Music at the Mission: Harvest August 12, 2012

Aug 12, 4pm & 7pm

The 50th anniversary season of the Cabrillo Festival culminates with two Grand Finale performances in the magnificent sanctuary of Mission San Juan Bautista, and welcomes three featured composers for the concerts. The Festival Orchestra presents Michael Ippolito's Nocturne, a work originally inspired by Joan Miro's 1940 painting by the same name. Ippolito was struck by its "fantastical figures and swirling lines" and by the tension between the "energy and whimsy" of the imagery and the title of the work, as well as by the commonplace idea of night as a time of rest.

Next is composer John Mackey's Harvest: Concerto for Trombone. a work dedicated to and featuring Joseph Alessi on trombone. Harvest is based on the myths and mystery rituals of the Greek god Dionysus. Classical Review has described the piece as "a cycloramic feast of shifting moods and instrumental hues." Principal trombone of the New York Philharmonic, Alessi is known to Festival audiences for his unforgettable West Coast premiere performance of Christopher Rouse's Pulitzer-Prize winning Trombone Concerto at the Mission in 1994.

Iranian composer Behzad Ranjbaran writes music that is lushly tonal and draws on the music and culture of his native land. Ranjbaran returns with Seven Passages, the final work of his Persian Trilogy, which takes its inspiration from "The Seven Trials of Rostam," an episode in the national epic of Iran, the Shahnameh.

The concert closes with British composer Thomas Ades' Polaris. The piece is named for the North Star or Pole Star, around which the other stars appear to rotate as if it were itself a magnetic pole. Of this work, Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "there's a rapturous sheen to the score that makes it impossible to resist." Irresistible, too, is this Grand Finale performance of the Cabrillo Festival's historic 50th anniversary season!

Official Website: http://cabrillomusic.org/2012-season/performances/music-at-the-mission-harvest.html