Here I am — once again blogging from the airplane, thumbing my way across my tiny virtual keyboard, able now to reflect on what was an unpredictable, edgy, adventurous, and successful music festival, a festival that defies conventional classical music world logic, that challenges its audience and orchestra in unimaginable ways, and in so doing, rewards them in an equally fascinating and unpredictable manner. Cabrillo. Marin Alsop. Santa Cruz. This is where it’s at if you want to know what is actually happening in art music today (or the so-called and woefully named “classical music” if you prefer). For two short weeks in Santa Cruz, some of the best musicians in the world convene for a musical exploration that is unparalleled and truly out of this world, and the 2009 edition certainly did not disappoint.

You may wonder about the basis on which I stake these grandiose claims. If so, pull up a google window and check these names out.

Composers in attendance in 2009: Osvaldo Golijov, Avner Dorman, Brett Dean, David Heath, Enrico Chapela, Joby Talbot, Kevin Puts, Ingram Marshall.

Other notable composers who had pieces featured in 2009: Aaron Jay Kernis, James MacMillan, Magnus Lindberg.

Throw in a fantastic orchestra, an incredibly efficient management team, and an out-of-this-world music director in Marin Alsop — one of the foremost champions of new music, a leader with artistic vision, musical integrity of the highest caliber, and a work ethic that would make Paul Bunyan weep — and the result is a sort of musical perfect storm: a two week Santa Cruzian Nirvana for music and musicians.

In case you can’t tell, I had a pretty good time at Cabrillo. I had intended to write regularly during the festival, but as it continued to unfold before me, it became more and more difficult to find time to even reflect on what was going on, much less write about it. On top of that, my second week of the festival featured a major concerto performance combined with an untimely and completely unexpected lip infection. Got your attention now? I thought maybe. No need to worry though, the concerto performance came off beautifully and received a rousing reception, all thanks to the miracle of antibiotics. Well, that and literally countless hours of preparation, but you probably guessed that part already.

As the festival approaches each year, and as I prepare the unrelenting music, I wonder how we will ever live through it this time. But each year as the festival closes, I am left wondering how we will live without it.

In the next few days I’ll recount some of my experiences from the last two weeks, the same experiences I had planned on communicating while they happened, but which sucked me in to such a degree that they left me unable to write about them as they unfolded.

Perhaps through these writings you will see why I think the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is such an extraordinary event, and why I think it deserves even more attention than it already gets. But for right now, I’m going to raise my tray table, close my eyes, and rest — the sounds from yesterday’s concert in the Mission San Juan Bautista still soaring through my mind.

CabMuFest 09 has come and gone. I for one, am sad to see it go, but with the 2009 version disappearing in the rear-view mirror, I am already looking forward to the next one emerging on the horizon, curious about all the wonders it may have in store. Bring it on.

{ fin }

After writing about the spinning tubes used in Brett Dean’s Moments of Bliss and being unable to secure the actual name for the tube, I posted the question to my friends on Facebook. One of them wrote back with a link to a page about the “Bloogle Resonator”, so I visited this page and found that it described pretty accurately what I was talking about. There was also a picture, but this picture seemed to be on about the same level as one my 5 year old would take with his PlaySchool camera, so I was not totally convinced it was the same instrument that I mentioned in We’re Off….

Later that day, I happened upon Ellen Primack, the Executive Director of the Cabrillo Festival. She walked up to me, and with little warning quickly beamed, “Whirly Tubes!”. This caught me off guard at first, but I quickly realized that she had read my previous post and was informing me that those little spinning tubes are in fact called “Whirly Tubes”.

Now to me, this name makes a lot more sense than “Bloogle Resonator”, and a quick Google search reveals plenty of results for Whirly Tubes, but almost nothing for Bloogle Resonator. Certainly, the name “Whirly Tube” much better fits my childhood memories — five years old, standing in front of my grandmother’s house, whirling and twirling the tube as fast as I could, trying to make the highest possible pitch emerge from the spinning blur in front of me…

But in the end, I think the best argument for this name was the instant recognition by David Heath and Avner Dorman (composers featured at this year’s festival) at Ellen’s mention of the name, “Whirly Tubes”. All three of them knew of other pieces that called for them and quickly began discussing the merits of including Whirly Tubes in a piece. As I sat and watched this discussion — two of the world’s most respected living composers discussing the role and musical merits, or lack thereof, of a little plastic toy called a “Whirly Tube” — I couldn’t help but think of what a surreal scene it was, and that really, this conversation simply could not happen anywhere else.

Santa Cruz and Cabrillo. For two jam-packed weeks in August it truly is the place to be for anyone interested in the beautiful but somewhat wacky world of contemporary music. Now, if only they let me play the Whirly Tubes!

{ fin }

If someone wanted to find me in Santa Cruz, they could do worse than to go to Lulu Carpenter’s and look behind any latte they see. Yes, I am back here again this morning after a fun, but grueling night of rehearsing, enjoying another beautiful latte, and doing research. Research, you may ask? Yes, research. And at the moment, the research isn’t going particularly well. You see, I am trying to describe the opening of last night’s rehearsal, lest you confuse the Cabrillo Festival with, well… with pretty much anything, really.

