Harrison fan gets crack at his famed `Concerto'
California Symphony concertmaster says the performance will be `joyous'
Jennifer Cho never met Lou Harrison, but she loves his music. That's why she's excited, as concertmaster of the California Symphony, about this weekend's performances of Harrison's “Concerto for Violin with Five Percussionists.”
“It's been on my wish list for a while — and now we're finally doing it,” she said. “It's such a joyous, celebratory piece.”
Conducted by music director Donato Cabrera, with Cho as the sole violinist, Harrison's concerto is the featured work on a program that includes Richard Strauss's “Serenade,” and Mozart's “Serenade No. 10 (Gran Partita).” Performances are March 16-17 at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.
Cho's been listening to recordings of Harrison's music recently, and says this concerto has become one of her favorite pieces by the late American composer, renowned as the creator of Asian-infused works featuring one-of-a-kind instruments.
Throughout his career, Harrison was inspired by gamelan — a kind of Indonesian music ensemble — and his 1959 score features
an unusual array of those instruments, among them wind chimes and flower pots, brake drums and coffee cans.
In a call from her home in Petaluma, where she lives with her husband, bassist Mark Wallace, and their 10-year-old son, Cho described the work.
“The sound he creates for this kind of gamelan moves from a celebration to an outdoor market place full of life,” she said. “Then there are these quiet moments when you hear a little bit of echo, and you're not quite sure what it is. He's able to achieve so many different kinds of textures and moods.”
Cho says that many of her colleagues knew Harrison, who was born in Portland, Oregon, and spent much of
his later life on the California coast. “They knew him and played a lot of his music. I didn't know him myself, but I remember studying him in school and hearing so much about him.”
Playing Harrison's concerto, she said, reminds her of her early training. She was born in Southern California and started on violin at a young age. She also played percussion.
“Starting from the 5th grade, I was a percussionist,” she said. “I played timpani, glockenspiel, all those things. I really loved it. My favorite part was that I didn't have to sit in a chair and be stuck for the entire rehearsal — I could walk around the back of the room. That was great, and I think that made this piece a little dear to my heart.”
The back row aside, violin has always been her
principal instrument. When an older cousin won a violin competition, Cho decided she wanted to play the instrument too. And she did — earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at the prestigious Juilliard School.
“After that,” she said, “I knew I wanted to play in an orchestra.”
In 2011, she came to the Bay Area for a position with San Francisco Opera. Since then, she's had assignments with San Francisco Ballet and other ensembles. In 2013, she joined the California Symphony; in 2016, Cabrera appointed her concertmaster.
Cho said her work with Cabrera and the orchestra is always productive.
“He really has a gift for programming, and it's been great to play some of the pieces he's chosen. The season coming out of the
pandemic was especially meaningfu. We played the Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony, which was so special at that moment.”
They've also played music that doesn't come around that often — works by William Walton and Hans Rott, and new works by resident composers Katherine Balch and Viet Cuong.
It's challenging, but Cho said that Cabrera's an ideal leader. “We've worked together now for quite a while. We're good friends and it's nice to have that ease of a relationship. I'll just ask him — what do you think about this? We've gotten to where we understand each other and what we're trying to bring out in each piece.”
Away from work, Cho decompresses at home. She's a master gardener who has created a “food forest landscape”
on her property.
“I tend to get a little obsessed with my hobbies — that's how I ended up where I am,” she said. “I'm from L.A. — I didn't know anything about gardening! But when we came up here, there were some little plum trees on the side of the fence. Going out there and picking them, eating them with my son, was a joy that I cannot describe. I became obsessed with figuring out how to grow food.”
Now they have multiple crops.
“I just keep sticking things in the ground,” she said with a laugh. “It's a numbers game. Not everything's going to make it. If I plant 100 trees and end up with 20 good ones, I'm ecstatic.”