Published: 23 July 2012
Category: Artists

Marin Alsop celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, of which she has been Music Director for the last 21 years. Cabrillo is America’s preeminent contemporary music festival, and Marin Alsop has created a devoted audience at this two-week festival in Santa Cruz, California, which Alsop describes as her “artistic oasis”.

The programme for this year’s festival (available in full here) opens with the world premiere of an evening-long orchestral and multimedia work, Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra, commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival as a collaboration between The Kitchen Sisters (Santa Cruz residents who present a radio show on NPR) and four female composers.

On August 4 Marin Alsop conducts the world premiere of Woman of the Apocalypse by James MacMillan, commissioned by the festival and dedicated to Marin Alsop. MacMillan has a strong relationship with Alsop and with the Cabrillo Festival. Woman of the Apocalypse will be the tenth work of his that has been presented at the festival. James MacMillan introduces his composition here.

Earlier in July, Marin Alsop was in São Paulo for two weeks of concerts with her orchestra there. She conducted Johannes Moser’s performance of Enrico Chapela’s electric cello concerto, MAGNETAR, co-commissioned by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, alongside a concert performance of Prokofiev’s The Prodigal Son. The second programme included Villa-Lobos’s Momoprécoce, with Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, and Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony – a programme which the orchestra will take on tour in August to the BBC Proms in London (August 15).

Marin Alsop also made her inaugural visit to the Campos do Jordão International Winter Festival, Latin America’s major classical music festival. Set in one of Brazil’s most scenic mountain destinations, the festival is curated by the OSESP (São Paulo Symphony Orchestra) Foundation under Marin Alsop’s leadership. Working with the Festival Orchestra, which is formed of student “Fellows” from Brazil and abroad, Marin Alsop conducted the festival’s closing concerts on July 21 in Campos do Jordão and on July 22 in the Sala São Paulo. Nelson Freire was her soloist once again in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20, and the programme closed with Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin suite. Click here to see a clip of Marin Alsop’s rehearsal with the orchestra.

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