The Santa Cruz Symphony turns 50. A look at the local icon, and the creative crescendo that lies ahead.

Celebrated composer Lou Harrison at work on something superior for the symphony back in 1960. Harrison, who also was a champion for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, passed away in 2003.

The Santa Cruz Symphony is about to celebrate its golden 50th anniversary.  Like anything that has been around for half-century this creative musical organization has matured, grown, and has many stories to tell.  From Beethoven to the Beatles, Wagner to World Music, the symphony has offered the community an earful of live concertos, overtures and world premieres for adults and youth. Now they are looking ahead to 50 more years of first-rate classical music.  Our short waltz down memory lane with some of the people who have been a part of the Santa Cruz Symphony over the last five decades uncovers some rich history:

1950s—Birth of a Symphony

In 1958, Curt Bowman was the principal of Soquel Elementary School and the principle clarinetist for the fledgling Santa Cruz Symphony.  He’s also recognized as one of the primary founders of the symphony, along with Matilda Dedrick and Norman Walters, both violinists.  On May 17, 1958, Bowman played clarinet in the very first concert of the symphony at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.  “I always loved music and loved playing with the symphony,” he reflects on those early days.  “We were a bunch of amateurs back then, but the symphony evolved into a terrific organization and is now phenomenal.”  

The Santa Cruz Symphony in 1958.

That first orchestra was made up of musicians who came from a myriad professions, including bakers, teachers and farmers.  Seventy people responded to a note in the local daily newspaper that invited prospective orchestra musicians to attend an organizational meeting on March 10, 1958.  “It was just a pick-up kind of thing back then.  The first musical director was Detlef Anders and he would come down to Santa Cruz from San Francisco to lead the orchestra,” Bowman adds.

After 10 rehearsals the brand-new orchestra played to an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 on May 27, 1958.

Fifty years ago, that very first concert of the symphony opened with Beethoven’s “Overture to Egmont” and included works by eight other composers including Jean Sibelius, Leroy Anderson and J.S. Bach.  According to reports of the premiere, there was a standing ovation half-way through the program and a local Santa Cruz pharmacist named Melvin McRae optimistically exclaimed after the first concert: “We won’t have to worry about juvenile delinquency when we can offer young people this!”  

Bowman is now 85 years old and laments that, “Young people don’t get exposed to classical music as much as they used to due to lack of music and arts funding in the schools.”  For many years the Santa Cruz Symphony has been a primary force in bringing the classics of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and the like to young people across the county.  Since the mid-1960s, musicians from the symphony have brought classical music into elementary classrooms county-wide and participated in educational question and answer sessions with the young students.  

Symphony Founders (l-r) Norman Walters, Matilda Dedrick and Curt Bowman in 1958.

Bowman played locally for 17 years and continued playing music until arthritis set in and he gave his clarinet away to a young woman who was an enthusiastic and promising student of music.  But arthritis hasn’t stopped Bowman from enjoying the Santa Cruz Symphony today.  He plans on hearing the musical offerings of the 2007-08 season; “I still love classical music and I love the Santa Cruz Symphony.”

Many of the musicians who have participated in the Santa Cruz Symphony have also played music with other local groups over the years.  In the 1950s and ’60s, Bowman was friends with Lou Harrison, the celebrated composer who brought the sounds of Balinese gamelan to Western audiences of classical music and wrote a number of pieces for the local symphony over the years.  “We played a lot of music by Lou Harrison at an avant-garde eatery in Aptos called the Sticky Wicket,” reminisces Bowman, who also performed with the Cabrillo College Symphony.   

1960s and ’70s—Music in the Family

Ralph Fingal was also a charter member of the Santa Cruz Symphony.  “Music was very important to him,” recalls Ralph’s son, Eric, a photographer in Santa Cruz.  Eric recalls attending symphony performances in the late ’50s and seeing his father play clarinet in the orchestra.  “My mother and I would get dressed up and go to the concerts.  It was a special event, like a gala or going to church.”  

In 1965, when Eric was 13 years old, he followed in his father’s musical footsteps and became the youngest musician to join the local Symphony.  He also played with the Youth Symphony, which started in 1965 as a separate nonprofit organization with cooperation from the County Office of Education.  “I was terrified during the symphony auditions,” Eric laughs.  “Norman Masonson was the conductor then after Detlev Anders.  I played the oboe in the symphony until I graduated from Santa Cruz High School when I just got more interested in girls than the oboe.”

He says that it was during his five years with the symphony that the group went through “growing pains.”  Sitting in the photography studio, where he now works, he describes the shift that the symphony experienced as it transitioned from an amateur to a professional orchestra. “There was a move to bring in more serious musicians and we were wondering where the orchestra would go,” he says.  

