PROGRAM NOTES + BIOS
David T. Little: The Conjured Life (2017) | Festival Commission
World Premiere August 5, 2017
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
I. Invocation
II. A Nest of Shadows
III. Aubade (for Lou Harrison)
Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival in honor of Lou Harrison’s centenary with support from Diane and Donald Cooley.
PROGRAM NOTE
When Lou Harrison died in Indiana, I was living in Michigan. We were both far from our homes on the coasts; his west, mine east. Though we had never met, his death marked the first time I had mourned the passing of someone as an elder within the community of composers. That we had been so close geographically when he died—a mere four-hour drive—felt like a missed chance, a feeling that quickly intensified into regret. This feeling resurfaced when, not long after, I first heard his Threnody for Carlos Chavez. So moving and full of humanity, that piece changed me, and remains among the works most dear to me.
Harrison’s influence found its way into my own compositions, but to my surprise the process was gradual. By the time I heard his Threnody, I had moved beyond the feverish copying of styles I had experienced as a very young composer. I just listened, over many years, and tried to understand the music from the inside out. In a way, through this process, Lou Harrison taught me how to listen.
In writing The Conjured Life, I took a similar approach: I listened. Though the third movement certainly owes a debt to Harrison’s music for gamelan, I generally tried not to emulate his work. I dug into my own experiences with his music and tried to express the very personal nature of his influence on me. When mining this influence, however, it was not just Harrison that emerged, but other composers, poets, and thinkers as well: unexpected influences that not only inform my work, but also form the foundation of my creative life.
The title The Conjured Life is borrowed (with permission) from art curator Lynne Warren. She had originally used it for her exhibit on the lineage of surrealism created for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Though it seems unlikely that anyone would call Lou Harrison a surrealist, the title nonetheless seemed fitting. Harrison courageously followed his own path in an era of cultural homogeneity and conformity. He made a life for himself; seemingly conjured as if from nothing. Composers do something similar when we write music, mining and channeling our deepest thoughts, desires, and influences, to make something hopefully new, and hopefully great; seemingly conjured as if from nothing.
But nothing comes from nothing. And while The Conjured Life is on the one hand a tribute—offered to Lou Harrison on the occasion of his centenary—it could also be viewed as an essay about the deep and personal nature of influence itself. However one views it, it is for Lou. I hope he would have liked it, and am grateful to the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for offering me the opportunity to thank him at last.
––David T. Little
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
David T. Little (b. 1978) is “one of the most imaginative young composers” on the scene (The New Yorker), with “a knack for overturning musical conventions” (The New York Times). His operas Dog Days, JFK, and Vinkensport (librettos by Royce Vavrek), and Soldier Songs have been widely acclaimed, “prov[ing] beyond any doubt that opera has both a relevant present and a bright future” (The New York Times).
Other recent works include the earthen lack (London Sinfonietta / BGSU), The Conjured Life (Cabrillo Festival / Cristian Macelaru), Ghostlight—ritual for six players (Eighth Blackbird / The Kennedy Center), AGENCY (Kronos Quartet), and dress in magic amulets, dark, from My feet (The Crossing / ICE). Little is currently composing a new monodrama for Grammy-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound, based on Garth Greenwell’s celebrated novel What Belongs to You, and developing a new work commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater new work program.
This season, Chicago Opera Theater presents a production of Little’s acclaimed monodrama Soldier Songs, starring renowned baritone Nathan Gunn, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra presents obscure clues and shiny objects as part of its MusicNOW series. The 2019-2020 season also sees the world premiere of Little’s hold my tongue for voice, percussion, and electronics in September by Bec Plexus as part of the Gaudeamus Music Week in The Netherlands. Bec Plexus will also release an album, Sticklip, featuring hold my tongue, in March on New Amsterdam Records. Other upcoming album releases this season include AM I BORN, recorded by The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and NOVUS NY with Julian Wachner conducting (Acis Records), and AGENCY, a thirty-two minute-long work for string quartet and electronics, recorded by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and Third Coast percussion (New Amsterdam Records).
Little’s music has been presented by the LA Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, LA Opera, the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, BAM Next Wave, and Opéra de Montréal. He has previously served as Executive Director of MATA and on the board of directors at Chamber Music America, and currently chairs the composition program at Mannes—The New School. From 2014–2017, he was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia and Music-Theatre Group. The founding artistic director of the ensemble Newspeak, his music can be heard on New Amsterdam, Innova, Sono Luminus, Centaur, and National Sawdust Tracks labels.
September 2019 Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.
Lou Harrison: Third Symphony (1982, rev. 1983, 1989) | Festival Commission
World Premiere Recording
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
Musicmasters Recording 1991
Produced and engineered by Gregory K. Squires.
Recorded at University California Santa Cruz concert hall.
The world premiere recording was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and contributors to the Cabrillo Music Festival.
Allegro Moderato
A Reel in Honor of Henry Cowell
A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichson
An Estampie for Susan Summerfield
Largo Ostinato
Allegro
Streamed with permissions from Editions Peters.
PROGRAM NOTE
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) needs no introduction to long-time Festival audiences. A Founding Member of the Cabrillo Festival—he participated in the original 1961 Sticky Wicket concerts in Aptos that were the genesis of the Festival—for many years he presided over Festival concerts like a jovial patron saint. His works, including numerous West Coast and world premieres, were performed at every Festival for more than thirty years.
The Third Symphony was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival for its twentieth anniversary in 1982 and was first performed at the final concert on August 29 of that year. During the fall, Harrison revised the second and fourth movements of the symphony, and the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies performed this version in New York in November 1982. After further revisions, it was performed again the following summer at the opening concert of the 1983 Cabrillo Festival. In 1989, Harrison made additional revisions, primarily to simplify the fourth movement; this version was performed at the final Festival concert on July 29, 1990 and recorded the next day by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in the concert hall of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Harrison continued to revise the work before virtually every performance, including one he was planning to attend at University of Ohio, Columbus; though he died en route on February 2, 2003. It was performed yet again as part of the Festival’s 50th anniversary season in 2012, under the direction of Marin Alsop.
