San Francisco Composer Rejoins Rep for ‘Carol’

Much to her surprise, San Francisco composer Gina Leishman is back in town working for the San Diego Repertory Theatre again. The plucky musician made her local debut this summer with her score for Peter Barnes’ controversial, epic-scaled “Red Noses.” Her musical labors were rewarded last month when the San Diego Critics Circle voted “Red Noses” the best new score to appear among this past season’s dramatic offerings.

Although she has been composing music for two new plays in San Francisco, one that just opened at San Francisco State University and a second about to open at the Intersection Theatre, she gave in to the Rep’s entreaties to return to prepare new music for its annual holiday blockbuster production, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

“I tend to shy away from classic works in favor of newer works,” Leishman said, “but this is so universal in its appeal that I decided to do it. The whole lesson of ‘Carol’ is also so incredibly appropriate with the problems of poverty and the homeless all around us.”

Leishman’s studio is a small room in the Rep’s set construction shop just below Market Street at 13th and J streets. During the interview, she explained that she had gotten to know some of the homeless who inhabit that warehouse district. Sure enough, on the walk back from the coffee shop, she was greeted by some of the unshaven but smiling denizens of lower Market.

As heard in “Red Noses,” Leishman’s stylistic trademark is an eclectic blend of unusual acoustic instruments with a bevy of electronic sounds. But for “A Christmas Carol,” she has forsworn electronics and is using a four-piece street band of two brass players, a violin and a keyboard player who alternates between parlor organ and accordion.

“The street band is very much in the tradition of Victorian buskers--a kind of beggar band--with a little bit of Salvation Army band thrown in,” Leishman explained. She admitted that this musical tradition came a little later than the 1840s era in which Dickens’ plot is set, but the mild anachronism did not seem to faze her.

Leishman finds much of her inspiration from the sounds of certain instruments, especially if they are slightly exotic. In her studio, she proudly demonstrated the colorful sounds of the parlor organ loaned by Wendell Shoberg, a local collector and restorer of these 19th-Century, foot-pumped reed organs.

“This instrument will be the backbone of the play’s ghost music,” she said, “although, with the other instruments played off stage, it will blend into a kind of orchestral sound for some of the incidental music.”

Just prior to the interview, Leishman was teaching pianist Mark Danishowsky, who portrayed composer Marc Blitzstein and accompanied the singers in the Rep’s recent production of “The Cradle Will Rock,” to play the bandoneon. She chose the bandoneon because she thought its antique look helped establish the earlier period of Christmas Past in the play.

“The bandoneon is sometimes called the Argentine accordion, although it was brought to South America by German sailors. But the only thing it shares with the accordion is its interior bellows action. It is played entirely by buttons--there is no keyboard at all.”

True to her eclectic instincts, Leishman has tossed some traditional British ballades and carols into her score.

“It’s rather Victorian, but at the same time it’s me. My idea is to create music that is naive in a way--like a child’s imagination during the telling of a story.”

The rest of her musical crew is trumpeter Eric Kallen, violinist Floyd Fronius and trombone player Louise Titlow, who doublec on a wonderful piece of musical plumbing called the double-bell euphonium.

The Rep’s production of “A Christmas Carol” opens at the Lyceum on Nov. 26 and runs through Christmas Eve.

Another staple of the holiday theater repertory is Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” This season, the newly formed West Coast Lyric Opera will present six performances of the opera, which will open Dec. 6 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre. Company director Anne Young announced last week that Los Angeles soprano Brenda Wimberly will make her San Diego debut in the role of Amahl’s mother.

Wimberly is the 1988 winner of the Zachary Foundation auditions and was a national finalist last year in the Metropolitan Opera auditions. She has sung with San Francisco Opera and trained for several years in its Merola Program.

True to the holiday spirit, Young’s singers will present a preview performance of the opera for economically disadvantaged children Dec. 6. Local organizations that wish to participate or send youngsters to the performance should call Sherry Allison, 262-5557 or 296-1648.

The San Diego Men’s Chorus, which has been the toast of Hillcrest since its debut three years ago, has a sense of humor for the upcoming season. Anyone who can remember the words to the traditional English carol “Deck the Halls” is sure to chuckle over the choral ensemble’s holiday concert title, “Don We Now . . . “ The men will commence their “fa-la-la’s” Dec. 16 at First United Methodist Church of San Diego.