This Sunday only: By popular request, Destiny Muhammad returns with her crew of Bay Area masters!

Award-winning jazz harpist Destiny Muhammad is back by popular demand with "Soulful JOY," an inspiring blend of jazz, gospel, soul, and a hint of storytelling. Destiny first introduced this show at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and it has since become a beloved tradition that sells out every year. This is your chance to see it in here in Santa Cruz in an intimate setting.

Soulful JOY is just what it sounds like – a joyful and soulful way to come together during the holiday season. We'll be reflecting and re-imagining the holiday spirit with music and sacred movement along with Destiny and her cool, eclectic Sonic Ensemble of Bay Area masters: musicians Leon Joyce, Jr., Tammy Lynne Hall, and Ron Belcher; voices Leberta Lorál, Nicolas Bearde, and Will Hammond, Jr.; and dancer Victor Temple.

 

WHEN: Sunday, December 22 at 2 PM
WHERE: Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College
TICKETS: 831-479-6154 or cabrillo.edu/vapa

Destiny Muhammad (Harpist, Vocals)

Recording and performing artist, bandleader, composer, and producer, Destiny Muhammad's genre "from Celtic to Coltrane" is cool and eclectic with a feel of jazz and storytelling to round out the sonic experience. She has appeared on stage with jazz luminaries Azar Lawrence, BlueNote artist Ambrose Akisemuire, Faye Carol, and Tiffany Austin, to name a few. She has enjoyed sold-out shows at SF JAZZ Center and produces her own annual concert "Storytime: Great Jazz & Captivating Stories." As Yerba Buena Gardens Festival notes: "Whether interpreting jazz standards or her original tunes, Muhammad turns every piece into a soulful adventure."

Leon Joyce, Jr. (Drums, Percussion)

Leon Joyce, Jr.’s drumming and percussion savvy are in international demand. As a bandleader, clinician, and music director, he has established a rich global presence. Leon has worked directly with jazz masters Ramsey Lewis, Regina Carter, Clark Terry, Gary Bartz, Nnenna Freelon, and more. He has performed with San Francisco and Santa Cruz Symphony, and was the featured Teaching Artist for the Stanford Jazz Workshop series. His jazz festival performances have spanned the Bay Area and beyond, from SF Music Day and the Monterey Jazz Fest, to Montreux Jazz Fest in Canada and the Villigen Jazz Fest in Germany.

Tammy Lynn Hall (Piano)

Award-winning pianist/composer/educator Tammy Hall has taught and performed globally, including a 30-city tour with Queen Esther Marrow and the Harlem Gospel Singers. Winner of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Direction for Pamela Rose's Blues Is A Woman, Tammy has worked with stellar jazz artists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Tia Fuller, and more. In a recent stint with San Francisco Symphony, she focused on jazz collaboration; her venue and festival appearances include the Kennedy Center, Dizzy's Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Sala Filharmonia in Trento, Italy, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the San Jose Jazz Festival, and performances at SF Jazz Center. Tammy's career spans almost four decades, with no end in sight!

Ron Belcher (Bass)

Ron Belcher has traveled the nation and the world bringing his rhythmically buoyant, emotionally uplifting style to the stage for a wide array of jazz artists. He has performed or recorded with international stars such as Branford Marsalis, Regina Carter, John Handy, Pete Escovedo, Donald Bailey, Ledisi, Rodney Franklin, and Ernie Andrews, as well as a virtual "who's who" of the San Francisco jazz scene.

Leberta Lorál (Voice)

Leberta Lorál possesses a clarion voice and a technically impressive and emotionally intense sense of artistry. She has performed concert works ranging from Baroque to contemporary, garnering critical acclaim. Highlights include a performance at the opening night of the SF Exploratorium exhibit GLOW, a debut at the 65th Annual Monterey Jazz Festival, performing Classical Broadway with Tammy Lynn Hall, and featured appearances at the Cinnabar Theater, San Ramon Public Library's Jazz Series, SandBoxSandCity, Monterey County Composers' Forum at Hidden Valley Music, and the 25th African-American Art Song Alliance. In 2019, she won KDFC's Star Spangled Sing-Off. A regional winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she has been featured as the soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Southeast Symphony, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Nicolas Bearde (Voice)

Nicolas Bearde is an award-winning vocalist whose silky baritone sound, wit, and engaging rapport draws the audience in. With six albums on his own label, Right Groove Records, he has earned a unique place in the contemporary male vocal jazz scene. His most recent album I Remember You: The Music of Nat King Cole, featuring special guest and saxophone great Eric Alexander, rose quickly to the Top 20 on the Jazz Week Charts, garnering rave reviews at home and abroad. His theater credits include Jukebox, a staged radio play starring Danny Glover, and Athol Fugard's Master Harold...and the Boys. Nicolas has since expanded into film and television, and has performed with jazz legends such as Nat Adderley, Jr, Vincent Herring, Eric Alexander, Bobby McFerrin.

