Sweet escape

If there was ever a time when Americans needed uplifting, 2018 certainly qualifies.

In Theodore Bell’s program notes for American Made—the season-opening concert for the North State Symphony—he says that “Leonard Bernstein’s music from On the Town gave a much-needed lift to the American spirit during an epoch of tremendous uncertainties … .” And much as a nation fatigued by war in the 1940s might’ve been vicariously boosted by the musical’s singing sailors on leave, concertgoers in Chico and Redding last weekend could similarly find joyful respite from wildfires, and Washington, D.C., and whatever else in the symphony’s wonderful program of music from Bernstein and fellow American composers Aaron Copland and Adam Schoenberg—plus, a smidge of Johannes Brahms.

Things kicked off with the Bernstein party, “Three Dance Episodes from On the Town,” the composer’s orchestral arrangement of hand-picked tunes from act one of the musical. It was an alternately playful and sweet welcome to the new season that the symphony and conductor Scott Seaton delivered with focused energy.

After settling the nerves and setting the tone with the beautiful introductory dances, Seaton brought out the evening’s guests, the Brooklyn-based PROJECT Trio, and that’s when the night really took off. The three musicians—double-bassist Peter Seymour, cellist Eric Stephenson and flautist/beatboxer Greg Pattillo—personified the joy of music. The trio’s opening number was an original tune inspired by gypsy guitar legend Django Reinhardt, called “Djangish,” and the super-hot five-minute piece established the trio’s infectious level of emotional commitment to the proceedings, which was absorbed by the orchestra and matched by an eager and engaged Laxson Auditorium audience.

Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5” is both lively and a bit devilish (making it a perfect accompaniment for the shenanigans of old Looney Tunes cartoons or Charlie Chaplin bits), but at first glance it seemed a stretch to include a piece by a German composer in a program titled American Made. However, in the context of the four-song pre-intermission lineup that started with the gypsy-inspired “Djangish” and then sandwiched Brahms piece between two originals that PROJECT Trio performed sans orchestra—the hip-hop-inspired funky number “Sweet Pea” and the salsa-flavored “The Bodega”—the Hungarian folk dance felt like just another rich big-city flavor that the trio had smuggled out to California.

The evening rightly ended with Copland’s famous Appalachian Spring Suite. Originally composed in 1944 as a ballet commission for modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, the orchestral version Copland created the following year earned him a Pulitzer Prize. The symphony’s rendition was a lovely and flawlessly performed bookend that complemented Bernstein’s opening dances with its familiar melodies and pastoral beauty.

The suite was also a well-placed comedown that followed what was, for this reviewer, the most exciting work of the night, Schoenberg’s electro-acoustic “Scatter.” The 37-year-old American composer wrote the 19-minute concerto for PROJECT Trio, plus orchestra and some electronics. The work started with slow piano and a low sustained drone, and took its time making chord changes before Stephenson, playing Pied Piper, led the orchestra out of the fog with a bright flute melody and eventually to an exciting crescendo that dropped back down into a jazzy jam to end the first section.

Each of the piece’s sections began with an ominous drone, with the other two parts continuing on to similarly varied yet distinct dramatic journeys filled with pop melodies, fun and complex jazzy interplay and impressively jarring dynamics. This was not passive music, and active attention was rewarded with a fairly transcendent experience where the audience and musicians escaped to somewhere new. What a trip!