The lure of the central coast's music festivals by Clarice Assad

The lure of the Central Coast's music festivals: Critic's Notebook - latimes.com

262k

Membership Services

7/31/12 2:42 AM

Jobs

Cars

Real Estate

Rentals

Classifieds

Custom Publishing Place Ad

ARTS & CULTURE LOCAL

U.S.

BREAKING

WORLD

BUSINESS

PHOTOS

VIDEO

IN THE NEWS: 'THE HOBBIT'

SPORTS CRIME

ENTERTAINMENT OBITUARIES

'DANCING WITH THE STARS'

HEALTH

WEATHER

TCA PRESS TOUR

LIVING

TRAFFIC

TRAVEL

OPINION

CROSSWORDS

DEALS

GAMES

HOROSCOPES

KRISTEN STEWART

APPS

Culture Monster Topics Art

Critic's Notebook: The lure of the Central Coast's music festivals

The summer festivals Carmel Bach, Cabrillo and Music@Menlo are turning the Central Coast into a top music destination, with works both refreshing and illuminating. Comments

Latest Olympics Headlines Daily TV schedule London Olympics: U.S. swimmer Missy Franklin acts her age, joyfully London Olympics: Ryan Lochte misses, but Missy Franklin's a hit

Olympics Medal Count

The multimedia piece “Hidden World of Girls” was commissioned for Cabrillo Festival’s half-century. (rr jones / July 31, 2012)

Country

By Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times Music Critic July 30, 2012 , 8:05 p.m.

Music review: iPalpiti witty,

The enchanting coastal area south of San Francisco Bay to Big Sur has a wonderful history as a bewitcher of bohemian artists, at least until big bucks and high tech hit the area.

1. China (CHN) 2. United States (USA) 3. Japan (JPN) 4. Italy (ITA) 5. France (FRA)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-calif-festivals-notebook-20120731,0,2613176.story

Total 9

5 1 2

7 4 4

5 6 2

17 17 11 8 7

Full medals count

Page 1 of 5

The lure of the Central Coast's music festivals: Critic's Notebook - latimes.com

imaginative at Disney Hall

Review: Stephane Deneve sets off Bernstein fireworks at the Bowl

7/31/12 2:42 AM

Still, that legacy as well as Silicon Valley's burgeoning cultural appetite can be found in three major music festivals in late July and early August that have made this northern stretch of California's Central Coast a significant festival destination.

Bret Michaels, girlfriend call off engagement

Coincidentally, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and Music@Menlo are all celebrating major anniversaries this summer and all are undergoing meaningful renewal. Last week was the one weekend in which it was possible to visit all three.

E3 convention to stay in Los Angeles

No one would, of course, mistake today's tony and touristy Carmel-by-the-Sea for the artist's colony it was 75 years ago when Carmel Bach was founded. London Olympics: Conductor EsaPekka Salonen carries Olympic torch [video]

'Fifty Shades of Grey' spurs sales of Renaissance Tallis work

Ads by Google

East Coast Music Festival 40+ Artists, Enhanced Dining & Interactive Entertainment. 7/20-22 www.FireflyFestival.com

University of PhoenixÂŽ Online and Campus Degree Programs. Official Site - Classes Start Soon.

Titans receiver commits suicide

Over the years, the festival grew a little stuffy as Carmel grew rich, but that seems to be changing with Paul Goodwin, the controversial British early music specialist who became music director last summer. Saturday night, he ended his second season with a "Best of the Fest," highlights from the packed two weeks' worth of 47 concerts. Goodwin is rethinking everything about the festival. He has been revamping the electronic enhancement of the Sunset Theater's problematic acoustics. He has a striking flair for making the old new again. And he appeared inexhaustible Saturday night in a breathless three-hour mismatched miscellany of bits and pieces.

White House: Peru now top cocaine producer

Ads by Google

Bach's B-Minor Mass brushed against Rachmaninoff's Vespers and bluegrass mandolin. Bach's Air on a G String segued into "Midsummer Air" by Curt Cacioppo, an East Coast composer influenced by Native American music. The countertenor Robin Blaze sang Purcell with a pure, elegant tone. The local Carmel police blotter was turned into a comic choral piece. Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto was embedded with an excellent violin improvisation by Peter Hanson. And with reckless abandon, Goodwin led a periodinstrument orchestra in the last movement of Brahms' Second Symphony.

