Adventures in American Music

The Cabrillo Music Festival’s claim to fame is contemporary American orchestral music, but this year, the ever-spirited and progressive Santa Cruz summer tradition is putting an equal emphasis on American music theater . And because the production teams are largely filled with local artists, the festival can be even more intensely its unique communal self.

“I think that through everyone’s teamwork we have managed to make the festival a real celebration,” says Marin Alsop, conductor, violinist and longtime Cabrillo artistic director. “There is a sense of excitement and participation that I don’t find anywhere else. Most festivals are very concerned about popular programming that will sell tickets, but here they are completely open to anything I bring. And because the community is behind it, most performances are sold out, or nearly so.”

Alsop, who is also leader of the jazz/classical group String Fever and music director of the Colorado Symphony, is speaking from her home in Denver. This summer, she’s asking her audiences to be open to works by Philip Glass, Lou Harrison (one of the festival’s founders in 1963) and Virgil Thomson, among other composers. That lineup would generally yield unusual fare--Cabrillo has won an award for adventuresome programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers every year since the award was instituted in 1982--and doubly so this year, because of the rarity of the music-theater works Alsop has chosen.

First up is “The Photographer” by Glass.

It was as a violinist that Alsop initially encountered the piece, “a music theater work that falls into no particular category,” in the composer’s laconic words. “The Photographer” was conceived by Dutch director-designer Rob Malasch and premiered at the Holland Festival in 1982. It had its U.S. premiere in a new production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival the following year. Alsop played in the Brooklyn performances and is the concertmaster on the 1983 recording of that production.

She opens the Cabrillo fest Friday with its belated West Coast premiere at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium (it will have a second performance next Sunday).

“I’m never sure how I arrive at these pieces,” says Alsop, who will conduct and play violin in the performance. “I wanted to do something of Philip’s, and when I noticed that [the 2001] Lincoln Center [Festival] was doing practically everything else, I was happy we picked this piece. I think it has only been done once, in Europe, since the premiere performances. It is very rewarding to create a new production and involve the community.”

“The Photographer” is a piece with local connections. Glass was composer-in-residence at Cabrillo in 1990, and the work’s subject, 19th century British American photographer Eadweard Muybridge, worked in the Santa Cruz area. Muybridge, known for his motion studies, may be most famous for a series of photos of a running horse taken to prove a bet by rail baron and California Gov. Leland Stanford that at some point in its trot, all four feet of a horse are off the ground.

In 1874, Muybridge killed his wife’s lover but was acquitted at the subsequent trial. That forms the basis of Act I of “The Photographer,” presented as a play with incidental music. Act II is a concert, featuring extensive violin solos, played here by Alsop, and Act III is a dance.

For the Holland performances, Glass employed a fairly conventional chamber orchestra, later rescoring the work for his own ensemble. “We’re using the more traditional orchestra,” Alsop says, “but we will probably amplify it to give it that slight edge.”

In its first incarnations, “The Photographer” included slides of Muybridge’s work projected during the Act II concert, and photographs taken of the play in Act I and projected during the Act III dance. The original footage has been lost, Alsop says, and the Cabrillo production will use new projections by video artist Suzanne St. John, who has been assistant director of Cumminty Television of Santa Cruz County for the past three years. It is staged by Michael Scarola, who did Copland’s “The Tender Land” for Cabrillo last summer and is on the staff of Opera Orchestra of New York, and choreographed by Maria Basile, who teaches at San Jose State University and is returning for her third season at Cabrillo.

Scarola is also directing “Rapunzel,” a 1954 opera by Harrison that returns to Cabrillo Aug. 11, on its closing weekend. Based on British poet William Morris’ psychological reinterpretation of the fairy tale, “Rapunzel” was first staged in New York in 1959, but it had its West Coast premiere at Cabrillo in 1966. (Harrison and others had founded the festival only three years before.) It represents the composer’s last serious effort with Schoenbergian 12-tone techniques.

“I knew I wanted to do something substantial [by Harrison], and Lou suggested ‘Rapunzel,’ ” Alsop says. “It comes from a pivotal moment in his career, and it is very stunning for a serial composition, so lyrical. The orchestra is quite small, with a prepared piano, and its ping-y sound is the only unusual sound.”

“Rapunzel” features soprano Jennifer Foster in the title role, baritone Sanford Sylvan and mezzo soprano Wendy Hill Lewis as the witch. Harrison has always been interested in puppetry of all kinds, and shadow artist Leonidas Kassapides, from Kentucky, will provide new elements for this production. Local production artists include scenic and lighting designer Michael Antaky, a veteran of many Bay Area dance companies returning for his third season, and Berkeley-based costumer Tesse Crocker, making her Cabrillo debut.

Paired with “Rapunzel” is “The River,” a 1938 documentary film by Pare Lorentz about the effect of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The 25-minute score to the film was composed by Virgil Thomson. Harrison dedicated “Rapunzel” to Thomson, and Alsop put together the double bill in tribute to their friendship.

For this event, the recorded soundtrack has been eliminated, with singer-actor Morton Williams reading the narration and Alsop leading the festival orchestra in a live performance of Thomson’s score. Called “a lesson in how to treat Americana” by no less than Aaron Copland, the music includes traditional American hymns and songs.

The other formal concert components of the Cabrillo Music Festival this year are orchestral programs Saturday and Aug. 12, and a chamber music-dinner benefit Aug. 10. There are also a free family concert and extensive educational programs.

Composer John Adams, who was interim director of the festival in 1990, the year Glass was in residence, will be represented by “Fearful Symmetries” on Saturday. “While most summer music festivals have become revenue-conscious pops series,” he has said, Cabrillo is something else again: “a one-of-a-kind festival without comparison anywhere in the United States.”

*

CABRILLO MUSIC FESTIVAL, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, 307 Church St., and other locations in Santa Cruz, Calif. Dates: Friday-Aug. 12.Information: (831) 420-5260 or www.cabrillomusic.org.