There were no musicians in my immediate family, and while my father loved music, it was the music of Al Jolson, Ted Lewis, and the Mills Brothers that held him in thrall. I didn’t go to many concerts as a boy or young man; I was raised on vinyl. The composers who made me into a music lover had all died long before I was born.
As a teenager, I began to hear the music of a few living composers — mainly Shostakovich and Stravinsky; Barber, Copland and Menotti. It wasn’t until I began writing about music as a journalist that I finally started to catch up on the contemporary music scene, and to seek out the people who were writing it, particularly Americans.
I will never be completely caught up, but, like Bret Maverick used to say, I’m working on it.
Thus. for me, one of the most valuable elements of the Music Academy experience — as with the Camerata Pacifica experience — is the number of excellent living composers they bring to my attention in the course of their summer festival.
A case in point is the chamber music concert that took place July 29 in Hahn Hall. Somewhat slyly called Mendelssohn Piano Trio, after the last work on the program, the first half of the evening was devoted to works by two stunningly gifted young American composers Nico Muhly and Christopher Cerrone.
The concert opened with three piano pieces by Muhly, including the World Premiere of “Crosswise” (commissioned by the Music Academy of the West, sponsored by Stephanie and Fred Shuman and Michele Brustin), followed by “Teacher-Student” and “Move,” all played by piano faculty artist Conor Hanick (with piano fellow Nan Ni in “Teacher Student”).
Then came Cerrone’s “I Will Learn to Love a Person,” performed by soprano Anush Avetisyan (fellow), clarinetist Gerbrich Meijer (fellow), pianist Conor Hanick (faculty), and percussionist Michael Werner (faculty).
Finally, perhaps as a reward for our good-natured attendance, we heard Felix Mendelssohn’s “Piano Trio No. 1 in d-minor, Opus 49 (1839)” played by violinist Wenqi Ke (fellow), cellist Marcie Kolacki (fellow), and pianist Jonathan Feldman (faculty).
Whether or not you attended this concert, you will want to investigate these two wonderful American composers, either by searching YouTube for “Nico Muhly” and “Christopher Cerrone,” where they are both generously represented, or by going to their individual websites at www.nicomuhly.com/ and www.christophercerrone.com/.
(One of the treasures I discovered on Cerrone’s website is that he was so bowled over by Italo Calvino’s incomparable novel “Invisible Cities” that he was moved to set the novel as an opera. “Invisible Cities” is, in form, a monologue delivered to Kublai Khan by Marco Polo about the various cities he had visited — “Tall Cities,” “Thin Cities,” etc.
At the end of the novel, the Khan asks Marco Polo why he has not said anything about his home city of Venice. Marco responds: “I have spoken only of Venice.”
A more traditional gathering of American music will be curated by Larry Rachleff for the Academy Chamber Orchestra in a concert they call Appalachian Spring, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 31, in the Granada Theater.
The program will consist of three seminal works of Americana: “Times Square” (1944) from Leonard Bernstein’s “On The Town;” Charles Ives’s “Orchestral Set No. 1,” more familiarly known as ‘Three Places in New England” (1903-14); and Aaron Copland’s ballet “Appalachian Spring” (1944).
This concert is presented in special appreciation of Santa Barbara County healthcare workers for their tireless dedication to help the Santa Barbara community throughout the pandemic.
In my opinion, the greatest composer on this program is Leonard Bernstein. If you want to argue the matter, feel free to contact me at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com.
Copland is usually given the credit for founding the genre known as Americana, and “Appalachian Spring” is often cited as the first full-fledged Americana composition. If Americana is a thing, it was invented by Virgil Thomson, 14 years before the Copland ballet, with “Symphony on a Hymn Tune (1930)” — www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxRynHG0OA.
For more information, go directly to the academy’s website, www.musicacademy.org/.
You can also consult the online edition of the 2021 Festival’s brochure www.musicacademy.org/press-releases/2021-summer-festival-brochure/.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.