Sunday, August 8, 1pm 
Santa Cruz Civic AuditoriumPetting Zoo-Style Tour of the Orchestra
Nathaniel Stookey: The Composer is Dead (narrator, Nathaniel Stookey)

TICKETS: FREE (but required)

The Cabrillo Festival hosts its annual Free Family Concert on Sunday, August 8 at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. The Cabrillo Festival’s Free Family Concerts have become legendary—a staple in the musical education and upbringing of area youngsters, and a no less entertaining and engaging experience for their parents. It begins, once again, with the popular petting zoo-style Tour of the Orchestra so kids make an up-close and personal connection to the different instruments and players.

This year Nathaniel Stookey’s “tartly funny” The Composer is Dead, written for narrator and orchestra, will be performed. Composer Stookey (who is NOT dead) will narrate the work, a libretto written by Lemony Snicket (San Francisco-based writer Daniel Handler). It’s a murder mystery about the killing of a composer. Like Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Stookey's The Composer Is Dead is intended to introduce young audiences to the instruments in the orchestra, though with a dash or two of irony thrown in.

Watch excerpts from The Composer is Dead, here with narration by librettist Lemony Snicket and commentary by composer Nathaniel Stookey. San Francisco Symphony, 2009.

Program Note

The Composer is Dead (2006)
Nathaniel Stookey (b. 1970)

In 2006 the San Francisco Symphony, with which composer Nathaniel Stookey has maintained a close relationship, commissioned, introduced, and recorded The Composer is Dead, a sinister guide to the orchestra with narration by Lemony Snicket, the pen name of Daniel Handler, author of the popular books A Series of Unfortunate Events. “Having created a furor in the United States,” according to the Hamburger Abendblatt, the work was performed twice back-to-back to sellout crowds at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s New Creations Festival conducted by Peter Oundjian, and has since been performed by more than thirty orchestras around the world. The premiere took place on July 8, 2006 with Lemony Snicket narrating and the San Francisco Symphony led by Assistant Conductor Edwin Outwater. The following note is adapted from the book jacket of The Composer is Dead:

There’s dreadful news from the symphony hall—the composer is dead!

If you ever heard an orchestra play, then you know that musicians are most certainly guilty of something. Where exactly were the violins on the night in question? Did anyone see the harp? Is the trumpet protesting a bit too boisterously?

In this perplexing murder mystery, everyone seems to have a motive, everyone has an alibi, and nearly everyone is a musical instrument. But the composer is still dead.

Perhaps you can solve the crime yourself. Join the Inspector as he interrogates all the unusual suspects. Then listen to the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra and hear for yourself exactly what took place on that fateful, well-orchestrated evening.

Composer’s Note:

I hope I’m not giving away too much by saying that The Composer is Dead ends with a funeral march… Classical composers have always had a preoccupation with death, partly because we are human, like you, partly because we grapple with the mysteries of the universe, partly because death sells records and always has… Someday you'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you appreciated a living composer before that living composer became, like all composers, dead.
— Nathaniel Stookey

Librettist's Note:

I have been asked if I might say a word or two about the text of The Composer Is Dead, and the one or two words are “Boo hoo.” The story—which, as far as I know, is absolutely true—is so heartbreakingly glum that I cannot imagine that you will be able to listen to it without dabbing at your tears with a nearby handkerchief.
— Lemony Snicket

Suggested recording:
Lemony Snicket, narrator, San Francisco Symphony conducted by Edwin Outwater
Published as a book and CD by Harper Collins B002U0KP3U