Travel Report: Music in SPAIN

(By Charles Sutton - luthier, musician, and former SCBF board member)

One musical highlight each summer here in our part of Spain is the International Guitar Festival and Competition held in the nearby city of Velez-Malaga. Now in its nineteenth season, the week-long Festival features master classes, symposiums, and performances by contestants and instructors. The concerts are free and open to the public. The premiere presentation took place in the inner courtyard of the city's historic Palace of the Marques of Beniel, a building that now serves as a museum, art gallery, concert hall and offices for the government cultural council. The truly international first concert featured guitarists from Germany and Venezuela, with musical selections ranging from pieces by J.S. Bach through those of Giuliani, Albeniz and various South American composers.

The concerts are held in venues throughout the county area. We recentlyattended one in the Cafe Theater in our own village of Triana, Last night, (July 13) we saw an exceptional program at the Carmen Theater in Velez; music mostly by Spanish composers, with an excellent duo, piano and guitar, two brothers from Puente Genil in the Province of Cordoba.

We look forward to the conclusion of the festival and the final concert and presentation of awards. I recommend this highly if any of you are ever traveling in Spain this time of year. Forget the summer heat, nothing starts until 9:30 or 10 PM when things have cooled off a bit. After the concert everything is still open for food, drinks, ice cream, what have you. In fact, at that time the Spaniish evening has just begun.

If you would like more information about musical events in Andalusia, including, of course, flamenco, you may contact me, Charles Sutton, through SCBF, or at flamenco{at}cruzio{dot}com

-- Charles Sutton

Impressions of Boomeria

The annual Boomeria Extravaganza is not just a fundraiser for the SCBF. By bringing people in "touch" with pipe organs in an informal and entertaining setting, we hope to make at least a miniscule contribution towards the instrument's continued livelihood. Will it survive another 2 billenia...?

Though the organ is not as popular on the general music spectrum as the violin, piano, or guitar, Boomeria does have the potential of converting a skeptic or two to organ fans (at least temporarily). Aside from the wealth of sounds this early synthesizer produces, the mechanics and physics alone are compelling.

But Boomeria is also special to the SCBF because of the long-standing support our concert series has received from its hosts extraordinaire, Preston and Sara Boomer, who, together with us, look forward to greeting you at this hidden yet so-very-Santa Cruz enclave.

Some clippings of Boomeria from various contributors follow:

* * *

"With that, [Preston Boomer] makes a sound that surely has to envelope his entire area code, a chord of such ominous, molar-rattling, Old-Testament menace, I feel myself buckle at the knees. This is music of elemental and ancient power and it's coming from a lovingly maintained instrument that has become famous in Santa Cruz classical-music circles. It's the Boomeria
pipe organ [...]"

-- Wallace Baine, Santa Cruz Sentinel (July 9, 2009)

* * *

"Great news, The Castle and Catacombs are now open again. Thanks to State Farm Insurance and Bret Smith the rebuild is done!

Well, fun stuff would be a link to 'Weird Homes Visits Boomeria':
http://home.comcast.net/~pqboom/videos/Weirdhomes.mov

And, of course, 'The Tour of Boomeria':
http://home.comcast.net/~pqboom/tour/tour.html

And then 'About the Pipe Organs of Boomeria':
http://home.comcast.net/~pqboom/tour/pipeorgn.html"

-- Boom (June 22, 2010)

* * *

"When I first discovered the Boomeria chapel, catacombs and organ, I almost couldn't believe that such a marvel could exist tucked away in the Santa Cruz hills. Its 40 ranks and 2,500 pipes offer every kind of organ sound"

-- Linda Burman Hall, Artistic Director and early keyboard specialist (July 2009)

"When you engage in the organ crawl, you actually enter the organ as organ builders and tuners have across the
centuries. You see the tracker mechanism over your head and, around it, you hear the pipes
opening up all around you, and see the air that sounds the pipes' lift ribbons. You are in the heart of a miracle." -- Linda Burman-Hall, Artistic Director and early keyboard specialist (July 2009)

* * *

The Baroque Festival's Boomeria Organ Extravaganza is coming up on July 11, 2010. It takes place at Boomeria, from 1-5, and offers an afternoon of organ music (with several organists performing), snack, and wine, all on the intriguing premises of Boomeria, and surrounded by the forest. More information at www.scbaroque.org/special.html, or buy tickets at www.santacruztickets.com (search for "boomeria"). We hope to see you there!

