Maria Schneider Orchestra Maria Schneider, Conductor Thomas W
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS June 13–18, 2011 Monday, June 13, 2011, 8pm Zellerbach Hall & Playhouse Zellerbach Hall Ojai North! Ojai North! Maria Schneider Orchestra Maria Schneider, conductor Thomas W. Morris Artistic Director, Ojai Music Festival Dawn Upshaw Music Director, 2011 Ojai Music Festival Reeds Matías Tarnopolsky Director, Cal Performances Steve Wilson Charles Pillow Rich Perry 2 FESTIVAL PROGRAM 2 Donny McCaslin Scott Robinson Monday, June 13, 2011 Maria Schneider Orchestra Maria Schneider, conductor Trumpets August Haas Tuesday, June 14, 2011 Australian Chamber Orchestra Greg Gisbert Richard Tognetti, artistic director & lead violin Laurie Frink Dawn Upshaw, soprano Frank Greene Trombones Thursday June 16, 2011 The Winds of Destiny Keith O’Quinn Saturday, June 18, 2011 Dawn Upshaw, soprano Ryan Keberle Gilbert Kalish, piano Tim Albright red fish blue fish with Steven Schick, percussion George Flynn Peter Sellars, director Ustad Farida Mahwash, vocals Rhythm Sakhi Ensemble with Homayoun Sakhi, rubâb Victor Prieto accordion Lage Lund guitar Frank Kimbrough piano Jay Anderson bass Clarence Penn drums Ojai North! is a co-production of the Ojai Music Festival and Cal Performances. Ken Jablonski sound technician Ms. Schneider will announce the program from the stage. Ojai North! is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Liz and Greg Lutz. Cal Performances’ 2010–2011 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. 4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES A Niche A lovely thing to find, a niche. Just the spot that gut. She liked Gil Evans and his feel for or- piano and accordion with pizzicato accents from suits your talent, skill, and inclination. The very chestration, his translucent color, and Bob the bass, tiny pools of deep resonance, with best, of course, make that slot their own, shape Brookmeyer’s sense of theme and form. But shimmering glints of light in the upper registers. it through their gifts. But there’s another kind there is much else besides: Brazilian music, with Then something new: a kind of chordal coales- of niche, one you cannot find. It’s the one you its sensuous physicality, Spanish rhythms, a bit cence in the piano, almost like a hymn, taken create yourself. of blues and soul, and underneath it all that up by brass, around which we hear small flights Maria Schneider did much the same. She’s a foundation in the classics. This is not to say this of solo fancy. This leads into a laidback shuffle press agent’s nightmare. What is it that she does? is jazz with classical allures, that fabled “Third and another surprise—a sinewy vocal solo—be- She conducts, of course—composes, too—and Stream” utopia. She can’t stand the term and a fore the sax gives its wailing benediction above she’s got a band. But what to call it? OK, it’s jazz, lot of what it produced. No, her classical chops a blended mass of brass and reeds. We’re there, but there’s classical and world music, too, with are in her textures and ideas, the sense for devel- look around, look up, blue sky, birds in flight. lots of room for improvisation. Maria Schneider, opment and structure, in sophisticated timbres This is music—beautiful in shape and form, ex- is all about collaboration. When she gives a and the subtle balance of colors, in the interplay quisite in its textures—that is direct, evocative concert, it feels to her as if she’s hosting a party. of lines. This accounts for the sound of her or- and from the heart. Listen and watch. Imagine, though, a party in which everyone is chestra. Lots of mutes, for instance, and quirky Maria Schneider has been performing with actually listening to one another, and not just combinations. It’s not sectional, the traditional her orchestra since 1988—nearly a quarter cen- listening but watching, too. This is where it all big-band sound—reeds here, brass, percussion, tury—and almost half the players have been began, how a Minnesota girl discovered jazz— keyboards there. They play across sections, trad- there since the beginning. These players have by watching it happen, grow and blossom. ing off ideas. That’s what makes this music so become a part of her and her music is infused There were music lessons, of course: pia- difficult to play. You have to know each other, with their creative voices. When she writes, she no, clarinet, violin, the classics, a bit of stride. know when to give, when to take, catch the cue, writes with them in mind: their skills, their per- Music theory gave promise of unlocking se- follow the lead, provoke a response, be ready for sonalities, the way they work together. It’s all crets. What makes music tick? How does the surprise. You need to know how to create that about trust, merging egos, and doing what the germ develop into a theme, a theme undergo seamless flow between reading and improvisa- music needs to