For those curious to know the identities of the people named in the second movement:
Henry Cowell, a major twentieth-century American composer in his own right, did a great deal to encourage and support the composition and performance of new music. He was also a teacher and close friend of Harrison.
Harrison met Evelyn Hinrichsen while studying composition at Mills College in the 1930s. The school’s music librarian, she was described by Harrison as “that rarity, a genuinely helpful person.” She later married Walter Hinrichsen, editor of the C.F. Peters music-publishing firm and was responsible for the donation of many original manuscripts to the Mills College library. The Waltz was written for her birthday.
Susan Summerfield, an accomplished organist, was the music department chairman at Mills in 1982. The Estampie was first written as an organ piece for her. Parts of it proved to be unplayable, so it was adapted for orchestral use in the Third Symphony.
Harrison’s own notes from the premiere performance are the best commentary on the Symphony: My Third Symphony grew as did the other two, over a long period of time. Sections have undergone multiple revisions at various dates, and, finally, special and intense revisions in relation to other movements once the entire work came together.
I am, philosophically, a complete pessimist, but also a fairly bubbly glandular optimist. Out of this conflict, I keep up the pretense that civilization will endure, and thus behave as though there were plenty of time for works to mature. The poet Horace never let go a line without at least ten years’ consideration–the idea is appealing. Gilbert Highet once wrote that he believed it the duty of a poet to write memorable lines, and this, of course, is what takes the time. I like to think that it is the duty of a composer to write memorable melodies, and this too takes time–but what a joyous kind of time!
As in my Symphony on G, this work includes a “scherzo” area, again conceived as a little suite–here, three dances: a reel, a waltz, and a medieval estampie, the whole constituting movement two. The first and last movements are mostly canonic in manner and take the shape of the old concerto grosso form of Baroque usage. The Largo was the slowest to mature, and out of its final growth the entire symphony developed.
I am grateful to the many friends who made this piece possible, and hope that each may find at least some part of it that gives pleasure.
—Lou Harrison
BIOGRAPHY
LOU SILVER HARRISON (May 14, 1917-February 2, 2003)
After graduating from high school in Burlingame, California, studying, working and composing in San Francisco for nearly a decade, a year in Los Angeles, a hectic decade on the East Coast which led to a serious breakdown, Lou Harrison landed in the sleepy village of Aptos on a rolling hill overlooking the Monterey Bay in December of 1954. He was 37.
Aptos was the perfect climate for the ongoing recovery of his New York frantic decade. The cabin was peaceful and the few neighbors friendly. There was no phone and no deadlines. Harrison wanted only the time to study and compose, and to be employed just enough for basic expenses. He applied for several positions: flower gardener (Council for Civil Unity), full-time janitor position (Pajaro Valley school district), Reed College and Kumasi College in Ghana (no positions available). He eventually took work as a dog groomer and a forest service employee.
There was plenty of time to pursue alternate tuning systems and he composed in the next few years, incidental music for Corneille’s Cinna (“Five strict compositions on a tuning of 12 tone in the 2/1 and with each 2/1 tuned similarly”), Simfony in Freestyle (“ The exact vibrations per second of each required tone can be easily be worked out from the ratios; then by aid of Boehin’s Schema….”), Recording Piece (for percussion and electronic overlay), the Political Primer and Strict Songs, all with specified “Just Intonation” schemas.
Then in 1959, a young musician and composer, Robert Hughes, a graduate student at University of Buffalo came upon a recording of pieces by Virgil Thomson and Harrison including the Suite for Cello and Harp and the Second Suite for Strings (performed at the Cabrillo Festival in 1993). Hughes was moved by the simple beauty of Harrison’s work, began a lengthy correspondence and arranged a residency in Buffalo in May of 1959 (following the premiere of Harrison’s opera Rapunzel which received its West Coast premiere at the 1966 Festival).
Hughes soon after received a Baird Fellowship to study in Italy but became “disenchanted” and he took what was left of his money and travelled 6,000 miles to study with Harrison in Aptos. Around that same time, Victor and Sidney Jowers had opened a “roadhouse” café and bar. The Sticky Wicket began presenting chamber music concerts and dramatic productions. Several pieces of Harrison and Hughes works were performed and premiered.
In 1961, Harrison was invited to attend the East-West Music conference in Tokyo with an extended trip to Korea after he had met Dr. Lee Hye Ku and fallen in love with Korean Music. Dr. Lee came to collaborate in Aptos and Harrison returned for a second trip to Korea in 1962. Cabrillo Community College, which was operating out of Watsonville, opened an Aptos campus in 1963 and provided a larger venue for concertgoers, (Harrison’s theatre “kit” Jephtha’s Daughter was premiered there in 1963 even before the first Festival Season.)
Along with Hughes, Ted Toews, Alice Vestal and Gene Hambelton, Harrison was a part of the nucleus group that helped shape the expansion of the Sticky Wicket Concert Series into the Cabrillo Music Festival. However, as the first Festival neared, his second trip to Asia, a residency in Hawaii and the death of his father kept Harrison from direct participation, though he was able to return for the concerts which included his Six Sonatas for Cembalo performed by Margaret Fabrizio.
From then and throughout most of the Festival’s history, virtually every major work of Lou Harrison’s has been performed, including many premieres, two commissions, and several “volunteer” pieces. In the summer preceding Harrison’s death, the Cabrillo Festival staged a magnificent performance of Harrison’s opera Rapunzel, which brought the composer great joy. After Harrison’s death in 2004, a memorial tribute concert was presented at the Festival season, featuring a performance by Dennis Russell Davies reprising Harrison’s beautiful Grand Duo. Fittingly, the Cabrillo Festival has presented 72 performances of Harrison’s work, more than any other composer in its history.