Will Hammond Jr. (Voice)

The musical career of Emmy-nominated singer/songwriter Will Hammond, Jr. began at the Cathedral School for Boys and the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. After high school, he performed with up-and-coming black alternative/hip-hop bands Bass House Funk and Midnight Voices. While at San Francisco State University he wrote Tara Kemp's international hit, "Hold You Tight," which went to #3 on the Billboard Pop and R&B charts and became a certified gold record. He has written for various artists in Los Angeles and performed tracks with other Bay Area talents such as The Coup, Midnight Voices, Ledisi, Martin Luther, Goapele, and Patti Labelle. 

Victor Temple 
(Choreographer, Dancer)

Victor Temple is an internationally known dancer, choreographer, and teacher. He has danced with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Cirque Du Soleil, American Repertory Ballet, Oakland Ballet, Alabama Ballet, New Jersey Ballet, Hangzhou Song and Dance Group, Shanghai Ballet, and the Central Ballet of China. While living in China, he won a gold medal in the Asian Choreography Competition and was the first westerner to hold a position as a member of the Chinese Dancers' Associations. He choreographed the opening of the China and Hong Kong reunification ceremony. He has been Artistic Director of New World Ballet since 2005 and was named one of the 22 People to Watch in 2022 by the Press Democrat .

Soulful JOY on December 22 with the Destiny Muhammad Project

Discover a new sound for the holidays!

Back by popular demand! Destiny Muhammad, the self-described "harpist from the hood," returns to Santa Cruz for "Soulful Joy," a special holiday performance. Come hear an inspiring blend of jazz, gospel, and a hint of storytelling on Sunday, December 22, at Cabrillo College’s Samper Hall.

Destiny first introduced this show at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and it has since become a beloved tradition that sells out every year. This is your chance to see it in here in Santa Cruz in an intimate setting.

Soulful JOY is just what it sounds like: a joyful and soulful way to come together during the holiday season. We'll be reflecting and re-imagining the holiday spirit with music and sacred movement along with Destiny and her cool, eclectic Sonic Ensemble of Bay Area Masters: musicians Leon Joyce, Jr., Tammy Lynne Hall, and Ron Belcher; voices Leberta Lorál, Nicolas Bearde, and Will Hammond Jr.; and dancer Victor Temple.

"Whether interpreting jazz standards or her original tunes, Destiny Muhammad turns every piece into a soulful adventure."

WHEN: SUNDAY, December 22 at 2 PM
WHERE: Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College
TICKETS: 831-479-6154 or cabrillo.edu/vapa

An update on the Civic Auditorium's handrail Installation project

Santa Cruz Symphony cares about the comfort and safety of all who attend our concerts. We’ve heard your concerns about the lack of handrails at the Civic Auditorium, and we have been working with the City of Santa Cruz to install railings along the stairways.

A brief summary of the project and its status can be found here: https://www.cityofsantacruz.com/Home/Components/BusinessDirectory/BusinessDirectory/311/4350

The above link will provide updates on the progress of this project.

What do kids of all ages need right now? A good dose of holiday magic!

On December 14 and 15, Santa Cruz Symphony will deliver a spirited family celebration of holiday music for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa featuring many of your favorites. Our Holiday Concert is a presentation for the whole family—with special pricing for kids. Our show even includes a lively sing-along for added fun!

There's nothing quite like live orchestral music to bring the magical spirit of the season to life. Here's what you can expect to hear:

  • Leroy Anderson's A Christmas Festival, a toe-tapping medley of eight popular holiday songs, including Deck the Halls, Jingle Bells, and more.

  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Polonaise from Christmas Eve, a beautiful excerpt from the composer’s four-act opera.

  • Peter Jaffe's Symph-Hanukkah, an orchestral medley of popular Hanukkah songs including The Dreidel, O Hanukkah, Blessing over the Hanukkah Lights, and more.

  • Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleeves, a beloved traditional tune that originally appeared in his Shakespeare-inspired opera, Sir John in Love.

  • Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser's Hlonolofatsa (Bless in the Name of the Father), traditionally sung by African choirs, featuring rhythmic lyrics in Zulu.

  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, a popular series of eight short selections featured in the composer’s fantasy ballet.

  • Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, a perennial favorite that lets us imagine we have snow for sleigh rides!

As the nights draw in and winter approaches, give yourself and your family the gift of festive music enjoyed together with your community. Get your Holiday Concert tickets today!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14 at 7:30 PM
Civic Auditorium

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15 at 1:00 PM
Civic Auditorium

HOLIDAY TICKET SPECIAL: Youth tickets (ages 3–17) are just $13 each with our Family Pack discount! Click here to learn more.

