Conductor/Composer Training Workshop

A workshop with the
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Marin Alsop, Music Director

Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA

Friday July 25 - Wednesday July 30, 2008

MARIN ALSOP: Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Britain, Music Director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and Music Director Laureate of the Colorado Symphony; 2005 MacArthur Fellow and Classical Brit Female Artist of the Year awardee, 2003 Gramophone Artist of the Year, and winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Conductor of the Year 2002; former posts include Principal Guest with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Sinfonia, Creative Conductor Chair of the Saint Louis Symphony, founder of Concordia Orchestra at Lincoln Center, and Music Director of the Eugene Symphony in Oregon; her recordings have garnered nominations for a Grammy, Gramophone, and a Classical Brit Awards. Alsop attended Yale University and received her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School; in 1989 she won the coveted Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center and was a prizewinner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York. www.marinalsop.com

 

GUSTAV MEIER, a member of the Distinguished Visiting Faculty in Graduate Conducting at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He received his diploma from the Zurich Conservatory in Switzerland and undertook additional studies at Academia Chigiana Siena. Meier serves as Music Director for the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra in Michigan and Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut. He has regular appearances as guest conductor in Europe, South and Central America, China, Canada, and throughout the United States. Meier was former director of the Conductors Seminar at Tanglewood from 1980-1996, and former faculty at Yale School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His awards include the Luise Vorgerian Teaching Award from Harvard University, the 1996 Ditson Prize for a commitment to consistently perform works of American composers, and the Max Rudolf Award in 1999 from the Conductors Guild. He teaches regular master courses in such cities as Kiev, Bejing, Mexico City, and Adelaide.  

 

MICHAEL DAUGHERTY born 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by American popular culture. He first came to international attention in the 1990s with a series of witty, dark-humored, brilliantly-scored pieces inspired by 20th-century American icons such as Superman, Jackie O, Elvis, J. Edgar Hoover, and Rosa Parks, and places such as Route 66, Niagara Falls, and Sunset Strip. With compositional originality and ingenuity to match his subject matter, Daugherty became one of America's most frequently performed and commissioned living composers. The London Times has described Daugherty as "a master icon-maker" and hailed his "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear". His music has the uncanny knack of speaking everybody’s language at once while retaining the ability to surprise, move, stimulate, inspire and amuse. His idiom bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty's symphonic music has been featured at the Cabrillo Festival numerous times over the last decade including the Metropolis Symphony, Route 66, Bells for Stokowski, UFO (with Evelyn Glennie as percussion soloist), Le Tombeau de Liberace, Motown Metal, Rosa Parks Boulevard, the violin concerto Fire and Blood and Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra, Ghost Ranch, Raise the Roof. In the summer of 2008, the Cabrillo Festival will perform the West Coast premiere of Daugherty's newest family work, Troyjam, on Sunday, August 3, 2008.

 

JOHN CORIGLIANO is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. Among the dozens of honors he has received are included all of the most important music awards—several Grammy’s, a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 (2001), a Grawemeyer for his Symphony No. 1 (1991), and an Academy Award for his score to Francois Girard's 1997 film The Red Violin, which received it West Coast Premiere at the 2002 Cabrillo Festival. Perhaps the most important symphonist of his era, Corigliano has to date written three symphonies, each a wholly separate landscape unto itself. Symphony No. 1 (1991), commissioned by Meet the Composer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was composer-in-residence, channeled Corigliano's personal grief over the loss of friends to the AIDS crisis into music of immense power, color, drama, and scope: performed worldwide by over 150 orchestras and twice recorded, this symphony earned him the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. Symphony No. 2 (2001), a rethinking and expansion of the haunted, surreal, and glitteringly virtuosic String Quartet (1995), was introduced by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2000 and earned him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. The third symphony may be his most ambitious and remarkable yet: scored simultaneously for wind orchestra and a multitude of wind ensembles, Corigliano's excessive, crazed, and grandly barbarous Circus Maximus (2004), commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, had its New York premiere in 2005 at Carnegie Hall. Performances of his works at the Cabrillo Festival include the Symphony No. 1 in 1993, the Scherzo for Oboe and Percussion, Fanfares to Music, and Troubadours in 1994, Pied Piper for Flute and Orchestra in 1995, and the Fantasia on an Ostinato and West Coast premiere of The Red Violin in 1998, Symphony No.2 in 2002 and Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (Amy Burton, soprano) in 2007. During the 2008 Cabrillo Festival season, Corigliano's percussion concerto, TriplePlay, will receive its West Coast Premiere with soloist Evelyn Glennie on Saturday, August 2nd. 

This Conductors/Composers Training Workshop is distinguished by bringing early-career conductors face to face with early-career composers on the subject of interpreting their works. The goal of this professional training program is to give promising young conductors the skills they need to become partners in creating, and leaders in interpreting, promoting, and performing new works for orchestra. Working under the guidance of conductors Marin Alsop and Gustav Meier, and composers Michael Daugherty and John Corigliano, seven participating conductors team up with three selected composers to work on subjects including modern score analysis, coaching, practical guides for the rehearsal, and the interpretation and performance of contemporary works. The program culminates with a concert called In the Works featuring three short works by workshop composers. Each composition is performed more than once, each time by a different participating conductor.

Bartok Suite from Miraculous Mandarin
Mahler Symphony 1 (sections only)
Mahler Symphony 5 (Adagietto)
Mozart Magic Flute Overture
Debussy L'Apres Midi d’un Faune
Three student composer works: TBA

Participants are required to study all of the listed repertoire in preparation for this workshop. Participants will be given some choice of the segments they will conduct in consultation with the faculty. All workshop analysis sessions will cover the complete works listed.

Application Deadline: Thursday, March 27, 2008. The completed application form, video, and application fee should be mailed to: Conductors Guild, Attn: Cabrillo Workshop, 5300 Glenside Dr., Suite 2207, Richmond, VA 23228-3983.

Complete registration materials must be received by Thursday, March 27, 2008 (5 p.m. Eastern Time).

Please note that submission of a video is strongly recommended, and applicants should furnish one whenever possible. In the case of a large number of applicants, video evaluation will be a determining factor in the selection of Participants. Consult the CG Video Guidelines, posted on the CG website, www.conductorsguild.org, for suggestions regarding the preparation of a conducting videotape. Video formats and media other than VHS and DVD may not be accepted by the reviewing committee, at its discretion. Please make sure your DVDs are able to be played on standard DVD players. The Conductors Guild website also contains important information about workshop application review procedures, and about the goals and format of CG Workshops. Videos will NOT be returned. Please do not include originals. It is your responsibility to clearly identify your video.

PLEASE NOTE: Application is open only to Conductors Guild members. If you are not currently a member and do not include your membership application and membership fee (or apply online), your application cannot be processed.

»Cabrillo 2008 Workshop Application Form in Adobe PDF format (111k)

»Video Guidelines for Workshop Applicants

The following are the three composers chosen to participate in the Conductor/Composer Workshop this year. Please visit their websites and feel free to browse their works written for this event.

Mandy Fang Sketch for Orchestra
Ruby Fulton Road Ranger Cowboy
Clint Needham Radiant Nation