I arrived at the hall early to take another look at the music and to get set up. When I arrived they were doing a sound check for the first piece on the rehearsal, Moments of Bliss by Brett Dean. They were setting levels for the MIDI track, which includes a huge variety of sounds, including something akin to a jet engine blasting away with intermittent spoken phrases interspersed throughout. I look to my right and see that there is a large spinning wheel that looks a bit like a giant dartboard that fell out of a carnival arcade, complete with a big blue flashing light on top — this is apparently the “Wheel of Fortune”, but I’m not sure of the significance of that just yet. From there I look to the front of the stage and I see Concertmaster Yumi Hwang-Williams standing there holding a 5 string electric violin. Nice.

Once the piece starts, however, unique goes to bizarre. Towards the beginning of the piece is a nice harmon mute trumpet solo marked “smoky” (hmm… As Marin Alsop pointed out to me, perhaps “smokie” would have been a better choice). The solo is a pretty straightforward, jazz influenced, harmon mute solo, nothing too bizarre there. But in this solo, there are a couple of small breaks between solo statements (approx. a bar of rest each). Now, I had been envisioning a certain kind of music in these breaks, and the actual music that is in these breaks isn’t far from what I had imagined. What got my attention, though, was when members of the orchestra suddenly grabbed 3 foot long plastic hoses and began spinning them over their head! You know the ones, they are made of ridged plastic and make a pitched “whooo… whoooo… whooo” as you spin them. The faster you spin them, the higher the pitch. So there I am, trying to play a beautiful trumpet solo, and every time I stop playing my colleagues grab plastic hoses and spin them around over their heads. Somehow, I’m not sure that my musical expressivity is really coming across…

And this is where the research comes in. What are those plastic tubes called? I Googled everything I could think of and I even sent a text question to KGB (the text answer service), all to no avail. All I got from them was “everyday there are a few questions that we can’t answer and unfortunately yours was one of them.” Craig: 1 KGB:0. Great. I am winning a game I don’t even want to win!

So the Cabrillo Festival is underway again, my face already feels abused, and I am back at Lulu Carpenter’s ruminating over a latte.

It’s all good.

{ fin }

I have arrived in Santa Cruz and headed straight to my favorite coffee house, Lulu Carpenter’s: latte art, free Wifi, great ambience… What’s not to love!

The festival is now just a few hours from the first full orchestra rehearsal, just enough time to have an amazing latte, look at a couple of things in my music before rehearsal, and grab a quick dinner. It turns out that the Brett Dean Moments of Bliss is first on the rehearsal tonight, and I’m not so sure my part is entirely ready for public consumption.

As I sit, ticking off the minutes until the festival officially begins, I can’t help but wonder what exactly lies in wait. I sit on the precipice of a musical adventure, peering down into the ravine, waiting to jump in, unsure what exactly I am going to be immersing myself in, but totally confident it will be an interesting and enjoyable journey. Right now, though, I am just going to sit back, dangle my feet over the edge, and enjoy my latte. It’s good to be back at Lulu Carpenter’s.

{ fin }

I woke up early today to a foggy and cool Northern California morning, my persistent body clock informing me that it was not 6am (as the clock indicated), but rather 9am (the time on the east coast). My mind tried to reason with it, but my body was having none of it, so I was up and out of bed. Now, if I am going to be out of bed at 6am I am going to need one thing: coffee. Surprisingly, the nearest Starbuck’s is 3 miles away (I didn’t know it was still possible to be 3 miles from a Starbuck’s), so, with an ever increasing sense of urgency, I hopped in the car and headed of to the nearest palace of the bean, only to arrive drop-jawed at the sight before me. There was a line.

Before you think another thought, you have to understand that to me, arriving at a location outside of the house at 6:20am is a special occasion, a holiday of sorts, something that may only happen 2-3 times in a year — or in a decade. And if that special occasion happens to fall, as it did today, on a Saturday morning, then I feel confident that I will be virtually alone in whatever endeavor I deem to undertake, especially if it involves going into an establishment and purchasing something. Of course, this isn’t just anything, it’s coffee, and other people want it just as bad as me. As I stand in line reflecting on this fact, I realize that not everybody spends their life working until 11 on a Friday night, only to come home energized from performing, unable to sleep. Perhaps it is not as bizarre as I think to be standing in line for coffee at 6:20am. Maybe my initial thought, that strange things are afoot this morning was not the proper reaction at all. Then I pull out my phone and read my email. There is a forwarded message from my Mom:

“Giant Sinkhole Opens Near Denver City”

What?! A Sinkhole? Denver City? I pause for a moment, thinking… Denver City is in the news… Denver City is in the news because of a sinkhole…

You see, when I was very young we lived in a tiny town in West Texas called Denver City, a town so remote that you’d need a guide and a mule to find it, and even that probably won’t work. My Dad used to joke that the the town was so small they had to put both city limits signs on 1 post. We had a volunteer fire department with two firemen: the guy with the pickup and the guy with the garden hose. You get the idea. Now, there is an Associated Press news article in my inbox about — off all things — Denver City. And not just any common news article, no. This one is about a giant sinkhole that is 70 yards long, 67 yards wide, and 50 feet deep and is just 2 miles outside of town, a sinkhole large enough to swallow up a city block. Now that is bizarre.

I move forward in line now, inching closer to coffee, totally unsure whether it is normal or not to wait in line at a Starbuck’s at 6:20am, wondering what other aberrations this day has in store.

{ fin }