Symphony to honor Steinbeck
Program set for writer's centennial

By KIM CURTIS
Associated Press
Las Vegas Sun, Friday, February 22,2002

     CARMEL, Calif. – No one really knows what author John Steinbeck would think of a musical tribute to his life and his writing. He saw himself as a craftsman, not a highfalutin artist.
     He generally shunned publicity, and once suggested that his hometown of Salinas, Calif., name a bowling alley or brothel after him.
     The Monterey Symphony has a loftier plan to honor the Nobel Prize-winning author on what would have been his 100th birthday; a specially commissioned work for baritone and orchestra.
     "I knew we had to do something," said Joe Truskot, who began preparing for the Steinbeck centennial when he was appointed executive director of the Monterey County Symphony more than 10 years ago.
     Last year Truskot hired novelist Jamaica Kincaid and composer Allen Shawn to create a musical tribute to Steinbeck.
     Their 30-minute piece, "And in the air these sounds…" debuts Sunday, Steinbeck would have been 100 Wednesday.
     "It's not tied overly much to the occasion," Shawn explains. "It's an independent work of art that celebrates language in a musical setting."
     Shawn said Kincaid first sat down to write the lyrics, which she titled, "nocturne for the note your father left you in the pocket of his dead suit." It's an abstract poem that describes the act of writing and the lonely task writers face when sitting down and confronting a blank page.
     "I pictured a writer late at night," Shawn says. "It's so abstract and repetitive. It reminded me of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce…After finding it quite daunting, I suddenly started in and wrote the piece in a state of tremendous excitement. I was just swept along by it."
     The symphony performs the work through Tuesday in Pacific Grove, Calif., and Salinas.