A special evening of music designed specifically for Santa Cruz community members by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music will take place on August 8, at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.
Presented in collaboration with The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, Community Night offers an opportunity for both longtime festival goers and first-timers alike to get a more intimate perspective on the talented artists who come from around the world to be a part of the Cabrillo Festival orchestra.
Cabrillo Festival Music Director Cristi Macelaru and members of the Festival Orchestra have put together a concert that will feature new and recent chamber works that showcase festival musicians as soloists and in small ensembles.
Executive Director of the Festival, Ellen Primack, noted that this year’s Community Night is particularly exciting for the staff, orchestra, and community, as it features world premieres written and performed by two of the Festival’s orchestra members. She added that both the Cabrillo Festival and The Humanities Institute are offering a limited number of free tickets to the Santa Cruz community to ensure everyone will have a chance to experience the Festival orchestra.
Primack observed that Community Night is unique in the way it brings together the Festival’s strengths and its core values.
“Cabrillo Festival stands on two pillars of strength--our artistic soul that lies with the incredible orchestra musicians who come from across the globe, and the culture of the organization that is born of this special community. When we can create an opportunity for our musicians to shine as individual artists--a bit more akin to rock stars--and at the same time open our doors more broadly to community members--with a pay-what-you-can sliding scale, as well as our free ticket offer--we’ve married the best of our strengths and our values.”
Community Night is also a reflection of the Festival’s ongoing partnership with The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz. This has lead to collaborative programming and festival events, such as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute “My Own Words: The Law and Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” held in downtown Santa Cruz earlier this year.
The THI-Cabrillo Festival collaboration additionally provides opportunities for public humanities research and work experience through the THI's Public Fellowship Program. This summer Sienna Ballou, a graduate student in the Literature Department at UC Santa Cruz, is working with festival organizers on the logistics of the two-week long contemporary music festival as a public fellow. She has begun chronicling her experience through a blog on the Cabrillo Festival website. Her first post, “The Festival Through My Eyes,” describes the festival offices and her work as a production assistant. An interview with Ballou can also be found on the THI website, where she talks in detail about her experience as a public fellow.
The ongoing collaboration between the two organizations has proved to be beneficial to both partners, as well as the local community.
“At the Humanities Institute, we believe that art and the humanities are not a luxury, but a necessity,” noted THI managing director Irena Polic. “That is why we are committed to engaging with the broadest community possible--from first-generation students and scholars in every discipline, to local residents, and anyone interested in making sense of our complex world. We are thrilled to be partnering yet again with Cabrillo Festival, an amazing organization at the heart of our community.”
In turn, the collaboration has helped introduce new audiences to the Cabrillo Festival, and provided an opportunity for the festival to share its unique music and programming with the university.
As Primack noted, “This partnership has been extraordinary in building connections between the community and the university and sharing our respective commitment to the arts and humanities.”
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NOTE: For ticket information and to view the program for the Community Night concert, visit the Cabrillo Festival website.
