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What does California sound like?’ asks Steven Schick into his cell phone, to me and to himself, reaching for a chair in a hotel room somewhere in San Francisco. He has freshly arrived via BART from the East Bay after flying in from San Diego, and will soon depart for a weekend of percussion-course planning in the Canadian Rockies (‘just about as beautiful a place as you’ll find on the planet’).
Seeing as Schick is the one between the two of us who, a couple years back, took a six-week, 716-mile stroll up the California coast to record its noise in slowness and openness, I let him answer the question.
‘It sounds like people speaking different languages, it sounds like construction, it sounds like the ocean, it sounds like traffic, it sounds like a ‘mdash; a lot of things, things that have become important to us that we don’t even notice anymore. And if we forget what things sound like, then we pretty soon forget who we are, I think.’
Schick is far more regal a UCSD landmark than ‘The Cat in the Hat’ or the stone bear; his office is a secret garden of grand percussion instruments; he has worked with Philip Glass and John Cage but would love to work with you in office hours. Anyone who’s even come so far as to graze the outer rungs of the music department has a story about him, or has heard one, or at least thinks he must be wonderful. The Beatles class he taught for decades and finally let lie last year ‘mdash; soon to be no more than a legend, as all who bore witness make their way out into the world ‘mdash; will go down in campus history as the most coveted gen-ed course of all time, with sit-inners spilling out the double doors and a waitlist like a battleground.
But Schick moves on and resettles where he is needed. Last year, on top of professorship, he was named conductor of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, and has since created a course in the fall devoted e
ntirely to lab-studying their rehearsals. ‘Oftentimes in the professional musical world, you play a concert with these groups of people, a little bit like what I’m doing this week ‘mdash; here, then going somewhere else, and the scenery changes all the time,’ he says. ‘To see the same group time after time after time, rehearsal after rehearsal, and to develop a rapport, a way of working with the same group, has been just fascinating.’
It was only a matter of time before Schick’s ambitions made their way over to the Loft. The new campus venue’s hallmark mission ‘mdash; and ultimately what makes its new-car smell so hard to get rid of, as the over-eclectic, hyper-hip delivery is often clunky’ ‘mdash; is to help high art off its gilded easel and rephrase it in colloquial terms, then squeeze it nice and chummy (but still A-line, still in the know) into that comfortingly corporate corner of Price Center. Event coordinators aim to show students the ins and outs of snotty traditions such as fine wine and string concertos, and reveal how nonscary ‘mdash; even how pleasant ‘mdash; those things can be.
Schick’s vision for the new La Jolla Symphony Informances series is shrouded in similar education-meets-entertainment ideals. Only difference is, unlike the somewhat traditionless (at no fault of their own) foundations of the Loft, this music-department darling and good king of Mandeville is equipped with the long-standing respect, adoration and hard-earned hipness one can only wear after years at the helm of the scene.
That said, the agenda for Feb. 4 ‘mdash; following up a Dec. 4 Informance that set Tijuana dancers ablaze with Indonesian compositions on which to troupe ‘mdash; is almost inconceivably burdened with ambition, continuing in the sccatterbrained tradition of the Loft’s everything-goes lineup. Branching off the La Jolla Symphony’s yearlong ‘DNA of music’ theme is the show-specific focus on ‘Home,’ weighted by an obligation to tribute Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin’s 200th birthdays, and meanwhile adhere to Black History Month with pieces by black composers and a dialogue on their place in the history of classical music. Schick’s idea is to pull themes and elements (pianist here, budding UCSD composer there) from the formal La Jolla Symphony concert that will take place on the following weekend, mixing them up with a little hump-day art dialogue and making a night of it.
‘Rather than coming simply to a symphony orchestra concert, hearing an hour and a half or two hours of music and that’s it, we create a companion concert that will flesh some of those themes out,’ Schick says. And in doing so, in letting everyone in on the varitable rehearsal dinner and brainstorming phase before the formal Mandeville sit-down, his humble excitement for dialogue shows promise in melting those artier-than-thou barriers the Loft often fumbles to topple. ‘We’re going to have a discussion also of the relationship of so-called art music ‘mdash; and I don’t know what to call it, I don’t like that term, but you know, music that’s destined for the concert stage ‘mdash; we’re going to talk about if there’s a social component to that music. Should we be involved in our community? Should we care about political and social events? Or should we care more?’
If he finds the time ‘mdash; and that’s definitely an if, at this rate ‘mdash; Schick would love to retrace John Muir’s steps from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley, absorbing that much more of California’s, and therefore our own, natural sounds. But for now, he’s here with us, evolved from a lifetime of experiments into the conductor we need. ‘You know, the raw material of art ‘mdash; you don’t make art if you don’t have hope,’ he said. ‘Art is about the future.’ And so we get started.
The La Jolla Symphony and Chorus’ Informance event ‘Home’ will take place Feb. 4 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Loft in Price Center East. See the full transcript of Steven Schick’s interview here.
