This year's Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music brings out an all-star line-up of guest composers (July, 2010)
By: Wallace Baine, of the Santa Cruz Sentinel

If Marin Alsop had assembled a baseball team instead a roster of guest composers for this year's Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, you might say that she's put together the makings of a championship squad -- a couple of superstars, a couple of promising youngsters and a lot of fine, dependable professionals in between.

OK, so contemporary orchestral music is a rather rarefied realm on today's cultural landscape. But if you know who's who on the scene, then you might approach this year's Cabrillo Music Festival like a baseball fan approaches the All-Star Game.

Chief among those stars is Alsop herself, one of the most prominent and accomplished female composers in the world, now in her 19th season of programming the CMF. Then come the giants in the field, the minimalist pioneer Philip Glass and "Nixon in China" star composer John Adams. Behind them, the near-greats -- the prolific Briton Mark-Anthony Turnage and friend-of-the-festival Jennifer Higdon, whose year so far includes winning a Grammy and a Pulitzer Prize. Then, the familiar names to Cabrillo watchers -- Kevin Puts, Michael Hersch -- and the young newcomers -- Anna Clyne, Sean Hickey, Nathaniel Stookey. The festival also includes top-drawer performers as well, including the Kronos Quartet, percussionist Colin Currie, cellist Wendy Sutter and the ensemble Eighth Blackbird...

...Over the past 19 years, Marin Alsop has created an environment where composers want to be. Much of the appeal for composers, she said, comes from Cabrillo's audiences, a relationship she cultivates with the annual "Meet the Composers" luncheon this year on Aug. 7.
"Uniformly, composers are always impressed by the level of discourse from our audience," said Alsop. "It's not just When did you start composing?' or Who's your favorite composer?' There are questions about philosophy and more existential questions than they're accustomed to."
Like novelists or painters, composers often find their work to be a lonely experience. Festival appearances are one of the most immediate ways that composers connect with audiences.

"Composing is very much like the situation that I'm in as a conductor," said Alsop. "You're not there in big numbers and, often, you're the only one who does what you do there. I think the composers find it stimulating and illuminating to be around other composers."
"It's great to be around like-minded people," said Hersch.

However much they like communing with each other and audiences, Cabrillo composers reserve their highest accolades to Alsop and the musicians of the CMF Orchestra...

..."I've been to my fair share of festivals," said Michael Hersch, whose last time at Cabrillo was in 2003. "And from my first experience at Cabrillo, the experience was so positive. I can't really imagine it being any better."

Baltimore Symphony to offer 2010-11 season preview at Strathmore (July, 2010)
By: Tim Smith of The Baltimore Sun

One of the smart ideas to have emerged in orchestral circles in recent years is the season preview concert -- a program designed to provide prospective concert-goers (and subscription-buyers) a taste of what will be in store on the series ahead. The Baltimore Symphony will offer such a program in September, although not in Baltimore

This preview of the 2010-2011 season will be performed Sept. 10 at Strathmore, conducted by BSO music director Marin Alsop and, making his public debut, the teenage Ilyich Rivas, the BSO-Peabody Bruno Walter Assistant Conductor who is about to start the second year of his fellowship with the orchestra. He makes his subscription-series debut in October...

...The BSO's wildly popular Rusty Musicians project was presented at Strathmore first last winter, but will make it to Baltimore in September. "Our aim is to have annual Rusty events and a season preview concert at both venues," says Eileen Andrews Jackson, BSO v.p. for marketing and communications.

Meanwhile, there's no reason why Baltimore-area folks can't check out the Strathmore preview, too -- the price is right ($10 in advance, $15 at the door) and, for those who have yet to compare the aural and ambiance differences between Meyerhoff and Strathmore, this is a great opportunity.
Alsop will conduct the bulk of the program, which includes
movements from symphonies by Schumann, Prokofiev and Shostakovich; an overture by Mozart and an Essay by Barber; and selections from the world of ballet (Prokofiev's "Cinderella") and film (Williams' "Star Wars" main title music).

