2024 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

44 unbound: Phase 1 (2023) Nate Heyder (b. 1998) [World Premiere | Festival Commission] Commissioned as the winner of the Cabrillo Festival Emerging Black Composers Prize with generous support from Michèle and Larry Corash. Unbound marks a transitional period in my life during which I felt personally, artistically, and spiritually free from the constraints that had once held me down. With total disregard to words and terms such as classical, contemporary, genre, art music, and even composer, this work represents a feeling of freedom that one only reaches through truly being oneself. —Nate Heyder Tell Me Again (2021) Lembit Beecher (b. 1980) [West Coast Premiere] Karen Ouzounian, cello Tell Me Again was written for cellist Karen Ouzounian and premiered by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra with Eric Jacobsen conducting. Both Karen and I grew up with stories of family origin and migration. My grandmother was Estonian: she escaped during the latter part of World War II, eventually immigrating, along with my seven-year-old mother, to the United States after 5 years in displaced person camps. Karen’s grandmother was Armenian: she grew up in Beirut, her own parents having been driven out of Turkey during the Armenian Genocide, and Karen’s parents and grandmother immigrated to Canada during the Lebanese Civil War. As I wrote, I thought about the importance of these stories to our respective families. I think that for all of us, but particularly those who have lived through upheaval and trauma, telling a story is not just a way to convey a sequence of events but a way to process experience, to try to come to terms with and have some degree of power over the forces that have shaped our lives. With Tell Me Again , I wanted to write music that reflected the way in which stories like these become a central part of the culture of families and communities as they are told over and over again, even as they change over time, with each new generation consciously or unconsciously making choices about what to omit and what to emphasize. In the first movement I thought of the solo line as the embodiment of a story, forming and unfolding in response to the jittery, chaotic energy of the orchestra, which surrounds the UNBOUND: PROGRAM NOTES CABRILLO FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC cello with the swirl of life. As the orchestra leads, the cello responds with short, echoing gestures. The orchestral music keeps starting over, returning to the same phrases, like a mind replaying the same events over and over, and in response, the cello gradually acquires a life of its own, pulling melodic strands and fast passage work out of the orchestra’s textures, gaining momentum and gradually coming into its own. About two-thirds of the way through, the cello arrives at a soaring melodic line that it holds on to for the rest of the movement. The orchestra now follows the cello, gradually fading like a memory slowly being replaced by a story. In the second movement, the cellist becomes a singer, teaching the orchestra a song. The cello’s melodic line combines elements reflective of Karen and myself, starting with the snapped lilt of an Armenian melody and ending with a quote of an Estonian folk-tune, Meil Aiaäärne Tänavas , that I first heard as a child. The melody spreads across the orchestra, repeated in a call-and-response style typical of Estonian folk singing, and gradually evaporates, settling into a tender and shimmering texture: a return of the cello’s soaring music from the first movement, this time quietly introspective. The movement ends with the Armenian-Estonian melody played in fragments across the orchestra. The thirdmovement begins with a cadenza, the solo cello playing repeated 16th notes, almost as if it were scrubbing with an eraser, trying to overwrite the memory of earlier movements. As the orchestra begins responding to the cello, joining in its perpetual-motion energy, hints of music from the previous movements reappear, including a majestic, slowed- down version of the cello’s first movement melody, played by the horns. After a suddenly soft, wistfully fluttering middle section, the music resumes with energetic abandon and exuberance—sometimes joyful, sometimes fearful, sometimes grand—spiraling out of control until it gives way to a brief, unexpected coda: a glimpse of something that is new and hopeful, yet bittersweet. —Lembit Beecher Casting the Dice (2024) Iván Enrique Rodríguez (b. 1990) [World Premiere | Festival Co- commission] Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with generous support from Henry and Carole Klyce Español | Spanish La oportunidad de emprender en esta aventura llegó a mi justo un día antes de mi The Golden Spike (2019) Daniel Kellogg (b. 1976) [West Coast Premiere] On May 10, 1869, in a desolate wind-swept vale high up in the Promontory Mountains north of the Great Salt Lake, a ceremonial golden spike marked the completion of the massive transcontinental railroad endeavor set in motion seven years prior. At 12:47PM the telegraph transmitted the following, "Dot, dot, dot, Done." The first transcontinental railroad linked the growing population of the Pacific coast with the rest of the nation. It led to the development of both the "great American desert" and the fertile agricultural industries of the West Coast, it created a vast and profitable trade between the East and the West, and it provided the unfortunate means of subduing the beleaguered native Americans of the western plains and mountains.  I. Black Powder and Hell on Wheels Black powder was a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur used to explode rock in the extensive tunnels and cuts dug in the Sierra Nevada granite of California by the Central Pacific. Hell on Wheels was the temporary rowdy lawless tent town that followed the Union Pacific as they made their way west. These two groups of poor young men embodied the massive human labor required. This gritty music grinds and hammers forward with increasing tension as all obstacles are overcome by sheer force of muscle.  II. Promontory The railroad spanned six existing and future states moving through the heart of American western wilderness, a pristine and undeveloped land that was ultimately tamed by the railroad and the civilization that came with it. This slow movement captures the raw power, isolation, and natural beauty of this incredible expanse. The music is majestic, lyrical, and grand. Portions of this movement are also filled with lament. Something sacred was lost; Native American cultures were displaced and decimated. III. Manifest Destiny The American settlers were destined to move across the great expanse of the American West. Two coasts connected, new economies flourished, towns and cities sprang forth, and the vast territory of America became a unified country. The music is grand and celebratory and includes the victorious bells and cannons that rang out simultaneously in New York City and San Francisco on May 10, 1869.   The Golden Spike was commissioned by The Kansas City Symphony and Maestro Stern. —Daniel Kellogg