Departures: Orchestra Concert

A new era begins for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with a work aptly titled Points of Departure. Composer Michael Gandolfi originally wrote the work for chamber orchestra and joins us for the world premiere of a re-orchestration for full orchestra, conducted by Maestro Cristian Macelaru. New York Times critic Allan Kozinn wrote that Gandolfi’s music “has some of the rigor of the mid-20th-century atonalists, but it also draws on the richness of melody and timbre prized by the neo-Romantics;” he describes Points of Departure as “an essay on the beauty of angularity.” Next, Macelaru leads the Festival Orchestra and the Grammy Award-winning Scottish virtuoso Dame Evelyn Glennie in the world premiere of another Festival-commissioned work— Clarice Assad’s percussion concerto, AD INFINITUM. Assad, a Brazilian-born composer, collaborated with Glennie on the concerto, which began with the idea of exploring childhood toys and imaginary worlds and developed “into a suite of different phases of life–from birth through adulthood.” Assad has incorporated improvisational elements into the score, allowing Glennie creativity in her choices and the opportunity for each performance to be utterly unique. Grawemeyer and Pulitzer prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis’s soulful and imaginative music draws freely on Romanticism, Minimalism, the Impressionists and Hip-Hop. This summer Kernis returns to Cabrillo for his Second Symphony, written in response to the Persian Gulf War. The composer explains, “The Gulf War was the first war in which, as an adult, I ‘witnessed’ (through the media) my country’s participation. In addition, the Symphony was fueled by a time of great personal change, and signifies both a loss of innocence and an important shift of tone in my music.” As relevant today as when it was written, this dramatic work powerfully rebukes the absurdity and cruelty of war.

The 2017 season begins with an outdoor Pre-Concert Talk with Cristian Macelaru, hosted by radio producer Robert Pollie, and a special ticketed dinner, prepared by Feast for a King and served alfresco at the Civic Auditorium. Dinner reservations are required.