For the 20th Anniversary of the Festival (1982) Harrison was commissioned to write his Third Symphony, which incorporates revisions and orchestrations from as early as 1937. As an anniversary tribute, the 2012 Cabrillo Festival season included Harrison’s Third Symphony on Saturday, August 11, with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.
—Charles Hansen
For more about Lou Harrison, explore:
- Cabrillo Festival’s 2017 centenary tribute pages.
- Lou Harrison: Composing a World by Leta E. Miller, Fredric Lieberman
- Lou Harrison: A World of Music, a documentary film by Eva Soltes
- Cabrillo Festival Board Member Tom Ellison’s profile of Lou Harrison on the Diversity Center’s website.
Anna Clyne: RIFT a symphonic ballet (2016) | Festival Commission
World Premiere August 5, 2016
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop
Kitty McNamee choreographer
Tom Ontiveros lighting and visual designer
Hunter Hamilton costume designer
Hysterica Dancers: Katherine Cowgill, Stephanie Kim, Derek Memchek, Baden Silva, Liz Walker, Ty Wells
Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival with generous support from Prue Ashurst in memory of Marjorie O’Connor; Michael Good & JoAnn Close; Ellen Kimmel; Carole & Henry Klyce; Alan Ritch, Margaret Brose & Hayden White; Cherrill Spencer; and an anonymous donor.
The world premiere performance was supported by New Music USA.
PROGRAM NOTE
In creating RIFT, myself and choreographer Kitty McNamee, have used music and dance as a voice to reflect upon the chaos and destruction that is so prevalent in the world today.
Whilst RIFT is presented in one large brushstroke, we have, in our imaginations, divided the journey into three acts.
Act 1 – dust
A song of reflection -- a meditation on the sadness, which, throughout this act, escalates into a chaotic mass of sound that snaps into Act 2.
Act 2 -- water
Covered in the dust of destruction from Act 1 we now move into a more ethereal world of rituals. A snaking duet emerges from the ruptures that sever Act 1 and introduce Act 2, which is then interrupted by a wild outburst of energy. From here, we move into a more serene ritual -- bathed in water, softly washing away the dust and debris.
Act 3 -- space
From this cleansing we are then propelled back in time to a period of more refined and orderly beauty -- a sacred and harmonious space. From here we are then propelled into the future where, through our journey, we find ourselves in a more optimistic sonic and visual world.
We would like to express our deepest thanks to Marin Alsop and the staff and musicians at the Cabrillo Festival for offering such a wonderful opportunity to create this work.
—Anna Clyne
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
London-born Anna Clyne (b. 1980) is a Grammy-nominated composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Described as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods” in a New York Times profile and as “dazzlingly inventive” by Time Out New York, Clyne’s work often includes collaborations with cutting-edge choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians.
This season features multiple premieres of new works by Clyne, including Sound and Fury and Overflow with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, where Clyne serves as Associate Composer. Spring 2020 sees the world premiere of Clyne’s COLOR FIELD, an orchestral work inspired by Mark Rothko’s paintings, with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and Breathing Statues with the Calidore String Quartet.
Other recent premieres include Clyne’s Rumi-inspired cello concerto, DANCE, premiered by Inbal Segev at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival, conducted by Cristian Macelaru; Three Sisters, her mandolin concerto for Avi Avital and the Kremerata Baltica; Restless Oceans with the Taki Concordia Orchestra and Marin Alsop at the World Economic Forum; and Beltane with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard. In July 2019, Clyne wrote and arranged music from Nico’s Marble Index for The Nico Project, a theatrical work presented by the Manchester International Festival. Clyne has been commissioned by such renowned organizations as Carnegie Hall, Houston Ballet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Southbank Centre.
From 2010–2015, Clyne served as a Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Music Director Riccardo Muti lauded Clyne as “an artist who writes from the heart, who defies categorization, and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries. Her compositions are meant to be played by great musicians and listened to by enthusiastic audiences no matter what their background.” She has also been in residence with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and Berkeley Symphony. Clyne serves as the mentor composer for the Orchestra of St Luke’s DeGaetano Composer Institute. Clyne is currently serving as Associate Composer with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a three-year residency lasting through the 2020-2021 season. The residency includes plans for a series of new works commissioned over three years.
February 2020 Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.
Kristin Kuster: When There Are Nine (2019) | Festival Commission
Text by Megan Levad
World Premiere August 2, 2019
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
Jamie Barton, mezzo soprano
Roomful of Teeth, vocal ensemble
Esteli Gomez, soprano; Martha Cluver, soprano; Eliza Bagg, alto; Virginia Kelsey, alto; Eric Dudley, tenor; Avery Griffin, baritone; Dashon Burton, bass-baritone; Cameron Beauchamp, bass; Brad Wells, artistic director
“People ask me sometimes… ‘When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is: ‘When there are nine.” –Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Innumerable Drafts
The Pedestal Is A Cage
Pathmarking
La Giaconda
Riding an Elephant
On Dissent
For Marty
On Dignity
A Push-up Is a Push-up Is a Push-up
Kristin Kuster’s composition was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival with generous support from JoAnn Close & Michael Good; Carole & Henry Klyce; Cherrill Spencer; and Joan Zimmerman.
Megan Levad’s libretto was supported by the Joe Collins Fund at Community Foundation Santa Cruz County and by Diane & Donald Cooley, in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s colleague and friend, Sandra Day O’Connor
The world premiere performance was supported by donors to the Festival’s Artistic Initiative Reserve (AIR) Fund, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
PROGRAM NOTE
When There Are Nine is a protest piece.
“Did you know that the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in 1967 and it still hasn’t passed? We need thirty-eight states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional.
