Cabrillo Festival Opening Night with Maestra Alsop and Matt Haimovitz August 1, 2008

Opening Night of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, with Maestra Marin Alsop and the acclaimed Festival Orchestra. Composer Stephen McNeff of the U.K. will be in the audience for the U.S. Premiere of Sinfonia, a fast-paced concert opener commissioned and premiered by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Marin Alsop. Twenty-eight year old composer Eric Lindsay will return to his hometown of Santa Cruz for the World Premiere performance of his newly revised Darkness Made Visible.

Renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz has become a legend in the music world for pushing beyond conventions-be it performances in surprising venues or collaborations with unexpected partners around unpredicted genres. For his Festival debut, he'll perform in composer David Sanford's Scherzo Grosso, a "classical-funk-jazz-bebop-hip-hopping" work originally composed for cello and big band, and then rescored for full orchestra. The evening ends with a Festival milestone: the World Premiere performance of the third in a series of recent Festival commissions, Pulitzer-prize winner Christopher Rouse's Concerto for Orchestra. Among the most respected composers of his generation, Rouse is one of Marin Alsop's favorites.

(The 2008 opening night begins with an outdoor Pre-Concert Talk by Marin Alsop and a special ticketed dinner served alfresco at the Civic Auditorium. Reservations required.)

$26-41.

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