A Summer Classic Turns 20

THE PHRASE “WORLD CLASS” is such a tattered cliché, one hesitates to use it. But even as La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest begins its 20th year this month, many San Diegans may not realize how highly regarded the festival has become. Only the annual Mainly Mozart Festival, begun in 1989, can compete for prestige. SummerFest is shorter and less international in scope (the Mozart organization has a large presence in Baja), but the SummerFest folks tend to push the envelope when it comes to pleasing—and stirring up—their many conservative patrons.

According to Christopher Beach, LJMS president and music director, the three-week run features “a record-breaking six premieres of newly commissioned works,” not to mention “great jazz and dance performances with the Wayne Shorter Jazz Quartet and Lux Boreal dancers.” For music lovers, the new pieces are truly something to look forward to. The lineup: a Leon Kirchner work by the brilliant Orion String Quartet; Bright Sheng’s Three Fantasies for violin and piano (co-commissioned by the Library of Congress); a piece by celebrated Finnish giant Magnus Lindberg (co-commissioned with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival); a Wayne Shorter wind quintet especially created for the Imani Winds (co-commissioned with the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Da Camera of Houston and the Library of Congress); and a Bruce Adolphe piece written for the Imani ensemble and based on a story written by best-selling children’s book author Louise Gikow.

“The idea of looking back and looking forward is evident in the entire SummerFest 2006 programming,” says famed violinist Cho-Liang Lin, a former LJMS music director. Lovers of the traditional classics will not be overlooked.

As Beach explains, “We are a leader in commissioning contemporary composers and will continue to proudly maintain that leadership position; however, the majority of the festival is made up of great masterpieces and much-loved works from the classical chamber music repertory. We have focused the contemporary work into two back-to-back programs for those primarily interested in new works.”

Lots of people are coming to the 20th anniversary party. “We open this year with the San Diego Symphony,” says Beach. “It will perform alongside two generations of SummerFest artists—violinist Miriam Fried and her son, pianist Jonathan Biss; and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, whose mother, pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, and father, violinist Donald Weilerstein, played in the 1986 festival.

“We will also celebrate by bringing in such alumni all-stars as pianists Jeffrey Kahane, Yefim Bronfman and violinist Gil Shaham. We’ll offer a performance that unites all the past SummerFest artistic directors: violinist Lin, violist Heiichiro Ohyama, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. We’ll have a special encore performance of a Mozart program originally performed during SummerFest 1986. And the opening-night celebration will feature Bohuslav Martinu’s La Jolla Sinfonietta, originally commissioned and premiered here in 1950 by the Musical Arts Society of La Jolla.”

There is much talk in the classical music world these days about the “graying of the audience.” Beach seems unconcerned. “I have not been here long enough to fully understand the progression of our audience,” he says, “but at every LJMS concert this past season, I have seen a wide range of patrons, including children with their parents, college students and young professionals.”

Whatever the age, SummerFest keeps exciting us with provocative programs played by top artists. Find them August 3-20 at various venues. See ljms.org for additional information.

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