Mahler, who is a substantial focus of the '10-'11 lineup (the season coincides with the 150th anniversary of his birth and the centennial of his death), will be also represented. Alsop will conduct his arrangement of the famous "Air" from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3. Rivas will lead the BSO in the exquisite "Blumine" movement from the original version of Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

Baltimore Symphony's Zappa, Glass, Shodekeh concert generates great vibes (July, 2010)
By: Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun

The tattoos offered the first clue. The congregation of smokers outside at intermission – at least four times the usual number – provided another strong signal: That wasn’t the routine Baltimore Symphony crowd Friday night at Meyerhoff Hall.

I hope the BSO is already hard at work on figuring out how to lure them back in the future with more of the left-field programming that drew such an age-, race- and everything else-diverse group of engaged, enthusiastic people. The vibes were great in that house.

Music director Marin Alsop devised this summer concert as a Baltimore-centric exploration of stylistic cross-pollination – works by two major innovators born here, Frank Zappa and Philip Glass; and a guest appearance by Baltimore’s favorite beatboxer, Shodekeh. (I loved encountering a senior citizen during the interval on his cell phone – he was one of the few who did look every bit the traditional symphony-goer – telling someone that he had just heard the most “amazing,” “unbelievable” performance by a person called a beatboxer.)

Zappa’s orchestral works are surprising in many ways, sometimes almost Second Viennese School-ish in the application of brief, dense clusters of harmony and instrumentation; sometimes unmistakably infused with the idioms of pop music. Alsop, who set off a surprising, sustained ovation from the audience when she praised her musicians for charging into this material with such spirit, drew crisp and colorful performances of “Dupree’s Paradise”; “Be-Bop Tango” (complete with yelps from the players and the audience); “Outrage at Valdez” (rather mild outrage, but making haunting use of an Alpine horn); and a particularly rollicking “G-Spot Tornado.”

Glass was represented by four of the six movements from
his Symphony No. 4, titled “Heroes,” a work based on the Brain Eno/David Bowie album of that name. This is not necessarily Glass’ strongest stuff. There are absorbing passages -- the “Neukoln” movement, with its moody descending theme and shimmering instrumental background, is wonderful – but also moments when the music seems curiously earthbound and constricted. And what’s up with the Tchaikovsky-like, big unison ending for the otherwise Glass-y last movement? It comes off as awfully tacky.
That said, it was great to hear this music in the concert hall, and to hear the BSO spinning out the composer’s trademark reiterative patterns with such a warm and beautifully nuanced sound.

As for Shodekeh, well, he brought the house down with his virtuoso vocal acrobatics, applied first in a modest little concerto for beatboxer and strings called “Fujiko’s Fairy Tale,” by Finnish composer Jan Mikael Vainio, who was on hand to take a bow.


What Shodekeh does is quite brilliant. On one level, the technique constitutes a human percussion-generator and is plenty impressive for that alone. But it’s the array of character that Shodekeh brings to the device -- all the subtlety, surprise and humor in his propulsive and evocative sounds (my favorite suggested an approaching plane) -- that turns it into a more personal kind of music-making. He had a field day in the concerto, providing so much texture and action that Vainio’s score began to sound more interesting.

Shodekeh returned to the stage after intermission to provide a lead-in to the Glass symphony with a solo improv. Taking a leaf from Bobby McFerrin, he tried added some group participation stuff along the way, starting with the BSO players, who gamely tried emitting various vocal noises, then bringing in the audience. It went on a little too long, but certainly had its moments, especially those involving Alsop’s baton, which Shodekeh commandeered.

After the BSO concert, I headed to the Windup Space to catch Mobtown Modern’s presentation of some cutting-edge UK artists – composer Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei), pianist GeNIA and percussionist Joby Burgess (leader of the ensemble Powerplant).

I particularly enjoyed the kinetic performances Burgess gave of the “Fanta” movement from Prokofiev’s “Import/Export” (who knew a Fanta soda bottle could be so versatile?) and of Steve Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint” on a “xylosynth.” Late in the evening, Shodekeh dropped by and did a bracing, anything-you-can-beat-I-can-beat-faster-and-louder jam with Burgess (now on drum set).

