CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : SONOR to Make Waves at West German Festival

Packing for Darmstadt may sound like the title of a mediocre performance art piece, but it describes the current preoccupation of about 50 members of SONOR, UC San Diego’s contemporary music ensemble. At the invitation of the West German government, the university’s first string avant-gardists will descend on Europe’s most prestigious modern music festival. According to Roger Reynolds, UCSD resident composer, it is the first such invitation to an American ensemble.

“We will totally dominate the first week in terms of presentations--we’re filling virtually every hour,” said Reynolds. His composition, “Transfigured Wind IV” for flute, tape and chamber orchestra will open the two-week festival Aug. 1. SONOR’s sampling of its wares for Europe’s most critical but knowledgeable music connoisseurs will include the gamut of its repertory, from works by emeritus composer Robert Erickson--”The Idea of Order in Key West,” which the ensemble recorded several years ago--to a new composition by graduate student Chaya Schwarz, first performed last week for her doctoral jury.

During the first decades after World War II, when the likes of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen jostled with American iconoclast John Cage, the Darmstadt Festival set the pace for new music, deciding who was “in” and what young composers would be emulating for the next year. But according to SONOR soprano Carol Plantamura, the festival is no longer the arbiter of musical opinion it once was.

“It was always the Delphi of contemporary music, so the trip is kind of a pilgrimage for me,” said Plantamura. “The gods are no longer there, but that’s good. We’re going to see what has replaced the gods.”

Like other SONOR performers, Plantamura is leaving next week to engage in some of her own performances before arriving in Darmstadt. In Switzerland and Germany she will play in concerts with lutanist Jurgen Hubscher, and in Belgium she will rehearse Frederic Rzewski’s theater piece “Antigone” for a Japanese tour this fall.

SONOR’s most serious packing, however, has been arranged by technician Rob Huff, who is responsible for shipping 1,500 pounds of electronic and computer gear, as well as exotic percussion instruments and props the Germans are unable to provide. His most unusual prop, one which he had to make, is a broomstick with a mannequin’s foot attached.

“I had to go to May Co. to beg the foot in exchange for a note in the program,” he explained. The opus requiring this extra-musical gadget is UCSD composer Jean-Charles Francois’ “Impertinent Remarks of a Crustacean.”

P.S. After some extensive searching, Huff found the ideal shipper for the SONOR equipment--San Ysidro-based Schenkers International Forwarding. Coincidentally, the home office of Schenkers is in Darmstadt.

Two major outdoor festivals open this week, the San Diego Symphony’s annual Summer Pops at Hospitality Point on Mission Bay and Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Festival at Sammis Pavilion adjacent to Batiquitos Lagoon. While the Summer Pops programming exudes predictability--tomorrow’s opener with the toe-tapping Dukes of Dixieland and prosaic conductor Carl Hermanns is typical--the Batiquitos schedule bristles with unknowns.

Saturday night’s opening concert will be led by Soviet conductor Felix Krugilkov, unknown to the festival artistic director except as a recent guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic. Guest soloists appearing on later outdoor concerts include pianist Oxana Yablonskaya and cellist Karine Georgian.

Just what sort of animal the festival orchestra will be is also an unknown. Michael Tseitlin stated that one-fourth of the players will be visiting faculty members from the festival’s Summer Music Institute and that the rest will be graduate students, young professionals and free-lancers. In the case of the Batiquitos Festival, free-lance also takes on the meaning of free service, since the orchestra will be playing gratis.

A number of visiting artists and groups promised by Tseitlin earlier this year have not materialized in the final programming: the Hortus Musicus Tallinn early music ensemble, soloists from the Moscow Virtuosi, Soviet conductors Leonid Grin and Valery Gergiev. A Soviet film festival and visual arts exhibit that Tseitlin announced in February also failed to materialize, although Tseitlin promised these events at next year’s festival.

We knew it had to happen sooner or later. In a gushing press release from the Batiquitos Festival of the Arts, the al fresco orchestra series was described as providing music for everyone. The evening of July 16 will feature, the release continued, “an ‘Amadeus’ night with enchanting music from the Oscar-winning movie.”