By the early 1980s the Santa Cruz Symphony had union certified musicians and was no longer putting out informal calls for violinists, cellists, flautists and the like.  It was the end of an era that is characterized by the opening lines of an Aug. 21, 1966 article from the Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Maybe you could play in the Santa Cruz Symphony.  Its membership is made up of not many professional musicians.  Not many at all.  One is a district attorney-elect; another is a real estate broker; another a waiter; another owns a bakery, another works on a mushroom farm.”

Priscilla Whitcomb (now Priscilla Fisher of Aptos) still plays with the orchestra. This 1982 Symphony promo photo was for a Flood Disaster Relief Benefit Concert.

Eric Fingal loved classical music, but like most teenagers he also listened to rock music.  “I grew up listening to both classical music and rock,” says Eric. “I noticed that a lot of rock musicians are classically-trained. I used to listen to Cream and I know that bassist Jack Bruce was trained classically.”  

Nowadays, experiments in combining different musical styles are commonplace and new ground is continually being broken.  Samples of classical music are transplanted into pop, rock and hip-hip songs and lately DJs are spinning discs alongside orchestras.  In recent years the Santa Cruz Symphony has worked with rock musicians to perform album-length tributes to none other than the Beatles.     

(Clockwise from top) Symphony co-founder Curt Bowman, Eric Fingal, son of the Symphony’s Ralph Fingal, longtime Symphony publicist Nancy Meyberg and Joel Scheafer (with his cello).

In 1971 Maestro George Barati arrived in Santa Cruz and began his tenure as Musical Director for the Santa Cruz Symphony. He had previously worked with Béla Bartok, the famous Hungarian composer, and had led the Honolulu Symphony and Opera for18 years. Many speculated that the move to leading a community orchestra was a step down for Barati and he reportedly had to be convinced to work with the local Symphony as it was still largely non-professional and was not up to the Maestro’s standards.  Barati was finally convinced to lead the Santa Cruz Symphony by then- boardmember Bud Kretschmer.  

In his memoirs, Maestro Barati writes that Bud was the main reason that he stayed on with the orchestra.  Soon after his arrival, professional musicians began being attracted to joining the Santa Cruz Symphony because of Barati’s presence here. It was his commitment to bringing the Symphony up a few notches in quality and professionalism that opened the door to a new era for the Symphony. It also helped attract seven strong candidates for a new musical director once Barati left.

1980s—Symphony Goes Pro

Joel Schaefer was born and raised in Santa Cruz and was a student when he joined the Santa Cruz Symphony in 1981.  “I was in the symphony when it was moving away from being all-volunteer and was moving towards being professional,” he remembers.  “The early ’80s was when they started bringing in more musicians from outside of the area, which continues today,” says Joel, a mortgage banker who has also played cello with the Youth Symphony, the Bayshore Monterey Symphony and the Santa Cruz Chamber Players.  

The move to become a professional organization was a profound development for an orchestra that had started out by requiring musicians to contribute 25 cents each to pay for the conductor’s services at rehearsals and performances as well as annual membership dues of one dollar.  How things have changed; the Santa Cruz Symphony’s current marketing director, Jessica Frye, says that the annual budget for the symphony is now close to $800,000.    

“Music speaks to me,” Schaefer notes with a smile, adding, “The orchestra can tell bigger stories than can be told in three minute pop songs.”  He compares the classical orchestra to a living, breathing being that is larger than the parts that make it up. “The symphony is a big organism that is producing art.  It is exciting to be a part of that.”       

In 1981, Schaefer experienced another shift in the life of the Santa Cruz Symphony when musical director George Barati left the group. “I joined when the search was on for a new musical director.  Kenneth Klein then came on board.  I was on the search committee.  We had a dozen applicants to look at.”  Later, Mitch Klein became the musical director, who was followed by Joann Falletta and Ed Houghton, both of whom were interim directors.

1990s—A New Maestro in Town

The year 1990 saw another quest for a musical director that was dubbed, “Search by the Sea.”  The symphony musicians and board members were hoping to find a long-term leader for the orchestra.  A year later, after auditions and interviews, John Larry Granger was selected to head the local symphony.  He came with a bright and successful seven-year record as musical director of the South Coast Symphony, a Southern California orchestra based in Costa Mesa.  Granger looks back with pleasure at his 1991 selection as musical director of the Santa Cruz Symphony; “It was a joy to work with the conductor search committee,” he says.  

Conductor John Larry Granger

The golden anniversary of the Santa Cruz Symphony marks Granger’s seventeenth year as musical director.  The maestro arrived on the scene just following a period when the Symphony was struggling to find a permanent local performance hall.  In prior years, the orchestra had played in so many different venues that Nancy Meyberg, the Symphony’s publicity director from 1983 to 2006, referred to the symphony as “a gypsy band that played at more than 10 different locations.”  

