An absorbing Steinbeck birthday concert

By Barbara Rose Shuler
Special to The Herald
February 26,2002

The Monterey Symphony, under the direction of Kate Tamarkin, presents an absorbing tribute to John Steinbeck as its contribution to the national celebrations of the writer's 100th anniversary this month.
     The program for Concert IV of the symphony's subscription series (first performed at the Pacific Grove Middle School Auditorium) features the world premiere of "And in the air these sounds…" commissioned by the symphony for the occasion. This dramatic and emotional work, born as a collaboration between composer Allen Shawn and writer Jamaica Kincaid, inhabits the mind of a writer as he stares desperately at a blank page.
     Tamarkin's homage to Steinbeck is an expressive palate of works, all composed within the last 100 years, evoking many facets of the author's contribution to American literature.
     The urgent rhythms of "Sensamaya" by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas opened the program. The inspiration for the work is a poem of the same name by Cuban writer Nicolas Guillen, whose subtitle is "Chant for Killing a Snake." Hypnotic and repetitive, "Sensamaya" thrusts the listener into an exotic, dangerous realm with music that could easily serve as a chilling soundscape behind a chase scene in a film wherein the hero ducks and races through villages, brambles and crowded streets to avoid villainous pursuers. The work ends triumphantly, with the death of the snake.
     The intrepid tuba player Forest Byram, featured soloist last month in the symphony's Vaughn Williams tuba concerto, played the arduous opening theme of "Sensamaya" with colorful ease. The chance to hear unconventional and challenging tuba passages has been one of the unexpected pleasures of the symphony season. "And in the air these sounds…" introduced bass-baritone Clayton Brainerd to symphony patrons, an artist of Wagnerian stature and vocal prowess, with whom Tamarkin has worked in the past. Brainerd spoke a few words, inviting the audience to enter the Shawn-Kincaid piece as the free associative journey of a writer confronting blankness.
     Anyone who has braved the creative unknown will identify with the shattering interior world depicted in this 30-minute "monodrama," as Shawn calls it. Kincaid captures the quintessence of a mind wrestling with itself in a creative void: the existential angst, busy chatter, the parade of images and emotions that swirl within.
     Normally, this interior tumult of the writer never reaches the public. We read a polished novel or essay. But the crucible in which it was forged remains the author's secret. Kincaid rips the inside out and lays it on the page, raw and bare, brutally honest. Shawn, by his own admission, faced his own blank anguish as a composer in approaching the text: then the music came in an intense rush
     "And in the air these sounds…."begins like an impressionist dream, accented by the sound of the plucked harp, with the quiet introspection f the writer singing, "all beginnings are silent and the silence has no end for it is a beginning."
     The music turns more theatrical as the themes in the beginning give way to operatic passion and then become reflective again at the close. The orchestration includes many changes in tempi and mood-with a jazzy section, a waltz, a march adding textures.
     Brainerd delivered the text in a vibrant and intellignet interpretation that revealed his depth of understanding of the artistic conundrum. "And in the air these sounds…" is not necessarily a comfortable work to hear, but it is nonetheless a powerful and poignant musical statement, and an excellent tribute to Steinbeck.
     After intermission, Brainerd gave an engrossing rendition of Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs" introducing folksy moods to the concert with "the Little Horses," "The Golden Willow Tree," "At the River" and "Zion's Walls."
     It would be hard to imagine a more appropriate finale to Steinbeck concert than Copland's musical score for the film "The Red Pony," which the orchestra performed with dramatic brio.
     Happy Birthday, John Steinbeck! The Monterey Symphony will perform this concert tonight at Sherwood Hall in Salinas. For tickets, call 624-8511.