“We’ve had a record number of women running for office and winning, and still, we have twenty-three percent of the House and twenty-five percent of the Senate. I’m getting tired of the novelty of ‘the first female governor of this state,’ ‘the first female African-American mayor of this city.’ When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception?
“How are these young women looking up and seeing someone that looks like them preparing them for the future? We don’t have enough female role models, we don’t have enough visible women leaders, we don’t have enough women in power. Girls are socialized to know when they come out gender roles are already set. Men. Run. The world. Men have the power. Men make the decisions. It’s always the man that is the stronger one.
“And when these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to to tell them that that’s not the way it has to be?…wouldn’t it be great to teach them to watch how women lead?”
— Ann “Muffet” McGraw, American basketball coach, April 2019
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
Composer Kristin Kuster “writes commandingly for the orchestra,” and her music “has an invitingly tart edge” (The New York Times). Her colorfully enthralling, lush and visceral compositions take inspiration from architectural space, the weather, and mythology. Her orchestral music “unquestionably demonstrates her expertise in crafting unique timbres” (Steve Smith, Night After Night).
Kristin is based in Ann Arbor, where she is an associate professor and chair of composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. When she is not writing or teaching you can often find Kristin fiercely advocating for the marginalized and underrepresented groups of composers in our classical music culture, hanging out with her son with special needs, or on her deck with locally-brewed Sweetwaters and/or Comet coffee. Kristin loves camping, hiking, kayaking, and riding her mountain bike around town.
Most recently, Kristin received an OPERA America Discovery Grant for female composers, made possible through The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The grant supported Kristin’s work Kept: a ghost story, a 70-minute chamber opera drawn from the haunting of northern Michigan’s Old Presque Isle Lighthouse. Featuring a libretto by poet Megan Levad, Kept was premiered at the Virginia Arts Festival with support from the John Duffy Institute for New Opera in May 2017.
Upcoming and recent premieres of Kristin’s music include works for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the United States Air Force Heritage Brass Ensemble, Philadelphia-based Network for New Music, the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, the Lisbon Summerfest Chamber Choir, multi-percussionist Joseph Gramley, and the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet.
Kristin was awarded one of the highest honors the University of Michigan bestows upon junior faculty — a 2015 Henry Russel Award. The award recognizes faculty early in their academic careers who already have demonstrated an extraordinary record of accomplishment in scholarly research and/or creativity, as well as an excellent record of contribution as a teacher. Given yearly, university-wide faculty are eligible for the Henry Russel Award, and Ms. Kuster is among only five music faculty to receive the award since its inception in 1926.
Kristin’s music has received support from such organizations as the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship), the Sons of Norway, American Composers Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, New Music USA, American Opera Projects, the Jerome Foundation, and the Jack L. Adams Foundation.
Born in 1973, Kristin grew up in Boulder, Colorado. She often misses the daily-gazing at the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of her youth; yet she loves that Ann Arbor is blanketed in deciduous trees. Follow her on Twitter: @KristinKuster, or visit kristinkuster.com
MEGAN LEVAD, LIBRETTIST & POET
BIOGRAPHY
Megan Levad’s work has been praised as “surprising” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “odd, darkly funny, very smart” (Portland Mercury). The Paris Review wrote that 2017’s What Have I to Say to You is “one of the best poetry books of the last fifteen years.”
A 2017 MacDowell Fellow, Levad is the author of Why We Live in the Dark Ages, the first selection in Tavern Books’ Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poem-a-Day, Granta, Fence, and the Everyman’s Library anthology Killer Verse, which published a poem from her first musical collaboration, Murder, a song cycle with Tucker Fuller.
Levad has since written lyrics for several pieces, including Let Us Plant Our Gardens Now with Dominick DiOrio, who also set Broken with text from What Have I to Say to You; And Yet the Stars with Theodore Morrison; and Volta and Given a Body with Kristin Kuster. Kuster and Levad premiered their first opera, Kept, in May 2017 with the Virginia Arts Festival; and Levad is again working with Tucker on Gilded, a song cycle for tenor scheduled to premiere at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans in Fall 2019.
Megan earned her B.A. in English from The University of Iowa and her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Program’s Roethke Prize and was selected by Mary Ruefle for a Zell Postgraduate Fellowship. Levad served for several years as Assistant Director of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Karim Al-Zand: Parizade and Singing Tree (2001, rev. for full orchestra 2018)
World Premiere | Orchestral Version August 5, 2018
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
Nora el Samahy, narrator
Beni Măcelaru, illustrator
Part I. In which Parizade seeks the Singing Tree and hears the Dervish’s warning.
Part II. In which Parizade climbs the mountain and endures the travails of the ascent.
Part III. In which Parizade hears the wondrous song of the Singing Tree.
Part VI. In which the music of the Singing Tree proves to be magical.
PROGRAM NOTE
This charming folk tale has as its source an episode from the Thousand Nights and A Night [Alf laylah wa-laylah] collection of folktales—or the so-called ‘Arabian Nights.’ Unlike Aladdin, Ali Baba or Sindbad, Parizade is unfortunately not one of the better-known figures in the Arabian Nights. Her story is often omitted in the more popular published translations of the work. It is translated, however, in Sir Richard Burton’s encyclopedic edition; it appears as one of his many ‘Supplemental Nights’ (1886–1888). Parizade’s quest for the Singing Tree—in which “many princes and noblemen” before her have failed—is an exciting tale of adventure, determination and wonderment. As is common in the long, episodic tales of the collection, Parizade’s encounter with the Singing Tree is a story embedded within a larger narrative, one entitled variously by translators as The Sisters Who Envied their Cadette, or The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water. I have adapted the story somewhat for the present work. The language used is largely my own, though I have borrowed a charming phrase here and there from the Burton translation and those of Lane and Scott (1863 and 1909).
