Stanford Lively Arts 2008-09 season balances edgy and traditional repertoire
BY CYNTHIA HAVEN
When New Yorker Jenny Bilfield became artistic and executive director of Stanford Lively Arts in August 2006, she was not sure what kind of a season line-up her audiences would applaud. So the 2007-08 season was a gamble. She scheduled the kinds of performances that she would have presented to her New York audiences. This was risky fare; she had, after all, received an award for "adventuresome programming" from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. But her bet paid off.
"The thing most exciting to me was the openness of the Stanford community and the outside community to embracing new work," she said. "They respond strongly and specifically to new artists. It was exciting to see full houses at premieres."
Student attendance rose from 17 percent to 20 percent—a rewarding boost. "It's really a sign of their capacity to take risks here—it was a bit of an unknown last year. The season stimulated students intellectually and emotionally."
The 2008-09 performing arts season will continue the trend of juggling variety, tradition and edginess. The season opens on Oct. 5 with Marsalis Brasilianos—a celebration of the music of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, featuring acclaimed American saxophonist Branford Marsalis and members of Brazil's Philarmonia Brasileira, under conductor Gil Jardin. This project commemorates the 50th anniversary of Villa-Lobos' death.
On the cutting edge, the season spotlights a newly commissioned work from the acclaimed composer and choreographer Meredith Monk. Songs of Ascension, an evening-length work, gets its world premiere Oct. 18. Performed by Meredith Monk and vocal ensemble and a guest string quartet, the piece fuses music, theater, movement and art, spotlighting the works of renowned artist Ann Hamilton. With the architecture of a cathedral tower as a metaphor, Monk draws inspiration from the processionals of Buddhist stupas, Moses' journey up Mount Sinai and Tawaf, the Islamic ritual at the Ka'bah in Mecca.
"She's quite a remarkable artist—an important person representing the way creative people see themselves synthesizing forms, challenging notions of delineation," Bilfield said of Monk.
Other commissioned works include a composition by Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer John Adams. The West Coast premiere of the new work on April 5 celebrates the 20th-anniversary season of the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
Another work commissioned by Lively Arts, composer Roberto Sierra's Concierto de Cámara, will be performed by Imani Winds and the Miami String Quartet on Nov. 19.
In a new collaboration, American composer Paul Dresher returns to Lively Arts on March 7 with the world premiere of an evening-length solo-percussion-theater work for virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick and directed by Rinde Eckert. Dresher's music has been variously described as minimalist and post-minimalist. Deriding such labels, he has referred to himself as a "pre-maximalist," hence his record label, MinMax.
Not all the pieces are avant-garde or new. "Although we're putting a lot of emphasis on new works and commissions, a lot of our season is revisiting the important repertoire of the past," Bilfield said.
Lively Arts will celebrate the centenary of pioneering dancer and choreographer José Limón. The Limón Dance Company will perform his 1958 masterwork Missa Brevis with the Stanford Chorale, directed by Stephen Sano, and student and community dancers on April 25. Moved by the beauty and strength of the postwar Polish people, Limón set this powerful homage to Zoltán Kodály's Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli ("Mass in Time of War") in 1945. Missa Brevis includes 22 dancers performing to live choir accompaniment.
Lively Arts will be celebrating another centenary: On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, Lively Arts embarks on a series focusing on the life and work of the composer, including two interpretations of his seminal Quartet for the End of Time. The first is a traditional performance by members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet alongside selected organ works played by Stanford's Robert Huw Morgan on Nov. 13. Messiaen is known for the effect of his profound religious faith upon his musical ideas; he found inspiration in the natural world as well as the spiritual one. Composed in the Nazi work camp where Messiaen was interned during World War II—and using the four available instruments there: piano, violin, cello and clarinet—Quartet for the End of Time depicts the cataclysmic events of the end of time as described in Revelation. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards.
"It's harmonically very rich and coloristic," Bilfield said, adding that it has the "richness and delicacy of Debussy and Ravel."
Cellist Matt Haimovitz, clarinetist David Krakauer (known for his klezmer performances) and DJ Socalled present Akoka, a "Messiaen Remix," on Jan. 28. Haimovitz and Krakauer recreate the world premiere of Quartet for the End of Time through the eyes of Henry Akoka, the original clarinetist from the first performance, to explore the perspective of this Sephardic Jew performing an intensely Catholic-inspired piece for prisoners of war and German officers in a time of terror and upheaval.
Continuing a Lively Arts association that has endured for more than a quarter-century, the multiple Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet offers a dramatic program of Shostakovich's final three quartets on Oct. 15.
The Kronos Quartet, also a continuing tradition for Lively Arts, explores the musical traditions of Eastern Europe and the Middle East on Feb. 20. In conjunction with the 2009 Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, the quartet will perform Kronos-commissioned works by living composers Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (Azerbaijan), Aleksandra Vrebalov (Serbia), Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (Uzbekistan) and Raz Mesinai (Israel and New York).
Subscription packages for the Stanford Lively Arts 2008-09 season go on sale starting in July and may be ordered online, by e-mail or fax, by mail or in person at the Stanford Ticket Office in Tresidder Memorial Union. For a copy of the season brochure (available in June), visit the Stanford Lively Arts website at http://livelyarts.stanford.edu or call the Stanford Ticket Office at 725-2787. The complete schedule is now online at http://livelyarts.stanford.edu/0809Season.php.
