Triple Play/Maestra Marin Alsop/percussionist Evelyn Glennie August 2, 2008

Three remarkable composers join the audience for three new works, each promising to hit it out of the park!

The program opens with the World Premiere of composer Dorothy Chang's Strange Air. A work inspired by the beauty and intensity of the Pacific Northwest's natural environment, it was commissioned by Festival patron Russ Irwin as the first project of the Women's Philharmonic Commissioning Initiative of Meet The Composer.

Mason Bates returns to the Festival to once again perform on electronica with the orchestra in a work titled Liquid Interface. Bates became consumed with the idea of water as the influence of a musical endeavor when he experienced living on Berlin's enormous Lake Wannsee. "Over the course of barely two months, I watched this huge body of water transform from an ice sheet thick enough to support sausage vendors, to a refreshing swimming destination heavy with humidity." Liquid Interface begins with glaciers and moves through all the forms of water, inhabiting an increasingly hotter world in each of its four progressive movements. The work is dedicated by Bates to his mentor and friend, John Corigliano.

So how appropo that Academy, Grammy, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Corigliano should be present for Bates' West Coast Premiere, as well as the West Coast Premiere of his own Conjurer, a percussion concerto featuring soloist Dame Evelyn Glennie. A work for string orchestra and percussionist, Corigliano's Conjurer is in three movements, each restricted to a particular type of percussion: wood, metal, and skin. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said of the Pittsburgh Symphony's premiere, "[Conjurer] proved to be one blessed by the full dimension performance by soloist Dame Evelyn Glennie, conductor Marin Alsop and the orchestra."

A Talkback Session with Marin Alsop, guest artists, and composers follows the concert.

$29-44.

Official Website: http://www.cabrillomusic.org