Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in Ojai: Great Golijov

The 60th Ojai Music Festival had a major success last night with the performance of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. The opera we saw in 2003 at Disney Hall was a praise-worthy effort by an interesting contemporary composer, but it wasn't a compelling work. The revised version performed last night, introduced last summer in Santa Fe, was a great opera. The revised version simplifies the plot and expands the role of Lorca. Golijov created a compelling duet between Lorca and Margarita Xirgu, a duet in which the two sing of escaping to Havana which is ended by Lorca deciding that he won't leave Spain. He also made a powerful emotional experience of the scene in which Lorca and his two cellmates, a bullfighter and a teacher, prepare for their execution. With the added focus and strength in the story, the unique musical voice of Golijov becomes stronger.

Dawn Upshaw was splendid as Margarita Xirgu in the opera's major role. But Kelly O'Connor was her equal as Federico Garcia Lorca, inhabiting the character while using her rare vocal instrument, as a mezzo with the low voice of a contralto, very effectively. While I can imagine other singers eventually singing the role of Margarita, finding another singer for Lorca may well be more difficult. Jessica Rivera rose to her colleagues' levels in the smaller role, new to this version, of Margarita's student. Robert Spano led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which sounded like a major group last night. I'm getting the recording.

The evening began with Eighth Blackbird performing their version of Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together. As sharp-eyed Sequenza21 readers pointed out, this was not the first West Coast performance of the work; it wasn't even the first performance at Ojai for that matter. It was a good performance.

Thursday night's short opening concert had Robert Spano reading/performing John Cage's Lecture on Nothing. While no one in the Ojai audience ran screaming from the audience, the constructed silence between the fourth and fifth "movements" of the speech led two brave souls to begin persistant clapping. But most of the audience waited for the final allegro. Cage's words did, indeed, create the silences, and we heard the sounds around the park more clearly.

The high spot of Thursday night was Trimpin presenting seven of Conlon Nancarrow's studies for player piano, followed by an eighth as an encore. The music was played on a grand piano by Trimpin's "contraption" with drivers for each key controlled by a laptop computer following Nancarrow's music notation, transcribed from piano rolls to computer files. After the first applause from the audience, Trimpin stood and told the audience that the applause was really for Nancarrow's music since he, Trimpin, was merely pressing a button to re-play the composer's music. Nancarrow's widow was also in the audience. Trimpin's selections from among the studies were well-chosen to present the range of Nancarrow's interests, more than just playing tricks with tempo, in his experiments. It takes my ears a little time to adjust to what he was doing and to begin hearing his separate voices. I'm ready to try some more.

posted by Jerry Zinser 6/10/2006