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging in influence and inspiration, encompassing solo, chamber, vocal and orchestral works. From scores for dance, to compositions for young people, to multi-disciplinary and collaborative works, Al-Zand’s music is diverse in both its subject matter and its audience. It explores connections between music and other arts, and draws inspiration from varied sources such as graphic art, myths and fables, folk music of the world, film, spoken word, jazz, and his own Middle Eastern heritage. Al-Zand’s music has enjoyed success in the US, Canada and abroad and he is the recipient of several national awards, including the “Arts and Letters Award in Music” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a founding and artistic board member of Musiqa, Houston’s premier contemporary music group, which presents concerts featuring new and classic repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In his scholarly work, he has pursued several diverse areas of music theory, including topics in jazz, counterpoint, and improvisation (both jazz and 18th century extemporization). Al-Zand was born in Tunis, Tunisia, raised in Ottawa, Canada and educated in Montreal (McGill University, BMus 1993) and Cambridge (Harvard University, PhD 2000). Since 2000 he has taught composition and music theory in Houston at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University.
Jake Heggie: Moby-Dick Orchestral Suite (2010/2017) | Festival Commission
Arranged by Cristian Măcelaru
World Premiere August 12, 2017
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
PROGRAM NOTE
The creation of the opera Moby-Dick began early in 2005, when the Dallas Opera contacted me about composing a new work for the inaugural season of the new Winspear Opera House in 2010. At the time, I was at work on a piece with playwright Terrence McNally. He had been the librettist for our opera Dead Man Walking (2000) and we had been on the lookout for another big project. When I asked Terrence what he thought, he said “There’s only one opera I’m interested in doing: Moby-Dick.” I think I was as stunned as anybody. It seemed a gargantuan, impossible undertaking.
But he is a great man of the American theater, and when I saw the knowing sparkle in his eye, I knew it could be possible. I had never read the book, but when I did, I realized how essentially musical and operatic it is. The charged lyricism of Melville’s writing is deeply influenced by Shakespeare and there is great theatricality. The characters themselves are Shakespearean, and the events so epic they feel biblical. The drama could certainly fill an opera house, and it struck me that the music was already there. I could hear musical textures, rhythms, orchestral and vocal colors as I considered it. The hardest part would be to craft a workable, stage-worthy libretto.
Terrence suggested three things off the bat: Ahab should be a heroic tenor, the action of the opera should be entirely on the ship, and the cabin boy Pip should be a pants role for a soprano – the sole female voice. And then about a year into the process, Terrence had to withdraw from the project for personal reasons. It was devastating. But as luck would have it, I had already worked extensively with the gifted writer Gene Scheer. He is a prolific collaborator and we had created several song cycles, a one-act opera (To Hell and Back), and were in the process of creating a three-character opera (Three Decembers). Gene read Moby-Dick and thought deeply about what he might be getting into. I wanted to keep Terrence’s initial thoughts, which meant Gene would have to take on something already in process. He bravely agreed to join me.
About this time, we had the idea that the famous first line of the novel – “Call me Ishmael” – should be the last line of the opera. We could treat the novel as a memoir that would be written long after the events of the opera took place. This would give us enormous freedom to move events around, create moments and dialogues that aren’t in the book, but are in the spirit of the book and would work well on the stage. The central journeys of the opera became immediately clear and the architecture started to take shape.
We started working in earnest in April 2008 on a trip to Nantucket, where the story of the book begins. On this remarkable island, Gene and I visited the whaling museum and met with the great author Nathaniel Philbrick, who makes his home there. It was his prize-winning novel, In The Heart of the Sea, that made everything jump to life for us. His book is about the true story of the Essex, the whaling ship rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820 off the coast of South America. It was this legend that inspired Melville to write his novel, and it was Philbrick’s vivid, modern, human telling of it that made all of it seem real to me.
Gene worked closely with our director, Leonard Foglia, who also served as our dramaturg: asking questions, helping us to trace a meaningful, cogent, and poetic journey. All the while, I was trying to find the musical language of the opera. I wrote a chant for Queequeg and about 60 additional pages of music. In December of 2008, in agony, I discarded everything I’d written. It was good, just not good enough. What was blocking me? I realized that all of the characters had become real to me – except for Ahab. And without Ahab, you don’t have Moby-Dick. I had been trying to write from the beginning, which is what I prefer. But I had to cast that aside. Halfway through the first act libretto was the great monologue “I leave a white and turbid wake.” And there was the aching human being – the fully formed individual. The music for Ahab emerged and the world of the opera cracked open for me.
After completing that aria, I was able to go back to the first measure and compose straight through Act One. Ahab is the tree from which all branches grow. A four-chord harmonic theme became the meat of the entire opera, and from that all musical, harmonic, and rhythmic motifs emerged organically. Gene had given me a solid architecture on which to build the opera. Act Two went quickly and in July 2009, I had a complete piano/vocal score. A workshop in San Francisco was headed by our first conductor Patrick Summers, which led to further clarification of the story and score. After orchestration and completion of the score, the extraordinary cast and crew for Moby-Dick rehearsed tirelessly in Dallas in spring 2010, and miracle of miracles, an opera based on Moby-Dick opened and shook the rafters of the new opera house.
The associate conductor for the premiere of Moby-Dick was an extraordinarily gifted young man named Cristian Măcelaru. From the start, he expressed interest in one day creating an orchestral suite based on the score. His passion and determination have led to the premiere of the suite you will hear at the Cabrillo Festival tonight.
—Jake Heggie
Moby-Dick was premiered at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Texas on April 30, 2010, by the Dallas Opera, conducted by Patrick Summers.
