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RobeRt and MaRgRit Mondavi Center foR the PeRfoRMing aRts | UC davis PResents lara Downes Family Concert “Mudpies and lullabies” A Children’s Stage Series Event Sunday, April 25, 2010 • 1 & 3PM Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center, UC Davis There will be no intermission. FUrther lIstenIng see p. 26 The artists and your fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms, and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing, and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal. Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle this playbill for reuse. MONDAVI CENTER PROGRAM Issue 11: Apr-May 2010 | 25
FUrther lIstenIng lara DoWnes by JeFF hUDson Pianist Lara Downes lives in Davis—in fact, I periodically run into her at a restaurant or at the bank. So it’s easy to take Lara for granted as “someone we all know,” and perhaps pay less attention to her growing discography than her work deserves. Her first disc, Invitation to the Dance, came out in 2000—and thereby hangs a tale. “I was so lucky, I had no idea how lucky,” she recalled. “I showed up in New York and did a recital at Weill Hall,” the 268-seat venue that is part of the Carnegie Hall complex. “And someone from a recording company showed up,” Downes continued. This led to an offer to do a CD, and she began preparing material. “I knew I wanted to do some sort of compilation disc (featuring several composers), and not an all-Beethoven disc, or something like that. ‘Invitation to the Dance’ was a Weber piece I’d started learning earlier, when I was in Europe. At one time, in the 1800s, it was a hugely popular piece, but it had kind of fallen out of the repertoire. I thought it would make a nice theme—basing all of the selections on the CD on the idea of dance.” Another disc, Reform, followed in 2003. “That was a collaboration with several composers at UC Davis,” Downes said. “The thread through that disc was that the music was based on very traditional classical forms that were being reinterpreted by the composers in a very different way. It was lovely to work with everybody, and it cemented a lot of friendships for me.” Dream of Me was released in 2006, and features music by several New American Romantics, including William Bolcom’s “Dream Shadows,” Aaron Kernis’s “Before Sleep and Dreams,” Adam Silverman’s “Nocturnes and Reveries,” and Dan Coleman’s “Burden of Dreams.” And 2007 saw the arrival of American Ballads, which (as you might imagine) features American works from the 20th century. “I’d put Samuel Barber’s ‘Souvenirs’ on my first CD, so for this disc, I went to Barber’s ‘Excursions,’ and built the CD around the idea of Americana,” Downes said. “As we were preparing the CD, I met Benny Golson”— the veteran jazz saxophonist and composer who’s been recording since the 1950s. “Benny wrote a piece that was on that disc. That was the beginning of my several-year-long journey through American music, which I featured in several concerts at the Mondavi Center.” What sort of preparations does a CD entail? “Lots of practice, obviously. I like to record after a season touring with the repertoire. Performance is totally different than what happens in the practice room…I like to get the music out in front of an audience and see how it takes shape that way.” Her next project? “I think the next recording is going to be called Diaspora,” she said. She’s currently doing a recital program with that title. “It will have pieces written by composers in exile, or writing about cultures or people in exile. It will feature Chopin, who we don’t think of as being in exile, but he was from Poland, and moved to France, and really missed Poland.” Chopin continued to honor the musical heritage of his homeland in his Mazurkas and other pieces. “I’ll probably also do Bartók”—who grew up in Eastern Europe, left to escape the devastation of World War II, and then settled in the United States. “And I’ll probably do a piece by Tan Dun about his childhood during China’s Cultural Revolution.” Jeff Hudson contributes coverage of the performing arts to Capital Public Radio, the Davis Enterprise, and Sacramento News and Review. 26 | MONDAVIARTs.ORG
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