FREE FAMILY CONCERT
Sunday, August 5, 1:00pm Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Tickets: Free
sponsored by:
with additional support from:
media sponsor:
JAMES MACMILLAN: Stomp (with Fate and Elvira) (Conducted by Carolyn Kuan, Cabrillo Festival Assistant Conductor)
DANIEL KELLOGG: Pyramus and Thisbe (Joseph Ribeiro, narrator) (West Coast Premiere)
The Festival’s Free Family Concerts have become legendary! It all starts with a “petting zoo-style” tour of the instrument sections, then returns to the theatre for a grand concert experience with Maestra Marin Alsop and the full Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. The concert begins with Stomp, a rousing opener by James MacMillan conducted by Cabrillo Assistant Conductor and Alsop protégé Carolyn Kuan. Then actor Joseph Ribeiro, of Shakespeare Santa Cruz fame, will join Alsop and the Orchestra for the west coast premiere of Daniel Kellogg’s Pyramus and Thisbe, with a narration written by Tony Award-winner Mark O’Donnell and based on a scene from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In this salute to the Bard, Ribeiro will navigate an astounding cast of characters, keeping kids and their families in uproarious laughter!
Tickets are free and available at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium Box Office beginning June 15. (They only be mailed if accompanying other ticket purchases.)
Program Notes:
Pyramus and Thisbe (2007) (West Coast premiere)
Daniel Kellogg (b. 1976)
Born in Connecticut, Daniel Kellogg has had works performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and currently serves as composer-in-residence of both the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra in Wisconson.
Pyramus and Thisbe was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and its music director Leonard Slatkin. It was introduced on March 4, 2007 by the NSO with actor John Lithgow narrating. Kellogg has written the following notes:
Pyramus and Thisbe is a theatrical spectacle with wild, overwrought death scenes, waves of shimmering moonlight, fierce lion roars from the brass section, riotous music from the strings, overjoyed fanfares, sappy romantic tunes, funeral music, and a kazoo solo. It is a tragedy of the most farcical sort that parallels the story of Romeo and Juliet. Taken from Act V of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, Tony-Award winning writer Mark O’Donnell has reworked this scene for one brilliant ham who will play the part of narrator, wall, lion, moon, and our lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe.
A play there is my friends, some ten words long.
Which is as brief as I have known a play,
But by ten words, my friends, it is too long!
“The tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe.” Very tragical . . . mirth!
In all the play there is not one word apt!
And tragical, my little friends, it is,
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself,
But when you see it played, more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed!
It is nothing, nothing in the world,
Unless you can find sport in its intent!
And we will have it!
Not recorded