The Holy Cross Church, Mission San Juan Batista, Henry Cowell Park, the First Congregational Church and the Cocoanut Grove were among the venues that the Symphony migrated to in order to share their classical tunes. But even though it moved around quite a bit, Meyberg says the Symphony continued to stand out. In time, she says it impressed “for its level of excellence” in music director, musicians, board and volunteers.

“But the audience is like no other I have encountered,” she adds. “They embrace innovation and educational previews, they enjoy exposure to brilliant guest artists, musical collaborations, new classical music and support music in the community with such great enthusiasm that it made my job a pleasure.”

In the late ’80s, Cabrillo College had been a semi-permanent home for the symphony.  But the orchestra played second fiddle to college events when it came to reserving dates for the performance hall.  Another downside of the arrangement was that seating was limited to 500.  It was after the 1989 earthquake damaged and closed some venues that the symphony moved back to its original home, the Civic Auditorium.       

Granger remembers that the Santa Cruz Symphony was “having trouble finding a stable location for them to present concerts.”  The orchestra was offering the community a rich palette of classical music, but the absence of a consistent venue was not serving the needs of the musicians nor the concert-goers. Granger emphasizes simply, “A permanent venue made us more competitive”

The search for a permanent home and the change from an amateur to professional orchestra made this a tumultuous period in the life of the Symphony.  “It was a struggling organization,” Granger sums it up.  “They were going through a lot of growing pains and a lot of changes.  It was becoming a union orchestra with professional players.  And there were rising costs and life-threatening deficits.”  

The Santa Cruz Symphony has depended on ticket sales and the generosity of donations and foundation grants to stay in tune with the costs of sustaining a large orchestra.  The Symphony League, formed in 1966, has also raised substantial amounts of money to support the orchestra.  In 2006 the League raised $75,000 through activities like a themed ball, silent auction and fashion show.  The plan for this year is to auction art objects that have been made out of old musical instruments, including a piano and a trumpet.      

Granger helped attract donors and foundation grants by striving to increase the quality of the Santa Cruz Symphony and have that quality recognized by the California Arts Council.  In the early ’90s, he submitted Symphony recordings to the Council and received a “4-rating”—the highest given to any orchestra in its budget size.

“People don’t realize this about government funding,” says Granger.  “The California Arts Council acted as a sort of arts police.  They held orchestras to a high standard.”  The high rating brought in new funding for the orchestra, but the California Arts Council discontinued its rating system in 2000 due to its own budget cuts.

“It’s unfortunate,” Granger goes on, “when you have foundations that depend on the California Arts Council for grading whether to fund, and how much to fund, different orchestras, that becomes an issue. And when that money dries up, then orchestras have to rely more on local contributions, ticket sales, local support from audiences and individuals.  That usually leads to somewhat more conservative programming.”

Despite financial challenges, Granger has directed 17 seasons of the Santa Cruz Symphony and has brought with him world-renowned musicians like pianists Leonard Pennario, Jon Nakamatsu and Awadagin Pratt and violinist Sheryl Staples.  Since its humble beginnings in 1958, the Symphony has also collaborated with many arts organizations including Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre, Watsonville Taiko and KUSP Radio.  In recent years there have also been innovative contemporary productions that have brought the Symphony in touch with rock music by collaborating with the White Album Ensemble to recreate live performances of Beatles albums, note-for-note.

21st Century—Come Together

It’s been a long and winding road for the symphony. Who would have guessed that it would come together with our local version of the Beatles?  “I think that no one could’ve predicted that the Santa Cruz Symphony would play with a rock band,’ reveals Dale Ockerman, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist with the White Album Ensemble, the local group of musicians responsible for  bringing Beatles albums vividly to life.  Dale has also played with Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Doobie Brothers and is founder of the Santa Cruz New Music School.  “We had played with a string quartet and then the Symphony contacted me and asked if we could get together,” says Dale.

The Santa Cruz Symphony has collaborated twice in recent years with the White Album Ensemble to present “All Together Now” in 2006 and “Come Together” in June, 2007. Ockerman envisions future collaborations with the Symphony; “Next year we’re talking about doing another Beatles show with the Symphony,” he says.  “Perhaps something based on John Lennon’s song called “Imagine” or Paul McCartney’s work called “Live and Let Die.”

Granger also looks forward to more collaborations and further musical explorations as the Santa Cruz Symphony continues to grow during the next 50 years.  “I enjoy presenting music that brings up philosophical issues, music that makes statements about our lives,” he says. “The music that we present are great works that make you think, and spark discussions that are relevant to our times.  This coming season we have two world premieres.”

Granger recently committed to leading the Symphony until their 2012 season.