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
Jake Heggie is the composer of the operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, It’s A Wonderful Life, If I Were You, Great Scott, Three Decembers and Two Remain, among others. He has also composed nearly 300 songs, as well as chamber, choral and orchestral works. The operas – most created with Terrence McNally or Gene Scheer – have been produced on five continents. Dead Man Walking (McNally) has been recorded twice and last year received its 70th international production, making it the most performed new opera of our time. New York’s Metropolitan Opera recently announced that it will produce Dead Man Walking during its 2020/21 season in a bold new production by director Ivo van Hove, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Moby-Dick (Scheer) was telecast throughout the United States as part of Great Performances’ 40th Season and released on DVD (EuroArts). Great Scott was a 2019 Grammy Award nominee for Best New Composition, Classical. The composer was awarded the Eddie Medora King prize from the UT Austin Butler School of Music and the Champion Award from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. A Guggenheim Fellow, Heggie has served as a mentor for the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative and is a frequent guest artist at universities, conservatories and festivals throughout the USA and Canada. INTONATIONS: Songs from the Violins of Hope (Scheer) recently received a premiere and live recording. Upcoming are Songs for Murdered Sisters, a song cycle to new poems by Margaret Atwood, and Intelligence (Scheer), a new opera for the Houston Grand Opera.
Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano) and Jake Heggie (composer/pianist) In Concert
PROGRAM:
from Of Laughter & Farewell (poetry by Vachel Lindsay)
By the Spring at Sunset
from Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (texts by Gene Scheer)
La Petite Châtelaine
The Gossips
from The Deepest Desire (text by Sister Helen Prejean)
Primary Colors
— — — — — — — — — — —
By the Spring at Sunset
by Vachel Lindsay
Sometimes we remember kisses,
Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
Not always, but sometimes we remember
The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
Of laughter and farewell.
Beside the road
Afar from those who said “Good-bye” I write,
Far from my city task, my lawful load.
Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder,
Streaming clouds, banners of new-born night
Enchant me now. The splendors growing bolder
Make bold my soul for some new wise delight.
I write the day’s event, and quench my drouth,
Pausing beside the spring with happy mind.
And now I feel those kisses on my mouth,
Hers most of all, one little friend most kind.
****
from Camille Claudel: Into the Fire
texts by Gene Scheer
La Petite Châtelaine
Hello, my little one,
La petite châtelaine
Do you know who I am?
They say I leave at night
By the window of my tower
Hanging from a red umbrella
With which I set fire to the forest
Hello, my little one,
La petite châtelaine
Do you know who I am?
Or the land you come from?
Where the earth is stained…
I did as he said and returned you to clay.
Oh, how could I bleed such a blessing away?
Now I’m forever alone
With my children of stone.
La petite châtelaine
Can you hear my voice?
The voice of your mother?
The Gossips
What is in my hands?
What is in my head?
So many ideas, my mind aches.
So many ideas, the earth quakes!
People at a table listen to a prayer.
Three men on a high cart laugh and go to mass.
A woman crouches on a bench and cries all alone.
What does she know?
Does she know three people sit behind a screen and whisper?
What is the secret suspended in the air?
I know. I know.
The halo rusts. The light is dim.
Into the fire! Is it him?
***
from The Deepest Desire
texts by Sister Helen Prejean
Primary colors
I live my life in primary colors.
I let praise or blame fall where they may.
I hold my soul in equanimity
And leave the fruits of my labors to God.
At night, when I pray, I catch on fire;
And when I put my head on the pillow,
I fall instantly to sleep.
Celebrating Woman Suffrage + the Struggle for Voting Rights:
a Panel Discussion Streamed LIVE on Sunday, August 9, 11am PDT with audience Q&A. Register to participate!
PANELIST BIOGRAPHIES:
JUDGE MARLA ANDERSON
Judge Marla Anderson is a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Monterey where she has served for over 25 years and has presided over a variety of trial calendars, including criminal law, family law, juvenile law, probate, and civil law. Judge Anderson served as the Presiding Judge of the Monterey County Superior Court from 2013-2015, and during her tenure as Presiding Judge, she instituted a strategic plan to improve judicial administration. Judge Anderson served as Dean of the California B. E. Witkin Judicial College in 2013 and 2014 and in 2014-2016 served on the Chief Justice of California’s Commission on the Future of California’s Court System. She is a member of the Judicial Council of California, the policymaking body of California’s courts. Judge Anderson received her Juris Doctor degree from the University of California--Davis School of Law (King Hall), a Master of Arts degree from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Loma Linda University-La Sierra. Prior to her appointment to the bench, Judge Anderson served the County of Monterey as a prosecuting attorney for the District Attorney’s Office.
BETTINA APTHEKER
Bettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies Department, at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she taught for forty years. She currently continues to teach occasional seminars, and advise graduate and undergraduate students. She is the Peggy & Jack Baskin Foundation UC Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies (2017-2021) Her books include a memoir, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech & Became a Feminist Rebel, and The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis. A scholar-activist Bettina has been engaged in anti-racist, social justice, feminist, and LGBT rights movements for many years. She is the recipient of many awards for teaching and her memoir was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Santa Cruz with her wife, Kate Miller.
AIDA HURTADO
Professor Aída Hurtado is Luis Leal Endowed Chair, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Hurtado is a social psychologist who combines the feminist writings of African American scholars, with Chicana feminisms, social identity theory, and Anzaldúa’s Borderland Theory to delineate the applicability of intersectionality to different ethnic, racial, and gender formations. Her books include The Color of Privilege, Voicing Chicana Feminisms, Beyond Machismo, and Intersectional Chicana Feminisms. She is the recipient of the SAGE Award for Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Education Research, the Outstanding Latino/a Faculty in Higher Education Award, and the Heritage Award from the American Psychological Association. Professor Hurtado spoke at the 2017 and 2018 Women’s March and served on the Women’s March Steering Committee. She has served as a consultant to the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation.