For all I know, the session went on until dawn, but, with midnight approaching, I slipped away, nearly overloaded from more than four hours of cool sounds.

BSO mixes beatboxer, Glass and Zappa (July, 2010)
Shodekeh to make BSO debut in beatboxer concerto

By: Tim Smith, from The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra doesn't always generate hot sellers for its annual summer season, but it sure has a cool concert this year, surely one of the coolest programs in decades.

Marin Alsop, the BSO's intrepid music director, will lead the ensemble in examining two sides of an intriguing coin — orchestral works written by a Baltimore-born rock star, Frank Zappa; and a symphony written by a Baltimore-born composer, Philip Glass, inspired by the rock songs of David Bowie and Brian Eno.

That would be cool enough, but Friday's performance at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall also features Baltimore beatboxer Shodekeh. He'll be the soloist in a recent concerto by Finnish composer Jan Mikael Vainio called "Fujiko's Fairy Tale."

"I'm trying to highlight the fact that musical boundaries are much less rigid these days," Alsop says. "There's a fluidity now, a willingness to cross over and to share among different stylistic approaches and backgrounds."

Alsop has long championed the music of Glass, which received very little attention from the BSO before she took the podium in 2007. The conductor also has a good deal of Zappa in her repertoire. His pieces "show how drawn many pop artists are to the power of symphonic music," Alsop says. "He was one of the first. I like his music. It's very distinctive, individualistic and quirky, to say the least. And the titles are always fantastic."...

..."I hadn't thought about integrating beatboxer and orchestra before," Alsop says, "but I heard a concert in London last year that involved DJs and alternative music products. It was very effective."

Once Alsop learned about Baltimore's stellar beatboxer, she wanted to find a program for him. "The thing Shodekeh does is awesome," she says...

...The Vainio concerto provides a handy vehicle for Shodekeh's BSO debut. "I like it," Alsop says of the work. "It basically sets down a bed of strings playing melodic things for the beatboxer to play around with. It's pretty much an improvised solo part. And we're adding a couple of cadenzas for Shodekeh to riff on his own."

Shodekeh describes the concerto as "a piece that basically captures a moment in an imaginary fairy-tale land, with a lot of tension and adventure. It kind of felt it was speaking to me in a certain way."

Alsop didn't want to limit Shodekeh's involvement in the program to the concerto. She asked him to open the second half of the program with vocal improvisations. "I thought it would be a cool way to introduce the Glass symphony," the conductor says. (The BSO will perform four of the symphony's six movements.)

Shodekeh has been working on something appropriate for the pre-Glass slot. "I can't give it away," he says, "but I'm hoping the moment will create an inspiration for bridging gaps."

Such bridging is what the whole program is about.

"Music is music," Alsop says. "And we're all in this together."

New Music at Festival, but Familiar Players (July, 2010)
By: Chloe Veltman

It took some convincing to get Galen Lemmon to play with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s orchestra.

Mr. Lemmon, the principal percussionist with Symphony Silicon Valley and owner of the Lemmon Percussion store in San Jose, declined numerous invitations to join the orchestra of the annual festival in Santa Cruz. He finally agreed to fill in for a fellow musician — just one time — as a favor. That was 10 years ago, and Mr. Lemmon has since performed with the Cabrillo Festival orchestra every summer.

“After one concert, I was hooked,” Mr. Lemmon said. “It was an instant love affair.”...

Led by Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival stands out among music festivals for its dedication to new orchestral music. “Summer events like the Tanglewood and Aspen festivals feature some new music, but only Cabrillo as far as I know is distinctive for being focused entirely on contemporary works,” said Jesse Rosen, president and chief executive of the League of American Orchestras.
Like other summer festival orchestras, Cabrillo attracts musicians who accept generally lower pay to enjoy the sense of camaraderie with their fellow instrumentalists in beautiful surroundings. But its repertory of new music presents particular challenges not faced by musicians in most other festival orchestras, which largely perform the standard classical fare.