The Orchestra Goes for a Spin: Reviewing Adaptations on November 2/3, 2024

To start its November concerts the Santa Cruz Symphony took audiences for a spin with the world premières of a new work by local composer Josef Sekon – a work simply called Spin. As a student, Sekon was fortunate to be able to participate in seminars by some of the biggest names in atonal music of the second half of the 20th century, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez. Spin reflects this heritage.

Professor Martin Gaskell

In the 2021-2022 season the orchestra premiered another work by Sekon, his Aptos Sound Project, consisting of five diverse portraits of Aptos and Santa Cruz. These included a ghostly depiction of the cement ship on Seacliff State Beach at midnight, tango dancing in Aptos, and Halloween hysteria on Pacific Avenue. In contrast to this, Spin is a unified movement of 13-minutes duration. As the program note insert explained, the title is meant to conjure up emotions associated with spinning of all sorts including taking a fast car for a spin. (The composer suggested that ideally the car should be a bright red Lamborghini!) Going up in a space shuttle was another suggestion.

The sounds of Spin are a combination of various types of mechanical spinning on earth and emotions of space travel. However, as Kiefer Taylor joked in his excellent pre-concert talks, the car must have been travelling to Aptos on Hwy 1 on a weekday late afternoon, because sometimes the car came to complete halts! These static moments serve as important structural indicators in the piece. They include impressive, sustained, swelling, brass sonorities, held string sounds, and the music fading away to moments of complete silence before starting to spin again.

Spin started abruptly with a jolt. At first the listener’s attention was drawn to the fascinating pallet of sounds, such the gong, tubular bells, Wuhan cymbals, and fleeting woodwind fragments. Big, slow, static crescendi and decrescendi of the full brass appeared. After a second one dies away to a general silence, the strings get underway with the spinning. Traffic on Hwy 1 was finally moving!

Novel and striking string textures are an important part of the piece. This first section of motion dies away to a rumbling tremolo on the double basses and another moment of silence. Repeated double bass pizzicati on the same note underlay a wonderfully orchestrated pizzicato passage for the all the other strings. This was my favorite section. The music was now thoroughly tonal for a while. I felt like I was in a car now riding on the open road up Hwy 1 north of Santa Cruz. The pizzicati rose up and faded away to silence again. The brass slowly swelled and died away again.

This transitioned into a tremolo on the strings who were off spinning again. This time there was a spinning violin solo, played by concertmaster Yulee Seo on top of the general string motion. The spinning came to another standstill, and we got the swelling held brass sonorities again. This was followed by a long, held, harmonious, two-part major third in the violins. The spinning started up again with a tremolo scale on the low cellos that repeated over and over again. The whole string section and the solo violin got going once more.

Along with the aforementioned pizzicato section, the ending of Spin was undoubtedly its other most memorable feature. It contained some very original string writing. An eerie unworldly landscape was being depicted. The strings produced some unearthly slides to tremolos that died away to be almost inaudible. There was no more spinning. The thin sound was very static. Then a remarkable slow scraping by the strings began. Their bows were very slowly drawn across the strings with great pressure. There was no rhythmic motion, just a long, drawn-out crescendo. The woodwinds and brass joined in to give what felt like an exponential increase in volume. Then, just like after two orbiting black holes have merged, it was all over with an abrupt silence. Maestro Daniel Stewart held his stick motionless in the air. The hall was silent in expectation. After what seemed like an eternity, Stewart made a gesture of appreciation to the orchestra thereby indicating that Spin had finished spinning. The audience broke into applause. Josef Sekon was summoned up to the front. The audience at the Civic Auditorium was especially responsive with people rising to their feet, whistling in approval, and shouting, “Well done!”

In brief introductory remarks from the podium before starting Spin, Maestro Stewart had mentioned that giving a world premiere is a special challenge. It was one that the orchestra was well up to, however. Daniel Stewart, as always, was very well prepared and did not spare attention to details. The textures of Spin were often complex, and the players did a superb job of coordinating entries across the different parts of the orchestra. The playing was very precise. The smile on Josef Sekon’s face showed that he was very happy with the result. I mentioned the influence of Stockhausen and Boulez, but in comparing Spin to the best-known orchestral works of these two composers (works such as Stockhausen’s Gruppen or Boulez’s Notations), I have to say that my personal preference was for Spin.

