Sollberger Will Be at Home Amid Idealism of UCSD

Although California’s current economic slump may have tarnished the Golden State’s allure for some, composer Harvey Sollberger eagerly accepted UC San Diego’s invitation to join its music faculty.

“I’ve known the UCSD music department for a long time,” explained Sollberger, who began his teaching responsibilities on the La Jolla campus last month. “It’s an unusually idealistic place, a department focused on the present and the future. In most quarters of American academic life, I find a depressing sameness and timidity.”

The versatile Sollberger--he is also a conductor and flutist--was a co-founder of the New York-based Group for Contemporary Music, which he directed for 27 years. Since 1983, he was a professor at Indiana University’s School of Music, where he directed the school’s New Music Ensemble.

Sollberger’s earlier connections with UCSD have centered on the music of Roger Reynolds, one of the university’s longtime resident composers and founder of the Center for Music Experiment. In February, 1989, Sollberger conducted the San Diego Symphony in a concert devoted to Reynolds’ music, including “Whispers Out of Time,” the composition that won Reynolds his Pulitzer Prize. “Whispers” and “Transfigured Wind II” were subsequently recorded for New World Records under Sollberger’s baton.

From his vantage point as both composer and performer, Sollberger is sobered by current trends that impinge on music and the way audiences approach it.

“We are seeing a much greater influence in classical music by the world of mass media, especially television,” he said. “We seem to be losing our ability to listen, and images have taken over.”

He alluded to a newspaper account of a recent concert by the Ventura Symphony in which images of the piano soloist’s hands and programmatic nature scenes were projected on a 20-foot screen behind the orchestra.

“Although I am fascinated with this technology, it nevertheless sends shivers down my spine,” Sollberger said. “With the kinds of spectacular visual effects so easily achieved by movies and television, it is difficult for music alone to compete.”

Like the nation’s love affair with fast food, Sollberger sees a parallel infatuation with music that gives instant gratification.

“With so many well-trained young composers flooding the job market,” he said, “some simply choose the path of least resistance and construct music that has instant appeal to both audiences and music directors.”

Given Sollberger’s background, it would be easy to presume that joining UCSD would be the prelude to assuming the director’s role of SONOR, UCSD’s resident new-music ensemble. But that won’t be the case. When former UCSD music professor Bernard Rands founded SONOR in 1975, he acted as its visionary director until he left in 1985. But the group’s current organization eschews a single director and relies on group consensus to make programming decisions.

“SONOR is run by its members,” Sollberger said. “I will, however, curate one of its three concerts this academic year (April 7), and a lot of the conducting will fall to me.”

Although Sollberger is generally upbeat about making new music at UCSD, he is concerned that the music department has too few performing music majors to realize the scores of the comparatively large cadre of graduate student composers. Unlike Indiana University, whose huge music school has hundreds of virtuoso players at the disposal of aspiring composers, UCSD does not even have a resident string quartet with the chops to perform demanding new music. He hopes to change this situation, but is aware of the state’s financial plight and its implications for the university system.

But even if a slew of new scholarships for performing majors doesn’t materialize, Sollberger has the consolation of rejoining his former pupil and protege, faculty pianist Aleck Karis.

“He studied with me when he was a student at the Manhattan School of Music in the 1970s,” Sollberger said. “When he graduated, he frequently played with our Group for Contemporary Music, as well as other new-music groups in New York. We have a long history of performing together.”

Despite increasing demands to conduct, Sollberger still occasionally performs on flute.

“I’m not as active as I used to be, but as long as Milton Babbitt and others continue to write things for me to play, I’ll do it. I hope to give a solo recital this winter or spring.”

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Down Mexico Way. This morning at 10:30, almost 150 San Diego Symphony members and patrons are scheduled to leave Lindbergh Field on a charter flight that will take them to Merida, Yucatan, for the orchestra’s Columbus Day concert in the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. Upon arrival, the 83 orchestra members will be bused to their hotels in Chichen Itza, where they will be entertained by local performing groups. The patrons will be taken to their Merida hotel and feted at a party held at the governor’s palace.

Sunday will be a free day for both groups, although the musicians will play a dress rehearsal that evening on the Chichen Itza ball court. The Monday evening concert, conducted by music director Yoav Talmi, will present music symbolic of the visiting and host countries: Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Barber’s Adagio for Strings represent the United States, and Silvestre Revueltas’ exotic tone poem “La Noche de los Mayas” (“The Night of the Mayas”) represents the Mexican musical tradition. An additional eight percussionists from Mexico City will be flown in for an authentic performance of the Revueltas work, which calls for a battery of unusual native instruments. The program also includes Stravinsky’s Ballet Suite from “The Firebird.”

After the outdoor concert, symphony patrons, maestro Talmi, the performers and hosts will dine at the concert site. According to symphony spokesman Les Smith, if it rains Monday, the orchestra is prepared to stay an additional day and perform Tuesday night. Barring such climatic infelicity, the San Diego entourage will return on a Tuesday noon flight from Merida.

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Italian festival. Opera fans will be treated to several al fresco performances of arias and duets at Sunday’s Festa Bella at Embarcadero Marina Park South. The daylong festival (noon to 10 p.m.) will feature Italian food and wine, as well as a number of musical performances. Soprano Renata DiPetro and baritone Russ Simbari will present scenes from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and “La Traviata” at 2:15 p.m., and soprano Anna Bjarnson-Carson and tenor Herman Salerno will perform opera highlights at 6:15 p.m.

CRITIC’S CHOICE / DUTCH TREAT

Ton Koopman, one of the world’s leading harpsichordists, will lead the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra at 8 p.m. Monday in the University of San Diego’s Shiley Theatre. Sponsored by the San Diego Early Music Society, the concert of Dutch musicians will include music by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Mozart and Rameau.