Congratulations to DFMM Artistic Director and Conductor Jordan Randall Smith for receiving a Bruno Walter Conducting Fellowship with the
Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Smith led the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in Roger Zare's 'Aerodynamics' in the world premiere of the version for small orchestra. The performance was featured on the festival opener, the "In the Works" concert featuring the works of three up-and-coming composers, including
Mr. Zare and performances by seven young conductors, including Mr. Smith. The festival closes this weekend.
Smith said of the experience, "this year was my second time to attend the Cabrillo Festival, but nothing can prepare you because no two years are ever alike at this festival. It may be in the same quirky town of Santa Cruz, same fantastic weather, but every year occupies a completely different sound world as different composers come and contribute their unique voices."
Jordan Smith was one of seven conductor-participants in the Conductors Guild Workshop (partnering with the Cabrillo Festival) chosen from over 100 applicants from across the world to come to Santa Cruz, California. There, he had the opportunity to work with musical luminaries such as the legendary Gustav Meier, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and world-renowned conductor Marin Alsop, and members of the Billboard sensation Eighth Blackbird in the world-famous summer hub for contemporary music performance. (Eighth Blackbird and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra Violinist Matt Albert pictured is pictured above in the workshop with Jordan Smith conducting.)
Cabrillo Music Director and Conductor
Marin Alsop said that his work was, "well done, very good."
Marin Alsop coaches Jordan Smith at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music
Jordan Smith and Roger Zare have marked this performance as the beginning of a fruitful composer-conductor relationship. Mr. Smith spoke about Zare's score, "It is a fantastic piece of music, simply electric from tiny sparks to giant cracks of lightning." The concert was unusually well-attended considering that the concert contained no headliners; it was completely full of young conductors performing as-yet unknown composers. However, they were most appreciative, giving the performers a "curtain call" of sorts (the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium did not have a literal curtain but the conductors and composers were called back to the stage at the end of the performance). After the performance, Smith immediately began to make plans to engage Zare for this year's Dallas Festival of Modern Music. "Roger is an extremely gifted composer with very mature musical thinking and offers a very compelling musical story in each of his pieces. I can't wait to work with him again."
This year's Dallas Festival of Modern Music takes place this November 5-14, 2010. For more information, visit
www.dallasmodernmusic.org
When the pianist Steven Beck played Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Debussy at Bargemusic on Friday evening, the intellectual rigor of the early-20th-century works on the program was a palate cleanser after the heady emotions in the flurry of Schumann and Chopin bicentennial events this season. 
Dmitri Shostakovich recognised it 42 years ago, when his composer-friend showed him the score. Russian critics said it when the opera finally received a concert premiere in December 2006. Packed houses in the Bregenz Festspielhaus for the first staged production have been in no doubt about it, and nor has the German press: The Passenger is a masterpiece. 
“My job tonight is to allay any residual fears you might have,” the conductor Leon Botstein said from the stage of the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College here on Friday night. 
