SANTA CRUZ, CA—Is conservative modern programming the new normal  at the cheeky  Cabrillo Festival?

The audacious orchestral fest is turning away from its former infusions of rebellion and dissonance. This second season under Music Director Cristian Macelaru is setting sail on a more tranquil course, diverging from the bold tacks dating back to the 20th century, toward more consonant sounds.

In addition, there’s a 2018 Cabrillo push toward programs and agendas in the music, whether it’s folk elements, migration, sleeplessness, melting glaciers, or a piece in the shape of the solar system. If Beethoven turned up at Cabrillo with his Fifth Symphony, would he be told, “Humming that di-di-di-DAH tune is all very well. But couldn’t you also draft a meaty movement-by-movement scenario, perhaps about the Lorelei or the Pied Piper?”

Within those contexts, the fest still served up some beguiling and even brilliant music by composers like the visionary thinker Michael Gandolfi, 61, at the Aug. 12 finale. His multi-faceted “Garden of Cosmic Speculation” is a work without beginning or end, one with a random number of movements which can be played in any order.

The fascination of the five movements is their variety—-it’s as if they were created by five different composers. There’s polyrhythm, thunderous outbursts, flamboyant chimes and cymbals, some minimalism, bird chirps, and, eventually, traveling toward Havana: claves, syncopation and a jazzy staccato allegro. Per Gandolfi, it all deals with deep love.

This 23-minute segment is part of an eventual 22-movement opus. Idle thought: Is it possible for a composer to have too many ideas??

Gandolfi had been inspired by a vast, arcane garden in Scotland opened to the public one day a year. He also relates this garden to music and advanced math: string theory, quantum mechanics and the like. Presumably musicologists 200 years from now with unlimited free time will decipher and explain these interrelationships. Only after years of study, naturally.

Similar challenges face analyses of others’ music. Composer Missy Mizzoli wrote “Sinfonia” to portray the solar system and its orbiting planets. And Pierre  Jalbert wrote “In Terra” depicting the interior of the earth.

Deep secret: If you lack an analogy worth printing, your music might be bypassed by Cabrillo programmers. Think Lorelei or Pied Piper, folks!

The closing concert also featured a modern reflection on Benjamin Britten’s masterful vocal neoclassic “Les Illuminations” (1939). Nico Muhly wrote “Impossible Things” which, like the Britten, has tenor and violin soloists plus string orchestra, offering one of the finest performances of the 10-day festival. Nicholas Phan brought his gorgeous lyric tenor, in a baroque open-throat mode, at times in imitation of Britten collaborator Peter Pears.

Heard within the limitations of the elderly Civic Auditorium, the orchestra was generally effective in these challenging new pieces, and the elevated percussionists emerged as stars. The higher woodwinds were right on pitch, most of the time.

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in orchestral concerts at the Santa Cruz (CA) Civic Auditorium Aug. 3-12. For info: (831) 426-6966, or go online.  www.cabrillomusic.org

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