What's that Shape?

Find out from Shelley Phillips:

Shape note singing is a uniquely American tradition, a proudly inclusive and democratic part of our shared cultural heritage. The noteheads are four different shapes matched up and sung with solfege (fa so la and mi), aiding sight-singing in four-part harmony. The tradition is a living, breathing, ongoing practice passed directly to us by generations of singers, many gone on before and many still living. In fact, the tradition was born from colonial “singing schools” whose purpose was to teach beginners to sing, and our methods continue to reflect this goal. Groups are usually very social and open to anyone. Fasola singing (another name for this style) is not affiliated with any denomination and in earlier times it was a place where, say, the Baptists and Methodists could sing together. Here today in Santa Cruz we like to say that here the Wiccans and the Buddhists can sing together! This style is also often called “Sacred Harp” singing because the book that most singers use today is called “The Sacred Harp", referring to the human voice — that is, the musical instrument one is born with.

-- Shelley Phillips, Community Music School & Shape Note Singing Society

The Santa Cruz Shape Note Singing Society's choir will be featured on our upcoming Season Concert V, Jefferson's Jigge, an event co-presented by the Community Music School and the UC Santa Cruz Music Department.

Date & Time: Saturday – May 1, 2010 – 7:30pm

Location: UCSC Music Center Recital Hall

Featured Artist(s): Bill Coulter (guitar)

Deby Benton Grosjean (fiddle),

Barry Philips (cello), Boyd Jarrell (baritone),

Linda Burman-Hall (early keyboards) and The Shape Note Singing Society.

Description: Join the Jefferson family for folk and Baroque dance tunes in the parlor of Monticello. Our consort’s mix of classic colonial melodies, fancy continental imports, songs after Robert Burns, and passionate hymnody will set toes tapping. Co-presented by the UCSC Music Department & Community Music School.

Imaginary Intersections this Saturday: MORE INFO!

The SCBF is very much looking forward to this weekend's exciting and unusual concert production, "Imaginary Intersections: Raga & Raj." This premiere has resulted from over a year's worth of work and collaboration between Barry Phillips, Linda Burman-Hall and the Baroque Festival's resident ensemble Lux Musica. Here you can find various bits of information on the Raga & Raj project:

Event Poster
About the Program
Rehearsal Photos (Sunday, March 14)
Press Preview (SC Sentinal, March 18)
Press Info (more detail)

The performance will include the world premiere of Barry Phillips' imaginary musical exploration of Indian-Baroque crossovers, as well as selections of Indian and 18th-century European composers (inspired by Indian music), and finally a work by this and last century's Lou Harrison (d. 2003), known for his Southeast-Asian inspired compositions. Alone the sonic mix of Indian instruments with the softer and less-commonly heard, but timbrally instriguing historical Western instruments will be a journey worth engaging. We hope to see you there, and if you wish, do join us for a post-concert hangout at the Crepe Place (to be announced to the audience).

An Evening with Harps at Concert I

Our opening 2010 Season Concert I with harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton and ensemble was very well received.

Here are some comments (send us yours, too!):

"Cheryl Ann Fulton and three of her students played a program of traditional music from Wales on Welsh traditional harps. These lovely instruments are difficult to play, because they have three sets of strings. The ensemble played familiar Welsh melodies with much virtuousity and beauty.

Cheryl Ann Fulton holds a Ph. D. in music from Indiana University and is a specialist in Welsh and Italian historical harps. She is both a scholar and a performer on these instruments."

-- Alexandra Romanoff (Board Member)

"We found it charming. I'd never heard of harps having any more than a single set of strings, much less 3 sets! Cheryl Ann Fulton was passionate about the Irish Harp and she told amusing and informative stories about the harps and the compositions."

-- Judy Foreman (Board Member)

"Today while cleaning, I unwrapped Cheryl Ann Fulton's CD. Listening to The Airs of Wales, my heart is filled with the joy only beautiful music provides. Thank you to the Baroque Festival for providing the opportunity to hear her play in concert."

-- Jeannie Logan (Subscriber and Donor)

And here are some photos: Click Here (Photo in this gallery, as well as the one used above in this post by Lars Johannesson)