do. There’s nothing quite like it. variation and unfold into larger forms? But then tion, between individual spontaneity and en- So in the end Maria Schneider created a she asked why music makes us feel the way it semble discipline. niche of her own—with room enough to hold does? About light, color and emotion. And why Take a work like Cerulean Skies. It opens her friends. the need for passports at the borders between quietly—broken chords on the piano, a chorus styles, between tonal and atonal, popular and of bird calls. Listen to the way the flute, bass, ac- Christopher Hailey classical, North and South? Why this relentless cordion and muted trumpet seem to appear out search for smuggled contraband? Tall orders for of nowhere, creating a gossamer weave of sound analysis and textbook program notes learning. through a wash of polytonal harmonies. As this That’s when she realized the jazz world was sim- introduction dissolves, the music hits an easy ply more open-minded, that here Debussy and stride, strong lines in the brass, reeds with con- Ravel could mix it up with Gil Evans—and Bill tinuing echoes of that haunting introduction. Evans, too; that here there were no artificial bar- The central section opens up onto a freewheel- riers between performing and creating. It was all ing sax solo that goes, swirling, where it will. about the music and how you make it. Does any of this sound familiar? Sure, but listen “Nobody taught me how to be a jazz com- again to the intricate counterpoint of expressive poser,” she has said, “I learned by watching.” lines, the layering of textures. That’s something University jazz bands, late night combos, greats else again. What follows has the feel of a fitful on tour. Watching, listening, and trusting her interlude, fragmented wisps of dialogue between 6 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 7 CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM Tuesday, June 14, 2011, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Ojai North! Maria Schneider (b. 1960) Winter Morning Walks (2011) (Bay Area Premiere) Australian Chamber Orchestra Texts by Ted Kooser Richard Tognetti, artistic director & lead violin “Perfectly Still This Solstice Morning” Dawn Upshaw, soprano “When I Switched On a Light” “Walking by Flashlight” “I Saw a Dust Devil This Morning” PROGRAM “My Wife and I Walk the Cold Road” “All Night, in Gusty Winds” Anton Webern (1883–1945) Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 (1909; version for string orch. 1928; rev. 1929) “Our Finch Feeder” I. Heftig bewegt “Spring, the Sky Rippled with Geese” George Crumb (b. 1929) Black Angels (1971) “How Important It Must Be” 1. Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects Dawn Upshaw soprano Webern Five Movements for String Quartet Scott Robinson alto clarinet & bass clarinet II. Sehr langsam Frank Kimbrough piano Jay Anderson bass Crumb Black Angels 2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes Winter Morning Walks was co-commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival, Cal Performances and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Webern Five Movements for String Quartet III. Sehr lebhaft Winter Morning Walks is generously supported by Diane and Michael Gorfaine and Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris. Crumb Black Angels 8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura Webern Five Movements for String Quartet INTERMISSION IV. Sehr langsam Crumb Black Angels 10. God-music Timo-Veikko Valve, cello Webern Five Movements for String Quartet V. In zarter Bewegung Pieces are performed without pause. 8 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 9 PROGRAM PROGRAM NOTES The Company You Keep No composer can expect to be performed in night, where each performance is truly Béla Bartók (1881–1945) Five Hungarian Folk Songs for Soprano and isolation, least of all Webern, whose miniatures a creative collaboration. String Orchestra can scarcely stand alone or suffice to sustain an (arr. for string orchestra by Richard Tognetti) Toward this end, Schneider has called evening (though an evening would do to survey on three longtime collaborators—Frank his entire published œuvre). Music lives through “Annyi bánat az szűvemen” from 8 Hungarian Kimbrough, Scott Robinson and Jay the company it keeps—what it draws from the Folk Songs, Sz. 64, No. 4 (1907) Anderson—whose improvisational abilities past, what it shares with its time, and what it extend far beyond the language of jazz. They “Régi keserves” from 20 Hungarian Folk Songs, anticipates about the future. Webern’s riches lie join the Australian Chamber Orchestra, whose Sz. 92, No. 2 (1929) in such connections; his music takes flight when members play without a conductor and are thus, programmed with Schubert, Bach or Messiaen “Párosító I” from 20 Hungarian Folk Songs, like jazz musicians, deeply attuned to listening to bring out its lyricism, contrapuntal rigor or Sz.