Players arrive in Santa Cruz a week before the festival begins, and Ms. Stewart said they were expected to show up at the first rehearsal ready to go.

“We perform a total of five programs in two weeks, not including family and chamber concerts,” she said. “Most professional orchestras do only one program a week, so we’re basically talking about two weeks of working more than double time.”

...The players are drawn to Cabrillo for the opportunity to explore cutting-edge musical frontiers, hone skills and work first-hand with Ms. Alsop and renowned composers like Mr. Adams, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Jennifer Higdon, Philip Glass and Kevin Puts — all of whom will be at the festival this year presenting works.

“Most musicians don’t have many opportunities to play contemporary music in their traditional symphony jobs throughout the year,” Ms. Alsop said. “Devoting an entire effort to new music is a unique experience.”
Ellen Primack, the Cabrillo Festival’s executive director, said: “We are in some ways a foil to the rest of the musicians’ lives. If having a steady orchestra job is like a marriage, then the festival is like a fling.”

The passion in the festival players’ performances certainly has the energy of a mad crush — for better and for worse.
“As a pickup group, the orchestra lacks the homogenous sound of an ensemble like the New York Philharmonic whose members are used to playing together all the time,” said Mr. Puts, who has had seven of his works performed at the festival since 2002 and who will make his Cabrillo Festival debut as a soloist in his own piano concerto, “Night,” on Aug. 14. “Yet I’ve never experienced more energy and commitment from an orchestra playing my work than I’ve experienced at Cabrillo.”
It is working with composers like Mr. Puts that helps to put energy into the playing.

“One of the best things about the festival is interacting with the composers,” Mr. Lemmon said. “For the rest of the year, we mostly work with dead composers. But at Cabrillo, we feel like we’re part of the process of making their music come alive.”

By: Stephen Pritchard of The Observer

Marin Alsop continues her exploration of all Dvorak's symphonies for Naxos with these two monuments from his output, the Brahmsian seventh and the cheerful yet restless eighth. The bewitching scherzo of the seventh and the lyrical adagio and allegretto grazioso of the eighth stand out in these meticulous live recordings, Alsop drawing some wonderfully sensitive, silky playing from her Baltimore players.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop

Dvorak's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies make an excellent pair: one dark and passionate, the other sunny and relaxed. These are 'live' performances, recorded at a series of concerts in 2009 and 2008 respectively. The first movement of No. 7 is slightly disappointing: there's a snatched horn phrase early on and the glorious passage for the violins in octaves, first heard in the explosion goes for little. But in the slow movement and the Finale, the cellos' singing tone is ravishing and the strings and wind are charmingly delicate in the Adagio of No. 9. On the evidence here, Marin Alsop's Dvorak series will be well worth collecting. RL

Naxos 8.572112

Dvorak
Symphonies Nos 7&8
BaltimoreSO/Marin Alsop
Naxos 8.572112 74:21 mins

The gulf both in structural intent and expressive language between Dvorak's Seventh and Eighth symphonies is a challenge for any interpreter. The Seventh was written with the example of Brahms's in mind and is appropriately serious in demeanor. The Eighth was conceived as Dvorak was turning awar from Viennese Romantic classicism; it is both a more personal and more experimental work than the Seventh and, frankly, puzzled Brahms, although it has delighted audiences since its premiere. Although much of the Eighth is lighter in tone, its slow movement has moments of almost heart-wrenching despair.

The great strength of Marin Alsop's landmark performance of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony was that along with attention to detail, she never sacrificed spontaneity in pursuing the musical argument. Much of the same can be said of her way with the Seventh. Care for detail is apparent in the wonderful horn theme of the slow movement and the glorious sonorities in the Scherzo's trio section. Her sense of line is at its most impressive in the way in which the slow movement is sustained and the unfolding of the joyous second theme in the finale. Perhaps the recapitulation in the first movement could have been more overwhelming, but as a whole this splendidly recorded performance stand very high among available readings. The first movement of the Eighth is on a similar level with Alsop both infectious and persuasively symphonic...