After applause for Spin had died down, the stage was rearranged and Santa Cruz Symphony’s Artist in Residence and Concertmaster Nancy Zhou took the stage in a long black dress with gold trim. A year ago, Ms. Zhou made her solo debut with the orchestra in Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie, a virtuoso showpiece written for the great violinist Jascha Heifetz. For last weekend’s concerts, Zhou chose another virtuoso piece premiered by Heifetz: the Erich Korngold Violin Concerto. This beautiful, luscious work, composed in 1945, is Korngold’s most popular concert piece. According to a 2022 survey of over 14,000 orchestral concerts worldwide, the Korngold concerto ranked 6th among violin concerti in number of performances. This put it after the Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Bruch concerti. The Korngold concerto is a loosely structured, three-movement work. It is rapturous, full of tenderness and gentle yearnings, especially in the first two movements, but it is also very much a virtuoso work.

Ms. Zhou’s 2023 performances of the Carmen Fantasie with the orchestra had left the audiences in no doubt about her dazzling virtuosity. Her performances of the Korngold with its daunting technical challenges not only reinforced this but also showcased the lyrical side of Zhou’s playing. With its noble, rising, opening sweep for the solo violin, the Korngold concerto immediately transported the audience off to very different realms from the preceding agitations of Spin. The violin ascended to the top of its range straight away. This set the tone for the entire concerto, which stands apart from the other concerti mentioned above in having the solo violin sweetly singing for long periods of time in its very top register. Zhou made these super-high notes sing out above the orchestra at all times. She maintained flawless intonation and a gorgeous tone – highly non-trivial things with the tight tolerances imposed by the short string lengths needed for the stratospherically-high tessitura. Every note was clear, and Zhou had the music very much in control from beginning to end. She was sensitive to every nuance and rendered each phrase perfectly. Importantly, while capturing the romance of the piece, she avoided the sentimentality that one could easily fall into.

The concerto has enormous technical challenges, especially in the fiery last movement where Heifetz asked Korngold to write in additional virtuosic display. Heifetz played the finale at breakneck speed, finishing the movement in time that is more than a full minute shorter than that of most subsequent violinists. Ms. Zhou, like other top players, opted for a less reckless but still very high-spirited tempo. She handled all the technical challenges with ease. Thanks to the close-up video projected above the orchestra, the audience could see the large number of rapid shifts up and down the violin, the passages in harmonics, and the often-tricky bowings. Not only the audience, but also the members of the orchestra were enthralled. Since Zhou was moving while playing, the video cameras had been set up with a relatively wide field of view. An unintended but beautiful bonus of this was that the head of principal cellist Jonah Kim could be seen behind Zhou. Many times, when he was not intently playing, his facial expressions showed him enraptured by the concerto.

Not only is the solo part of the concerto very demanding, but so too is the orchestral writing. Korngold was a virtuoso orchestrator, and the orchestration is full of masterful effects. The orchestral part is closely interwoven with the solo. Korngold calls for a large orchestra, but his writing is always transparent and never gets in the way of the solo line. The concerto has a wide range of textures, along with rapid hand-offs and interchanges. All this needs exact coordination and keeps everyone on their toes. As always, Maestro Stewart and the orchestra handled all this superbly.

Needless to say, the audience response was ecstatic. At both performances, even at the end of just the first movement of the concerto, the audience had no hesitation in erupting into prolonged and enthusiastic applause – the sort of applause one expects at the end of a major work. Conventions of not applauding between movements of multi-movement works went out of the window; the brilliant end of the first movement was such that one could hardly not applaud! At Saturday evening’s concert in the Civic Auditorium there was also applause at the end of the gorgeous second movement. This applause would have gone on for a while if Daniel Stewart had not launched into the final movement. At the end of the entire concerto, as soon as the last chord of the exciting whirlwind ending came to a stop, the audience was immediately up on its feet with shouts.

After the intermission, the second half of the concert was devoted entirely to Antonin Dvořák’s popular Symphony no. 8 – a symphony I have to admit being one of my longtime personal favorites (I almost wore out my recording of it the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college and I later played viola in it). This is a cheerful work with many melodies. It starts with a broad melody in the minor for horns and cellos, but as the first flute (Sarah Benton) leads the orchestra into the allegro, the key switches to the major. As usual, the orchestra’s playing was very precise.

The slow second movement has a surprisingly diverse range of emotions and unusual drama for a slow movement (in this regard it is like the slow movements of the first two symphonies of Sibelius.) Daniel Stewart emphasized this drama, for example, by having first horn Brayden Ross bring out the dramatic solo towards the end of the movement. Like Beethoven’s Eroica and Parry’s English Symphony, the last movement is a set of variation announced by the cellos after an introductory fanfare, played in perfect unison by the two trumpets (Alan Matteri and Owen Miyoshsi). After the variations have died down, an exhilarating coda suddenly starts to bring the symphony to a close. This last movement has an exciting timpani part that the orchestra’s timpanist, John Weeks, was obviously thoroughly enjoying. And so, with the end of the Dvořák, the weekend’s concerts span to happy endings.