Encinitas Does Its Part to Open Musical Minds

The pessimistic observers of the local music scene readily claim that contemporary music can survive here only within the confines of the UC San Diego campus. To be certain, both Mandeville Center and the university’s Center for Music Experiment give the same protection to new music that the nearby Torrey Pines State Reserve affords the rare tree species.

These pessimists correctly observe that local attitudes toward new music, even the classical standards of the 20th Century, are not encouraging. Before a recent San Diego Symphony concert, a middle-aged matron complained to this critic that the symphony caused her great distress by playing Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” She rambled on about how dissonant this composition was to her delicate musical sensibilities. If “Adagio for Strings,” the lush, Romantic elegy that kept viewers’ eyes moist during the movie “Platoon,” is dissonant, then Burt Bacharach must be positively atonal!

Fortunately, the Friends of the Encinitas Library are immune to this sort of cultural pessimism and musical prejudice. Over the past four years, the organization has sponsored a variety of traditional chamber music concerts in the coastal community’s small library nestled on the crest of Cornish Drive. This season the Friends instituted a new series of contemporary music performance called “Music on the Edge.”

“This was our first real dive into contemporary music,” said series organizer Sally Dean, “and I am delighted that we’ve had a tremendous response from the community.”

The series opened last month with a performance by (trom-bown), a duo made up of trombonist Miles Anderson and electric violinist Erica Sharp. Their concert included Anderson’s own performance-art piece titled “Hot Tubs--The Opera” and drew more than 100 people, which, according to Dean, is close to capacity for the hall in the Encinitas Library.

“It probably helped that both of the performers live in Encinitas,” Dean said. The pair will perform their second program of the series at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 13, this time joined by percussionist Carol Pelkner. She will be featured in a new work by Las Vegas composer Walter Blanton commissioned especially for the Encinitas series. Blanton’s “Bleeker Street Romance” is described as “a throwback to the ‘Beat’ era of the 1950s, music with a postwar jazz feel, and some 1980s electronics thrown in for rast and snarf.”

Because Dean and her colleagues were able to line up co-sponsors from the local business community, these contemporary concerts are offered free. So it will cost the local music pessimists only gas money to attend one of these lively programs. They might even consider changing their grumpy minds after encountering a gathering of open ones in North County.

Tacky Traditions Die Hard. Although San Diego is usually awash in “Messiah” sing-alongs during the holiday season, this year’s schedule has been blessedly free of these dubious musical undertakings. A small-scale sing took place last weekend at a La Mesa Lutheran church, but the usual bastions abandoned their posts this year.

The La Jolla Civic-University Orchestra and Chorus has been presenting an annual sing-along since 1978, when chorus director David Chase collaborated with La Jolla organist Jared Jacobsen to put on the first local “Messiah” sing. This year Chase has put the tradition to rest.

“We assumed that the San Diego Master Chorale’s sing-along at Civic Theatre was well-established,” explained Chase. “Since our sing-along had not been growing in recent years, we decided to turn it over to them.” The San Diego Master Chorale, however, decided its December performing schedule was too full to prepare a “Messiah” sing-along, so scrubbed it.

While Chase diplomatically observed that he enjoyed a sing-along once it was in progress, he dreaded preparing for the annual ritual. In fact, he and La Jolla-Civic Orchestra conductor Thomas Nee took turns alternate years doing sing-along duty. Chase added a philosophical reservation about the tradition.

“I’m a bit nervous about setting up traditions that do exactly the same thing every year. It’s not a good idea to do exactly the same thing when you’re not growing.”

Chase will unveil his approach this season with three performances of a “Christmas Collage” this weekend at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium. He has included a Christmas offering from every musical era, from Richard Felciano’s avant-garde “Christmas Madrigal” to Giovanni Gabrieli’s Renaissance masterpiece, “Hodie Natus Christus Est.” For those who do not part with traditions easily, there will also be a nostalgic sing-along with the “Hallelujah” Chorus from “Messiah.”

And, for those who cannot part with sing-alongs at all, Master Chorale music director Frank Almond stated without hesitation that his group’s “Messiah” will return next year.

This Brass Not Banned. A dozen members of the San Diego Symphony brass section will present a pair of holiday concerts at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral on Dec. 12-13. Under the baton of Ethan Dulsky, former conductor of the Pacific Chamber Ensemble, the group will offer a potpourri of Gabrieli, Grieg and Copland, along with a clever medley of carols written by Sam Nestico, better known as the longtime arranger for Count Basie. Many of the other arrangements for this ensemble--less rustic and more refined than a brass band, according to Dulsky--have been worked out by John Wilds, the symphony’s new second trumpet. Soloists on the program will include principal trombone Heather Buchman and principal horn John Lorge.