Monday, August 10, 2009

Cabrillo 2009: Golijov

Last week from Wed. to Sat. a.m., I was down in Santa Cruz for Cabrillo 2009 with Ginny Beecher Zeitman who has been going there since the late '60s & is now a sponsor.

The most stunning piece we heard last Fri (opening) nite was "Azul" by (Argentinian-Jewish) Osvaldo Goiljov, inspired by his trip to Macchu Picchu: a cello concerto with 2 native-instrument percussionists & a hyper-accordionist, backed up by "a lot of other people" (he Cabrillo Festival Orchestra); Golijov historicized: "In the 19th c., music(al rhythm) was (based on) horses, in the 20th, motorcycles, now birds floating on air-(currents)." What about the embedded rhythm of the resting normal human heart? (1ce/sec.) Ginny (who was medical staff on the Stanford heart-transfer program) thinks we may have longago (primitively) adopted it as a musical meter. Is it a setting of the std. metronome?

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