GAIL PELLERIN, MODERATOR
Gail Pellerin is the Santa Cruz County Clerk/Registrar of Voters. In this position she manages all elections conducted in the county and serves as the Commissioner of Civil Marriage. Her office is responsible for voter registration, conducting elections, managing candidate and campaign filings, issuing marriage licenses and conducting ceremonies, maintaining fictitious business name filings, and serving as a passport acceptance facility. Pellerin has 34 years of experience in public service–seven years working for the State Legislature in Sacramento and 27 years serving as the primary elections official in Santa Cruz County. In June 2018, Pellerin was elected to her 4th term as County Clerk. She served as President of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials from 2010 to 2012 and is currently co-chair of the Secretary of State’s Voting Accessibility Advisory Committee. Pellerin is the author of several election guidebooks to assist voters in navigating through various election procedures including Initiatives, Recalls, and Referendums.
Special thanks to our partner-sponsors: The Humanities Institute at University of California-Santa Cruz, Baskin Foundation UC Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies, and Bookshop Santa Cruz
Co-Sponsors: NAACP, Temple Beth El and Women Lawyers of Santa Cruz County.
The event will be followed by a live Q&A, and precedes an evening concert featuring the orchestral world premiere of The Battle for the Ballot by composer Stacy Garrop, inspired by the centenary of the 19th amendment and pivotal figures in the Woman Suffrage movement.
Stacy Garrop: The Battle for the Ballot (2020) | Festival Commission
Text by American Suffragists: Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Carrie W. Clifford, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Adella Hunt Logan. and Mary Church Terrell.
Virtual World Premiere August 9, 2020
Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
Julie James, narrator
Svet Stoyanov, video producer and editor
Stacy Garrop’s composition was commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival with generous support from JoAnn Close and Michael Good.
The digital premiere performance was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
PROGRAM NOTE
Democracy in the United States has always been a messy process that is in a constant state of flux. When the nation’s Constitution was penned, the framers of the document didn’t differentiate voting rights between men and women. This led to various interpretations in the thirteen original colonies. For instance, while most of the colonies passed state laws that stipulated only a male adult who possessed property worth fifty pounds to vote, New Jersey’s laws allowed women to vote between 1776 and 1807, after which they were excluded. Women weren’t the only disenfranchised party in these states – slaves, men of particular religions, and men too poor to own the requisite amount of land were excluded as well. As the country progressed, wording was added to many states’ voting laws to ensure that white men (and a slim grouping at that) were the sole possessors of the vote.
Women’s inability to vote carried significant consequences. They paid taxes with no legal voice in crafting the laws of the land (i.e. taxation without representation). They were barred from becoming politicians, formulating laws, and serving on juries. If a woman got married, she immediately lost custody of her wages, children, possessions, and property. Women grew progressively frustrated by these circumstances and began to organize. The first women’s rights convention was held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, and officially launched the beginning of the women’s Suffrage movement. While additional conventions were held over the next several years, forward progress was halted during the Civil War (1861-1865), after which the cause was taken up again. Starting in the late 1860s, various Suffrage organizations formed, fell apart, and re-formed in pursuit of rallying women and men to the cause. Black Suffragists were not treated well by many of their white counterparts; as a result, they created organizations and clubs of their own. Even when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1919 and ratified in 1920, many states immediately passed laws that blocked Black women from voting by one means or another; this situation wasn’t rectified until Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act which federally protected all citizen’s right to vote and put an end to discriminatory practices throughout the country. Nonetheless, we still witness today how various parts of our nation try new methods to disenfranchise Black women and men from voting. For instance, in June 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court removed a significant section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which enabled especially southern states to once again seek to disenfranchise primarily Black voters because they are no longer required to get the approval of the Justice Department when revising voting laws in their states. Not only is democracy a messy process, but it is something we must be vigilant in safekeeping for all of our citizens.
The Battle for the Ballot features the voices of seven Suffragists, four of whom are Black (Carrie W. Clifford, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Adella Hunt Logan, and Mary Church Terrell) and three of whom are white (Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, and Carrie Chapman Catt). I excerpted lines from their speeches and writings, then interwove these lines together to form a single narrative that follows their reasoning for fighting so hard for the right to vote.
Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Music Director & Conductor Cristian Măcelaru, with generous support from JoAnn Close and Michael Good, The Battle for the Ballot commemorates the centenary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 granting women the right to vote.
