Sun 8.7 Free Family Concert: The Selkie Boy
Sponsored by Sunday, August 7, 2011, 1pm
Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium
Petting Zoo-style Tour of the Orchestra
Tina Davidson: The Selkie Boy (conducted by Carolyn Kuan) [West Coast Premiere]
(Ian McRae, narrator)
TICKETS: FREE, available from the Santa Cruz Civic Box Office
The Festival’s wildly popular Free Family Concerts are designed to introduce kids to the wonderful world of orchestral music. The concert begins with the popular petting zoo-style Tour of the Orchestra where kids can make an up-close and personal connection to the different instruments and players. This year the concert features Tina Davidson’s The Selkie Boy, written for narrator and orchestra and conducted by Carolyn Kuan, Cabrillo Festival Associate Conductor. The Selkie Boy is ideal for audiences of all ages in its warm account of self-realization and acceptance. The text for this work is based on an old Scottish folk-tale about selkies, or seals. The story tells about a little boy named Willie, who is found on the beach of the Orkney Islands and is adopted by a large family. Somehow he never feels as if he fits in, and longs for the sea and the selkies. Through the help of a little girl, he learns that the selkies are magical folk–changelings, who can shed their skins and walk on the earth. Willie is able to speak to the selkies and discovers his true identity.
This concert will be delay broadcast and webstreamed on KUSP radio, date TBA.
Program Note
The Selkie Boy for Narrator and Full Orchestra (1991)
Tina Davidson (b. 1952)
Tina Davidson makes her Cabrillo Festival debut this year with a children’s tale for narrator and orchestra, The Selkie Boy. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Davidson was raised in New York and Pennsylvania, where she now lives. Her thirty-five-year career includes performances of her works by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Kronos Quartet, among others.
The Selkie Boy was commissioned by the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, and underwritten by the Minnesota Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation. Davidson writes:
The text for the orchestra piece is excerpted from the children's story, The Selkie Boy by Helen Clare. The story is about a little boy named Willie, who is found on the beach of the Orkney Islands and is adopted by a large Scottish family. Somehow he never feels like he belongs and longs for the sea and the seals, the selkies. Little by little he finds out about the seals, and that tears will unlock his true identity.
The text is used with permission from Bel the Giant and other Stories by Helen Clare, © Pauline Hunter Blair, 1992. It is available from Bodley Head, 1956 and from Puffin Books, 1971, 1972.
Not recorded
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Photos, clockwise from left: Petting Zoo musicians, conductor Carolyn Kuan, narrator Ian McRae, composer Tina Davidson
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