2025 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

42 CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 2025 CHASING LIGHT PROGRAM NOTES Chasing Light (2015) Rene Orth (b.1985) Sometimes in life we find ourselves running a seemingly impossible race, just trying to get to that light at the end of the tunnel. Deadlines, stress, and pressure combined to create this sensation during my writing of Chasing Light. The majority of the piece depicts that frantic experience with small glimpses of hope, but the reward comes near the end, when that moment of relief and peace is finally achieved. —Rene Orth Frederick and Susan B. (2025) Stacy Garrop (b. 1969) [World Premiere | Festival Commission] Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with generous support from Robert & Carolyn Levering Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were more than titans in the battle for Suffrage; they knew each other for over forty years. Historical records show that the Douglass and Anthony families met as early as 1845, when the Anthony family purchased and moved into a farmhouse in Rochester, New York, which served as a meeting place for anti-slavery activists. Frederick, also a Rochester resident, frequently visited the Anthony farm. Over the following decades, Frederick and Susan actively worked together for voting rights, often taking part in the same organizations and speaking at the same meetings and conventions. But were they friends? In conducting extensive research for my musical work, it is apparent that they were acquaintances who had moments in which they were strong allies for the same causes and other moments in which they were not. Frederick and Susan had a particularly fractious moment in 1869 at the American Equal Rights Association convention, when they debated each other onstage regarding who should get the right to vote first. Frederick advocated for granting Black men this right, while Susan argued her strong belief in “universal suffrage,” granting voting rights to all citizens. Susan remained bitter with Frederick over the matter, writing of her disappointment in 1884 in a letter to fellow Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Regardless, Frederick’s and Susan’s efforts to attain Suffrage—through the speaking tours they undertook, the essays and articles they wrote, the organizations they helped to form and run—all helped to bring about societal change. Frederick witnessed Black men getting the right to vote when the 15th Amendment passed Congress in 1869 and was ratified by the States in 1870, then helped stump for women to gain the same right. Neither Frederick nor Susan lived to see women secure the vote, but as Susan wrote in 1902, “We old fighters have prepared the way…” I composed Frederick and Susan B. to be a conversation between these two remarkable individuals regarding their reasons and struggles for the right to vote. All texts are drawn from the speeches they gave, along with essays and newspaper articles they wrote, and comprise the material of each of my piece’s five movements. I wrote brief texts for the introduction and short interludes between the movements to provide historical context for the listener. —Stacy Garrop This Kiss for the Whole World (2022) Aleksandra Vrebalov (b.1970) To me, a kiss is a sign of an open heart, of acceptance. It’s a moment of authenticity, generosity, and connection between two people. This Kiss for the Whole World was composed during the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, inspired by his Ninth Symphony and its beautiful message to humanity that mutual love and solidarity make us strong in the face of hardship and oppression. It takes its title (in German: “Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt”) from a line in Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” sung by the choir in the Ninth Symphony.  While there are no direct musical references to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in my work, I thought about how artists have always responded to difficult times. Beethoven was both a revolutionary and a humanist. With so many conflicts and challenges around us today, it’s important to remember that music has the power to unite and heal. If we remind ourselves of the beauty and values humanity has created throughout history—from music to poetry, to architecture to scientific inventions—we will believe in the ultimate triumph of goodness in humanity.  As artists, our contribution is our art. Through our creative work, we can help envision a world built on beauty, kindness, cooperation, and understanding—a world in which we would want to live. —Aleksandra Vrebalov Pretty (2023) Julia Wolfe (b. 1958) [West Coast Premiere] The word “pretty” has had a complicated relationship to women. It implies an attractiveness without any rough edges, without strength or power. And it has served as a measure of worth in strange, limited, and destructive ways. It has a less sweet origin from Old English—“cunning, crafty, clever.” As words evolve, it morphed to a much softer sentiment. My  Pretty is a raucous celebration—embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll. —Julia Wolfe