By: Peter Reed

She[Marin Alsop], the [Mahler 2]symphony and her vastly expanded forces were back to make the emphatic point that Mahler was central to Leonard Bernstein's musical world. This concert was one of the high point of the Southbank Centre's Bernstein Project...

...she had the measure of the effect Mahler was aiming for, especially in the way the retreats from the tragedy of the first movement come supplied with a veil of distant regret, in a reading that in general emphasised the music's heroism.

She handled another of the music's big pressure-points - where the third movement moves into unexplored territory before dissolving into the mystery of 'Ulright' - with a supreme understanding that this is the symphony's pivotal structural and spiritual moment.

The finale's wide-open spaces expanded with a precise and generous sense of deliberation - Alsop's control and vision were masterly here - but even this didn't prepare me for the incredible entry of the chorus, not only for the aural marvel of one of the plumpest pianissimos I have ever heard - a real wall of sound - but also for the visual spectacle of the colossal choir erupting from the front stalls, the annexes, the boxes either side of the auditorium, not to mention as part of the chorus conventionally placed behind the orchestra.

It was Mahler as sight-and-sound installation, a 500-strong chorus exalting us to reg resurrected. Grandiose and over-the-top, certainly; thrilling definitely. Bernstein would have loved it.

Richard Fairman in the Financial Times

The symphony, almost more of a piano concerto, looks destined to linger on the fringes of the repertoire. Based on W.H. Auden’s long poem “The Age of Anxiety”, it is a rare example of philosophical narrative in music. Although the symphony is never boring – how could it be when Mahlerian angst rubs shoulders with jazz and ragtime? – this is music that never quite sticks in the mind. It is as if the composer who poured out hummable tunes in West Side Story had turned off the tap marked “Melody” because he wanted to sound serious. Still, Nicolas Hodges, the pianist, made the keys sparkle and Alsop proved there is life and colour in the orchestra to spare.

Marin Alsop conductor
Nicolas Hodges piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Ives The Unanswered Question
Bernstein Symphony 2 (Age of Anxiety)
Shostakovich Symphony 5

"Alsop is well-grounded in the standard repertoire, but she has real commitment to both American music and new music. There's an excitement about the way she makes music, the way she plans a season, the way she gets involved with the community and tries to make the orchestra integral to the city. She's full of ideas and always examining old habits to see if they might be changed for the better."
- composer, Christopher Rouse

"... a formidable musician and a powerful communicator, a conductor with a vision of what an American Orchestra could be in the 21st Century."
- New York Times

"Few conductors of her generation have made more recordings, and more highly acclaimed ones, than she."
- Boston Globe

"What she has done for audiences can't be measured."
- Rocky Mountain News

"She has shown herself to be conductor who makes a difference."
- Daily Telegraph

"Marin Alsop is a shooting star in the firmament of international conductors."
- Penguin Guide to Compact Discs

"There's no denying the wit and vitality that Alsop - a lively entertainer as well as a powerhouse musician - brings to her performances."
- San Francisco Chronicle

"A life-changing performance. That's how Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 struck me Thursday when performed by the Minnesota Orchestra under Marin Alsop. The music became a profound expression of what it is to be human in this difficult world."
- St. Paul Pioneer Press

"Alsop has again packed the houses, and made her orchestra play like there was no tomorrow. No doubt that there will be, if they continue to play like this: with greater flair, firmer ensemble, and a sense of fervour that hasn't been heard for years."
The Times (London)

"... there is no doubt that Alsop has the goods: a compelling vision of how she wants a piece of music to sound and the ability to draw that sound from a group of players... "
- Chicago Sun-Times

"With Alsop and the Baltimore players, the effect was one of total revelation."
- Washington Post

"This was a truly dramatic interpretation ... expansive, decisive, radiating colour, conviction, acumen and musicality in equal measure."
- The Telegraph (London)

"If there were anyone still looking for evidence that Marin Alsop is a thoroughly good thing, this concert... will surely have settled things once and for all... Her appointment is a landmark for the BSO... She has shown herself to be conductor who makes a difference."
- The Daily Telegraph