Phoenix.edu

Also on Saturday night, at the other end of the Monterey Bay, the Cabrillo Festival, now 50, opened its three-week season. This festival, too, has obviously changed with the region. It was begun by the composer Lou Harrison at Cabrillo College, in nearby Aptos, where he lived, to explore new and neglected old music. It is now a festival of exclusively new or very recent work held in gentrified downtown Santa Cruz's generic Civic Auditorium. Marin Alsop has been its music director for two decades, and she has removed some of the local flavor. But Saturday night she put it back in with an extraordinary commission, "Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra," to celebrate Cabrillo's half-century mark. I saw the Sunday afternoon repeat. The starting point for the 90-minute multimedia piece was the NPR series by the Kitchen Sisters (the Santa Cruz radio documentarians Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) that illuminates surprising, remarkable, profoundly soulful aspects of seemingly ordinary women. Laura Karpman then invited three female composers in their early 30s to write pieces based on three stories. She wrote a section herself, along with the connecting material. Added on was audio from the Kitchen Sisters' series, along with video projections by Obscura Digital. Each composer brought something different to subjects that ranged from Shadi Ghadirian's photographs of Iranian women to young girls who fantasize that they are from the planet Venus with

$99 for Ultrasonic Lipo with the Body Sculpt Wrap (reg. $250)

Latest News

Obama related to legendary Virginia slave, genealogist says 07/30/2012, 5:17 p.m. London Olympics: Disappointment for U.S. men's gymnastics team 07/30/2012, 4:55 p.m. London Olympics: Alexandra Raisman leads with competence, poise 07/30/2012, 4:45 p.m. Jonah Lehrer's Bob Dylan quotes lead to resignation 07/30/2012, 4:42 p.m. Should Lakers take Jason Richardson's salary to get Dwight Howard? 07/30/2012, 4:31 p.m.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-calif-festivals-notebook-20120731,0,2613176.story

Page 2 of 5

The lure of the Central Coast's music festivals: Critic's Notebook - latimes.com

7/31/12 2:42 AM

special powers that inspire the Beatles. Camera Obscura's contributions were visually elegant but the power was in the music. Alexandra du Bois' "Beneath Boundaries," for instance, provided more than enough imaginative evocation of Ghadirian's photographs. The hot desert can make the ordinary extraordinary, and Du Bois' orchestral sonorities glow and linger, while familiar musical motives — a child-like leaping up and down the scale, say — become downright eerie and otherworldly. In "Portraits for Orchestra," Karpman hauntingly sampled historical 1947 recordings of prison songs to musically portray photographs of female prisoners from that time, and that was movingly eerie as well. Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum took on the Venusians with good humor. Brazilian composer Clarice Assad wrote a macabre yet jazzy piece about brutal civil war in El Salvador, with the composer as dazzling vocal soloist. Alsop kept all the moving parts in line with the no-nonsense authority of a smart general. But she wasn't ruthless enough. Cut the visuals. Eliminate the unicorn, dolphins and clapping of the feelgood ending. Trim here and there, and "Hidden Girls" could become a work worth wide exposure. Further up in Atherton, Music@Menlo is 10. The chamber music festival was founded by pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel, who also run the chamber music component of Lincoln Center in New York. They get very good artists. And last year they got a new main venue, an approximately 500-seat hall built at Menlo-Atherton High School, with bright acoustics. There are coaching sessions and some concerts in more intimate settings around the area.

Videos Lochte gets gold, Phelps finishes 4th

Ryan Lochte turned his much-anticipated duel with Michael Phelps into a blowout,... Expand

Share Video:

The Friday night concert I heard at Menlo-Atherton (the festival began July 21 and runs until Aug. 11) had the theme "Transported: Sonic Journey." That's another way of saying it was quirkily all over the place, giving this festival something curiously in common with the Carmel and Cabrillo programs last weekend. The Escher Quartet played Sibelius String Quartet blandly. Kelly Markgraf sang Samuel Barber's "Dover Beach" blandly. A chamber version of the vocal last movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony, with mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, needed a conductor. But there were marvelous moments too. The pianists Jeffrey Kahane and Han performed Debussy's "Six Epigraphes Antiques" for four hands with refined sparkle. Kahane brought Spanish pieces by Albéniz and Granados to life. Kahane and violinist Jorja Fleezanis were magical in a three-minute Chinese fantasy by Chen Yi. Journeys tend to be like that. Lots of down time and then something special. Without the seaside charms of the Monterey Bay, Music@Menlo has its work cut out to become a destination. But the locals seem to love it. The hall was full, and an eager crowd cheered everything with great gusto. ALSO Music review: iPalpiti witty, imaginative at Disney Hall

@CultureMonster

Review: Stephane Deneve sets off Bernstein fireworks

Tweets from L.A. Times staff writers.

Review: L.A. Phil's Russian program adds French notes at the Bowl

CharlesMcNulty Review: 'The Producers' still

zings despite flubs at the Bowl latimes.com/entertainment/… yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite

mark.swed@latimes.com

debvankin .@thedailybeast And then there's

this... "Kent State Student Arrested for Tweet" thebea.st/MVFEAS #cheatsheet

yesterday · reply · retweet · favorite

debvankin Yep -- ditto. RT @estarLA Finally