| home | program guide | our schedule | special events | ticket orders | support us | scholarship program gallery | merchandise | our community | about us | contact us |
| About Us ... |  |
|||
 |
Allan Pollack, Artistic
Director, has
been Artistic
Director and
Conductor of
the Mendocino
Music Festival
for the last
twenty-two
years. He has
led both
orchestra and
chorus through
memorable
performances of
the Verdi Requiem,
the Brahms Requiem,
Beethoven's
9th, Mahler's Das Lied von
der Erde,
Stravinsky's Rite of
Spring and
seventeen fully
staged operas.
With a Ph.D. in
composition
from UC
Berkeley,
Pollack has
composed a
variety of
pieces for the
Festival over
the years,
among which are The Spiral
Dance for
chorus and
orchestra, Two
Movements in Time for
orchestra, From
the Song of
Songs for
soprano and
orchestra, A
Summer Evening
at the
Boonville
Fair for
orchestra, Albion
Song, Jazz
Concerto for
Saxophone, a
Vibraphone
Concerto, and a
String Quartet.
As a jazz
musician, he
leads the
fabulous
Festival Big
Band and
sometimes even
takes a solo on
saxophone
himself. In
addition to his
Festival
responsibilities,
Pollack has a
full studio of
private
students, is
the Music
Director and
Conductor of
Symphony of the
Redwoods (for
the last twenty
years), and was
appointed
Artistic
Director of the
Camellia
Symphony in
Sacramento
three years
ago. |
|||
 |
Susan
Waterfall, pianist, Festival Co-Founder and Director of the Piano Series, creates yearly multi-media scripted settings for chamber music. These have included “Voyage a Paris” (2001); “Argentina: Gauchos and Tangos” 2002; “Bartok’s Women” (2003); “Tales of A Parisian Salon: Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac” (2004); “Young Brahms” (2005); “Scandalous Music!: Satie, Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky” (2006); and “Leos Janacek, A Solitary Genius” (2007). This year’s program, “Degenerate Music”, explores the music of Kurt Weill, Schoenberg, and Hanns Eisler in Weimar Berlin.
Susan Waterfall studied piano with Ivan Moravec and Karl Ulrich Schnabel and musicology with Roland Jackson and Glenn Watkins. Her understanding of music in culture was enriched by living, studying, and performing South Indian Classical Music with the legendary Dhanammal family in Madras (Chennai), India, in the late 70’s. She has presented numerous lecture recitals on Olivier Messiaen’s monumental piano cycle "Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant Jesus". She is the wife of the Mendocino Music Festival’s Artistic Director, Allan Pollack. Their son is acclaimed jazz pianist Julian Waterfall Pollack. |
|||
| 2007 - 2008 Board of Directors | ||||
Barbara Faulkner |
President |
|||
| Roger Schwartz | Vice President | |||
| Susan Weaver | Secretary |
|||
| Tess Albin-Smith | Treasurer |
|||
| Otto Graham | Board Members | |||
| Jerry Greenberg | ||||
| Jim Havlena | ||||
| Mike Issel | ||||
| Shirley Issel | ||||
| Marcia Lotter | ||||
| Allan Pollack | ||||
| Arlene Reiss | ||||
| Guenter Riegler | ||||
| Sandy Riegler | ||||
| Susan Waterfall | ||||
History The Mendocino Music Festival was established in 1986. It was the founding dream of local musicians Walter Green, Allan Pollack, Susan Waterfall and music lovers to present fine music with a mix of professional and local musicians, and the opportunity for classical music education on the Mendocino Coast. With the cooperation of the community and the Department of Parks, the first festival was presented in a tent on the Mendocino Headlands State Park in July, 1987. The tent seated 400 people and the orchestra consisted of 56 musicians. Four orchestra and four chamber concerts were presented. In 1989, a fully staged opera was added. In 1992, a Young Musicians Scholarship Program began, a program that continues today with a name change to the Emerging Artists Program. The Piano Series began in 1996 and presents master pianists in an intimate daytime lecture/recital format. The Village Chamber Concerts began in 2005 and feature local musicians in daytime concerts at different venues in Mendocino and Fort Bragg. In 2008 the Mendocino Music Festival will present fifteen evenings of music including three orchestra concerts, two evenings of opera, two chamber concerts, jazz, folk, world music and Big Band. Three of these concerts will include dance performances. The main performance tent has more than 800 seats and the orchestra consists of approximately 80 musicians. There will be four Piano Series lecture/recitals, four Village Chamber Concerts, a Children’s Matinee, an Emerging Artists concert and a special jazz/pop concert on the last Saturday of the festival, for a total of 22 concerts between Saturday, July 12 and Saturday, July 26. All orchestra and opera rehearsals are open to the public free of charge. Each year we put up a large tent and build a symphony hall from the ground up at the Mendocino Headlands State Park, Ford House Museum and Visitor Center grounds. We have established a year round presence in the town of Mendocino with our office in the Old Bank Building on the corner of Main and Kastens Streets and with concerts, dinner parties and events throughout the year. Our national and international reputation as a respected summer music festival has helped give the town of Mendocino a cultural identity. We always work to build strong economic ties with the business community and individual donors. We have developed a large volunteer network of over 200 people that help out at the festival and at our year round events. We became charter members in the Mendocino Coast Performance Art Production Alliance (PAPA) in 2000. We share storage space, set pieces, costumes, tools and technical expertise with other local performing arts non-profit organizations. |
||||
| back to top | ||||
email: music@mendocinomusic.com |
||||
Phone: 707-937-2044 Box Office: 707-937-4041 Fax: 707-937-1045 |
||||
© 2008 The Mendocino Music Festival | Website design Studio Z Mendocino www.studio-z.com |
||||