—Stacy Garrop
The Battle for the Ballot -- narration
Woman suffrage is coming – you know it. (Carrie Chapman Catt)
The ballot! The sign of power, the means by which things are brought to pass, the talisman that makes our dreams come true! (Carrie Williams Clifford)
When I am asked to give the reasons why women should have the ballot, the reasons are too many to name. At every turn we are brought up to the desire to have a vote. (Jane Addams)
It is the ballot that opens the schoolhouse and closes the saloon; that keeps the food pure and the cost of living low; that causes a park to grow where a dump-pile grew before. (Carrie Williams Clifford)
It is the ballot that regulates capitol and protects labor; that up-roots disease and plants health. It is by the ballot we hope to develop the wonderful ideal state for which we are all so zealously working. (Carrie Williams Clifford)
I don’t believe in urging a man to vote against his convictions. I don’t even believe in trying too hard to persuade him…But the women should have votes to represent themselves. (Jane Addams)
How can anyone who is able to use reason, and who believes in dealing out justice to all God’s creatures, think it is right to withhold from one-half the human race rights and privileges freely accorded to the other half? (Mary Church Terrell)
What a reproach it is to a government which owes its very existence to the loved freedom in the human heart that it should deprive any of its citizens of their sacred and cherished rights. (Mary Church Terrell)
Justice is not fulfilled so long as woman is unequal before the law. (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper)
Behold our Uncle Sam floating the banner with one hand, “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and with the other seizing the billions of dollars paid in taxes by women to whom he refuses “representation.” (Carrie Chapman Catt)
Behold him again, welcoming the boys of twenty-one and the newly made immigrant citizen to “a voice in their own government” while he denies that fundamental right of democracy to thousands of women public school teachers from whom many of these men learn all they know of citizenship and patriotism… (Carrie Chapman Catt)
Is all this tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women under our government today than it was to men one hundred years ago? (Susan B. Anthony)
Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance. (Mary Church Terrell)
Having no vote they need not be feared or heeded. The “right to petition” is good; but it is much better when well voted in. (Adella Hunt Logan)
This much, however, is true now: the colored American believes in equal justice to all, regardless of race, color, creed or sex, and longs for the day when the United States shall indeed have a government of the people, for the people…and by the people…even including the colored people. (Adella Hunt Logan)
Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee. (Susan B. Anthony)
If we once establish the false principle, that citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every state in this Union, there is no end to the cunning devices that will be resorted to, to exclude one and another class of citizens from the right of suffrage. (Susan B. Anthony)
The time for woman suffrage is come. The woman’s hour has struck. (Carrie Chapman Catt)
And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long. (Mary Church Terrell)
With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. (Mary Church Terrell)
We propose to fight our battle for the ballot – all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law. (Susan B. Anthony)
COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY
Stacy Garrop’s music is centered on dramatic and lyrical storytelling. The sharing of stories is a defining element of our humanity; we strive to share with others the experiences and concepts that we find compelling. Stacy shares stories by taking audiences on sonic journeys – some simple and beautiful, while others are complicated and dark – depending on the needs and dramatic shape of the story.
Stacy is the first Emerging Opera Composer of Chicago Opera Theater’s new Vanguard Initiative for 2018-2020, during which she composed two chamber operas with Chicago librettist Jerre Dye. She recently completed a 3-year composer-in-residence position with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, funded by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras. Theodore Presser Company publishes her chamber and orchestral works; she self-publishes her choral pieces under Inkjar Publishing Company. Stacy is a Cedille Records artist with pieces currently on ten CDs; her works are also commercially available on ten additional labels.
Stacy has received an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fromm Music Foundation Grant, Barlow Prize, and three Barlow Endowment commissions, along with prizes from competitions sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Omaha Symphony, New England Philharmonic, Boston Choral Ensemble, Utah Arts Festival, and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.
Stacy’s catalog covers a wide range, with works for orchestra, opera, oratorio, wind ensemble, choir, art song, and various sized chamber ensembles including string quartet, piano trio, and saxophone works. She has been commissioned and performed by the Albany Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra; by Capitol Saxophone Quartet, Gaudete Brass Quintet, and Kronos Quartet; and by Chanticleer, Chicago a cappella, and Volti. She has upcoming commissions with the Music of the Baroque Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Dallas Symphony Orchestra Musicians Chamber Music Series, Reading Youth Symphony, and The Crossing.
For more information, please visit her website at www.garrop.com or her all-things-composition blog at www.composerinklings.com/
Violin I
Justin Bruns, Concertmaster, Atlanta GA
Sonja Bosca-Harasim, Fargo ND
Maya Cohon, San Francisco CA
Adelaide Federici, Atlanta GA
Natalie Gaynor, Houston TX
Maximillian Haft, Geneva, Switzerland
Robyn Julyan, Denver CO
Rita Lee, San Francisco CA
Benjamin Tomkins, Denver CO
Violin II
Matt Albert, Principal Second, Ann Arbor MI
Anne Chandra, Assistant Principal, Sarasota FL
Elise Blake, Washington DC
Susan French, Long Island NY
Alex Gonzalez, Miami Beach FL
Rob Simonds, Louisville KY
Charmian Stewart, San Anselmo CA
Viola
Sam Bergman, Principal, Minneapolis MN
Madeline Sharp, Assistant Principal, Atlanta GA
Chad Kaltinger, Capitola CA
Evan Vicic, Louisville KY
Dawson White, Houston TX
Cello
Thomas Carpenter, Principal, Atlanta GA
Kathleen Balfe, Granada Spain
David Gerstein, Little Rock AR
Ariana Nelson, Houston TX
Jakob Nierenz, Germany
Brad Ritchie, Atlanta GA
Bass
Ted Botsford, Principal, Manhattan CA
Joseph McFadden, Atlanta GA
Flute
Tim Munro, Principal, Chicago IL
Betsy Hudson Traba, Sarasota FL
Lauren Sileo, Haymarket VA
Oboe
Lillian Copeland, Principal, New York NY
Alexander Miller, Grand Rapids MI
Paula Engerer, Phoenix AZ
Clarinet
Bharat Chandra, Principal, Sarasota FL
Sean Krissman, Houston TX
Andy Hudson, Greenboro NC
Bassoon
Joe Grimmer, Principal, Hyattsville MD
Adam Havrilla, San Juan Puerto Rico
Leyla Zamora, San Diego CA
Horn
Gavin Reed, Co-Principal, Houston TX
Fritz Foss, Co-Principal, Chicago IL
Julie Thayer, St. Louis MO
Scott Strong, Birmingham MI
Trumpet
Craig Morris, Principal, Coral Gables FL
John Parker, Assistant Principal, Houston TX
Lauren Eberhart, San Antonio TX
Andrew Gignac, San Antonio TX
Trombone
Ava Ordman, Principal, Lansing MI
David Murray, Washington DC
Brian Santero, New York NY
Robert K. Ward, Grand Rapids MI
Tuba
Forrest Byram, Principal, San Francisco CA
Timpani
Scott Christian, Principal, Washington DC
Percussion
Galen Lemmon, Principal, San Jose CA
Tomasz Kowalczyk, Sarasota FL
Svet Stoyanov, Miami FL
Harp
Sarah Fuller, Principal, Baltimore MD
Keyboard
Emily Wong, Principal, Yorktown Heights NY