestra was written in memory of Piazzolla after a stroke killed him in 1992 at the peak of his creativity. Golijov borrowed the title, Last Round, from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar, and used it as the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit to fight one more time. With its white-hot passion and crisscrossed choreography of bows, the work is a sublimated tango dance. Avner Dorman has quickly risen to become one of Israel’s most successful and renowned composers. His Variations Without a Theme is described as “sophisticated music that cleverly explores both Eastern and Western sonic worlds� and “calls to mind the bustle of an Arab bazaar.� The composer joins audiences for its West Coast Premiere. Maestra Marin Alsop, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Chiayu, Borzova, and Dorman, bring the 2008 Festival season to a resounding close in the splendor of Mission San Juan Bautista. One moment, one chance. Don’t miss it! In the San Juan Day tradition, audience members are invited to enjoy pre-concert picnicking in the Mission Olive Grove.