Band Camp

Santa Barbara Symphony with guests Joan Tower,
conductor/composer, and Orion Weiss, piano. At the Arlington
Theatre, Saturday, November 11.

Reviewed by Charles Donelan

A multiplicity of woodwinds and brass
brought color, drama, and even some comic relief to the second
concert of the 2006-07 Santa Barbara Symphony season. Mendelssohn’s
incidental music to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream opened
the program, concluding with the famous Wedding March — an
appropriate tribute to the orchestra’s just-married conductor, Nir
Kabaretti. From there the program shifted gears as Joan Tower came
on to conduct her composition Made in America, a commission from
the Ford Motor Company Foundation that has been played nationally
by 65 orchestras.

No matter how many orchestras play it, Tower’s piece is unlikely
to become part of the standard repertoire any time soon. Based on
the melody of “America the Beautiful,” the work is marred by
insistent tea-kettle violins and faux-industrial bass figures that
fail to cohere into recognizable shapes or forms. Ford car horns
would have been a welcome diversion from the matter at hand, which
at times recalled the old jazz player’s adage about what to do when
you are out of ideas: “take it up an octave and trill.”