Poet, Santa Cruzan, and longtime Cabrillo Festival friend, Joan Zimmerman will be sharing poetry inspired by the sounds of the season. She will create new poems and curate work from fellow poets, responding to the music of the Festival, enriching and deepening the experience of our music. This blog will be updated throughout the 2025 season, so continue to check back in as the season unfolds and the music ripples out, creating waves of new muses. 

(Most recent poems first.)

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7.28.25

This series of tanka and haiku spotlights each of the six pieces on the program of the thrilling Donors Concert on the evening of Friday 7/26/25. The first piece was Ligeti’s Ballad and Dance of Romanian melodies performed on violin by CFCM’s Maestro Christi and his young daughter Maria. Second was CFCM’s Executive Director Riley Nicholson playing gloriously John Adams’ exquisite and challenging China Gates on piano; I appreciate Riley’s telling me that “it took a while to get the patterns in my hands.” Third was janela. ein fenster – fur zwei by Houben for cello and bass. Fourth was Michael Sheppard on piano with Sunday in the Park (the italicized haiku below samples and reorganizes phrases from lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). Fifth was Candillari’s duo for trombone (played by Carson King-Fournier) and piano (Candillari), Extremely Close, a 5-part programmatic piece inspired by Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Finally Christi and Maria closed the program (aided by Sheppard on piano) with three of Shostakovich’s Five Pieces for Two Violins.

Generosity

lullaby and dance
the radiant violin duo
of maestro
and his barely teen daughter
in her concert debut

his agile fingers
unfolding the design of
the China Gates

the sincerity
at day’s end of the cello
and double bass
a deep-voiced fog horn
welcoming an unlit raft

flecks of light and dark
blue triangular water
and elliptical grass

bel canto
trombone and piano
to calm the panic
of high bridges in a storm
and falling falling falling

held in the waltz
of violins and piano
and soft evening light

– Joan Zimmerman

Thanks to the attendees (including Bill, Mary, Nick, Cherrill, Ellen, and Jim) that I talked to about the concert music.

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7.26.25

Behind the Scenes

– With a line borrowed from Lou Harrison

A warm July afternoon,
in the Civic Auditorium lobby,
placing well-chosen photos,
drawings, books, manuscripts,
and musical scores,
inside two glass display cases:
an homage to Lou
arrayed for learning and pleasure.
Cherish, conserve, consider, create.

Stepping inside the hall,
late afternoon light radiating
from the transom windows,
the truss lifter poised to install
lighting and sound equipment
over the stage, the crew’s
soft steps and hushed conversation
burnishing the hardwood floor.
Cherish, conserve, consider, create.

Behind the scenes is where the work begins.
An exhibit installed, a stage readied.
In planting a garden the ground must be
prepared for what is to follow.
Cherish, conserve, consider, create.

– Jim Petersen 

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7.25.25

joyful jacaranda
all the Civic’s parking spaces
reserved for music

– Joan Zimmerman

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7.25.25

To bring in an additional poet, her fellow haiku poet Bev Momoi comes with her to one of the open rehearsals every year – in 2017 they hear the rehearsal of a piece by Gerald Barry. Bev offers two published haiku to reprint.

midsummer misunderstanding the French horns go staccato

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7.25.25

To begin, we start with a poem from Cabrillo Festival 2013.

hopscotch
first violins
warming up

– Joan Zimmerman, originally published in Daily Haiku