Cabrillo Music Festival does "Perfect Stranger" in Santa Cruz
Date: 1998/08/16

Well, this was last night (8/15/98) and so I went with
my wife down to the Santa Cruz Civic for one of the
last concerts of this series. It's an annual summer
thing composed of symphony musicians from various
Western states who are VOLUNTEERING their services.
So how d'you like that.

They are conducted by Marin Alsop and do not all dress
in black clothes.

The name of this show was "Perfect Strangers". Mostly
it was an evening dedicated to Joan Tower music. I'd
never heard of her but she would appear to have some
success and renown. She was there to accept kudos and
explain her songs.

Then there's a real young geeky guy called Michael
Hersch (26?) who was also there and was nervous and
seemed genuinely amazed that his piece was being
played. It looked like he was getting some potential
groupie action too.

Tower - Fanfare No. 1 for the Uncommon Woman - 1986
Hersch - Prelude and Fugue for Orchestra - 1995
Tower - Music for Cello and Orchestra (Lee Duckles, cello) - 1984

- Intermission -

Zappa - The Perfect Stranger- 1983
Tower - Duets - 1994

Tower introduced her pieces (which I liked) and did
several excerpts in advance as a demonstration of what
she was trying to accomplish compositionally. In fact
this added to the experience of hearing a completely
new piece, because as it was later unfolding you could
more easily discern the patterns and say ah-ha ooooh
ahhhh.

Ms. Alsop introduced the Zappa piece and excerpted the
Door-bell (duh) but it did get a laugh!! and the
eybrows (swooping string lines), the salesman's pitch
(klangorous horns), and then went on to mention that
the housewife especially liked the vaccuum attachments
which we really can't talk about here, or something to
that effect. She got a little tongue tied at that
point and claimed that she couldn't really figure out
the bit about the dog in the high chair but oh well.
Perhaps she needs to groove on "Evelyn, a Modified
Dog".

I'd listened to TPS from the album of the same name a
couple times in the last two days so I'd be somewhat
more familiar with it. So what can I say except they
appeared to do a fine job of it and enjoyed playing
it. The percussion lines were played cleanly which is
of course always nice to hear. Frank sure loved that
stuff.

It was very strange in that it required about 40% of
the orchestra to change position. In a ring around
the conductor were woodwinds: oboes, clarinet, bass
clarinet, flutes. The harp was placed dead center of
the stage. Most of the cellos moved to the left of
the harp but some of them stayed over on the right by
the basses.

From where I was sitting that's about all I could see.
Within the context of all the other pieces, TPS did
not stand out as being exceptionally weird at all, in
fact it was practically Milli Vanilli!!!

Before the last Tower number, Ms. Alsop called Ms.
Tower to the stage, saying something along the lines
of, "are you still here?..... or did that vacuum
cleaner send you over the edge?"

They also put the orchestra back in its original
position.

So finally, if you really dig Zappa's orchestra stuff,
maybe Joan Tower might do something for you, and to a
somewhat lesser extent Michael Hersch but hey what's
my opinion worth??? 8^)))))