World Premieres:  Rainbows and Warblers

The 2007-2008 season of the Santa Cruz Symphony will feature world premieres of two new works, both offering a creative vantage point and unique perspective on the Americas: “The Rainbow Sign” by Gwyneth Walker has a spiritual framework and “The Americas Symphony” by ZunZun is a bird’s eye view of diverse cultures and environments.

“The Rainbow Sign” is the first section of a planned four-part work by Walker called American Songs for Orchestra.  Each section is based on folk or hymn tunes from traditional American music.  The basis for “The Rainbow Sign” is the spiritual “Hold On,” and is specifically based on the line; “God gave Noah the rainbow sign.”  Program notes for the piece explain that: “An interpretation of this message might be that the sign has been given to Noah (and to us all) that the world is a place of many colors, many races and many individualities.  Accepting these is the path to peace.  And this is the natural order of life.” Walker explains further that, “This is a freedom song that is referring to the idea of holding on to your dreams to make them reality.”  

ZunZun, the local children’s music duo of Gwynne Cropsey and Stephen Snyder, will premiere a new work titled “The Americas Symphony.” The wife and husband team have previously collaborated in two family concerts with the Santa Cruz Symphony.  “The Americas Symphony ties together an exploration of cultures, the environment, language and music from South, Central and North America,” says Cropsey.  Brazilian rhythms and instruments have been incorporated into the fifteen minute piece which follows the imaginative northward migration of a warbler, as it flies over different terrains and countries of the Americas.  

“When we see a little bird sitting outside here in Santa Cruz, we may wonder what has that bird seen?  In the Symphony we are giving a musical bird’s-eye view of these lands with lots of cool twists and turns,” Cropsey elaborates, hoping that the music and text will offer young people a fresh way of seeing the connection and diversity of our cultures and environments.  “Each environment that the bird flies over is expressed and explored through the music. In the Andes we hear the wind through a harp solo.  When the bird flies over Columbia, the trees and ocean are mimicked by the orchestra.  In Mexico we will hear sounds that evoke the hot desert.”  Narration for the piece will be bilingual in Spanish and English.

Cropsey is happy that ZunZun is collaborating once again with the local Symphony and she feels grateful to be a part of the 2007-2008 golden season that is celebrating the first half-century of music brought to life by the symphony. “The Santa Cruz Symphony is such a great group of people.  I’m very inspired by them,” she says.  “And I look forward to the Symphony’s innovative musical programs for another 50 years!” n

Tickets for the symphony are available at the Civic Box Office at 307 Church Street or online at santacruztickets.com .  In October, Santa Cruz Community Television will present a program celebrating the Symphony’s golden anniversary.

John Malkin is a local journalist and musician and is author of  Sounds of Freedom.  

2007–2008 THE GOLDEN SEASON

The Santa Cruz Symphony’s 2007-08 golden season includes half a dozen concerts from September through May.  Free pre-concert talks take place at 7 p.m. in the Civic Auditorium before each Saturday evening concert.  

Sept. 29–30 The opening concerts will be at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium and Watsonville’s Mello Center, with golden galas preceding those performances to celebrate the Symphony’s 50th anniversary.  The concert will feature Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Moravec’s “Spiritdance,” a work originally commissioned by the Symphony in 1989.  Beethoven’s Violin Concerto will feature solo violin by Sheryl Staples, associate concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic.  Also included will be Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” famously orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.

Nov. 3  The second concert includes Wagner’s Siegrfried “Idyll,” Schumann’s Cello Concert” with cellist David Requiro, winner of the Klein String Competition, Haydn’s “Symphony No. 10” and Massenet’s “Meditation from Thais.” The last will be played to honor all the past members of the symphony.  

Jan. 26–27 Concert three opens with the world premiere of a new work by Gwyneth Walker, “The Rainbow Sign: An American Overture.” Also on the bill are Tchaikovsky’s “Concerto No. 1” with Stephen Prutsman on piano and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5.”  

March 1–2 The annual family concerts will bring a new work from local children’s music duo Gwynne Cropsey and Stephen Snyder, a.k.a. ZunZun. “The Americas Symphony” is a musical journey across South, Central and North America with bilingual narration.

March 29 The fourth concert features “The Impresario Overture” by Mozart Dvorak’,s” Symphony No. “7 and pianist Adam Neiman will enliven the ivories as soloist for Chopin’s romantic” Concerto No. 1”.

May 3–4 The final concerts of the golden season will feature three major works for chorus and orchestra with Cheryl Anderson directing the Cabrillo Symphonic Chorus. “Fanfare for the Common Ma”n by Copland, Serenade To Music by Vaughan Williams, Escales by Ibert and “Symphony of Psalms” by Stravinsky are on the evening’s bill.  Borodin’s romantic “Polovtsian Dances” will be the grand finale with a huge orchestra taking the stage for a lively end to another season of the Santa Cruz Symphony.       

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