New conductor to open Santa Rosa Symphony season with fire-inspired composition

Anyone who experienced last fall's tragic wildfires will never forget the sound of the hot, erratic wind swirling about, scattering leaves and more in its path. It was as if the witches had decided to call a sabbath on the Mayacamas Mountains instead of on Rimsky-Korsakov's “Bald Mountain.”

What kind of music would you come up with if you were asked to commemorate the Wine Country wildfires and the community's rise to recovery?

Paul Dooley, a composer who grew up on the west side of Santa Rosa and now teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, accepted that difficult assignment from the Santa Rosa Symphony last year. His challenge was also to work within the confines of a succinct, six-minute work.

“I wanted to do something in two parts - a little more reflective - but also, have a celebratory and emotional ending that was more joyous,” he said. “So the challenge was trying to do that in a short amount of time.”

To simulate the wind at the start of the piece, he employed some unusual instruments known as a tuned whirlies, which create a whistling sound through corrugated tubes as you swing them around.

“Visually, they look like a siren spinning, so there's an analogy to that, but they sound very nice,” said Dooley, who started out as a percussionist and pianist. “I set those against a long, lyrical trumpet solo, then I add strings. For some reason, when the trumpet is in the low register with lots of vibrato and there are long, meditative strings, that has a very California sound to me.”

The Santa Rosa Symphony, which debuted Dooley's “Sonoma Strong” for Orchestra this summer during its free mariachi concert, will perform it again on Oct. 6, 7 and 8 at the Green Music Center during the season-opening set under new Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong. The work was a last-minute addition suggested by Santa Rosa Symphony Executive Director Alan Silow.

“Alan had mentioned the piece, in case I was interested in adding it,” Lecce-Chong said in a phone interview from Miami, Florida. “It's such a great way to start off the season. It will open the second half, and I'm pairing it with Beethoven's 5th (symphony), which is fascinating."

The theme of both pieces, he explained, is personal struggle and overcoming hardship. Beethoven's entire existence was a struggle, he noted, but the composer was able to transcend his suffering in his fifth and most famous symphony.

The iconic work, which has become synonymous with the composer's life, ends with the triumph of C major over C minor. That's exactly the kind of high note Lecce-Chong is aiming for in the symphony's season opener.

“I think of this program as bringing people together for a celebratory start to the season,” Lecce-Chong said. “Alan made the executive decision (last year) that if we finish the season in the red, that's OK. They gave free tickets to people (who lost their homes), and they were able to finish in the black, yet again, because the ones who could give continued to give.”

Last October, Lecce-Chong was the first music director candidate to audition for the post when the fires broke out. He and the soloist left a day early after the third concert was cancelled on Monday, Oct. 9. Before he left, he handed the keys to his hotel room to Symphony Board Chair Jamei Haswell, who lost her home to the firestorm.

“It seems more and more surreal the more I look back on it,” he said. “It was such a stressful week anyway. You're dealing with so many events, and then at the end, you have the concerts, you step it up and put everything on the line. I was so exhausted every night.”

Although he had turned his cellphone off Sunday night in order to sleep in, his parents in San Francisco managed to call the hotel and wake him up around 9 a.m. Monday. He turned on the TV, and it showed photos of the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, which had burned down. For a moment, he feared it was his hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Sonoma Wine Country.

“I thought, do I need to run out right away?” he recalled. “That was really freaky for a moment. Then I looked out my window, and I couldn't see the trees across the parking lot. That was the moment I realized we were not going to have a concert that night. It's right here. In our back yard. OK.”

Toured fire areas

Later, when he returned in April for a welcome reception, Lecce-Chong toured the neighborhoods affected by fire and spoke with staff and board members who had lost their homes.

“You don't think about what it's like to lose your home,” he said. “At the same time, they're so feisty and dedicated. It's unbelievable to me how much energy and willpower they have in the face of everything they've had to deal with.”

During the early morning hours of Oct. 9, composer Dooley was in Michigan, communicating with his parents via his cellphone. He started to receive text messages around 4 a.m., when the fires were still raging through Coffey Park.

“My parents said that ‘Santa Rosa is on fire.' What? The whole town”? he recalled. “So I went online … and was able to see some video in real time.”

It wasn't until the morning of Oct. 10, however, that the gravity of the situation hit home for him and many others. He went online and watched a video by a drone flying over Coffey Park.

“That's when people really figured out what had happened,” he said. “This is an all-time devastating fire.”

At that point, Dooley had already been in touch with the symphony about his young people's work, “The Conductors' Spellbook,” scheduled to open the symphony's Family Concert Series on Oct. 28 at the Green Music Center. A few months later, Silow called him back and asked him to write a commemorative piece to address the impact and recovery from the October wildfires.

At home for Christmas, Dooley took photos of the fire-impacted areas, including Coffey Park and Fountaingrove, where his dad works at Keysight Technologies.

“They just went back to work there three or four weeks ago,” he said. “My dad has to drive through a moonscape on his way to work.”

Delecate texture

For his commissioned work “Sonoma Strong,” Dooley decided to open with a transparent, delicate texture because he feels that small, intimate works sound best in the acoustically sensitive hall.

“It's very thin for the first few minutes, and the strings just sneak it,” he said. ‘It evolves into an emotional climax, and then it transitions to the second half. The first time the woodwinds come in signals a rebirth - Part II.”

With the help of the percussion section, the piece gains energy and rhythm in its second half as it moves toward a big, celebratory ending.

“It's very heartfelt,” Lecce-Chong said of “Sonoma Strong.” “It represents what I love about new music. It's present and now and has a different way of connecting with people.”

The first half of the concert will open with another contemporary work, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's exuberant “Celebration,” then will showcase a favorite workhorse: Brahms' Concerto in D Major for Violin performed by French violinist Arnaud Sussman.

Lecce-Chong said he is looking forward to giving the pre-concert lectures - it's one of his favorite things to do - but he likes to change it up so people don't know what to expect.

“I like to have a little time with the guest artists to get some of their insights, but it varies depending on the program,” he said. “There are programs where I will spend the entire time at the piano, and other times I'll do audio or video clips.”

Especially during times of deep loss, when housing and other necessities seem more pressing, Lecce-Chong believes that live music plays a crucial role in demonstrating the importance of the arts.

“I think the opening concert will bring back a lot of memories,” Lecce-Chong said. “I've become so passionate about how an orchestra can be a center for people to come together … the fact that the symphony was able to get through this year as well as they did, with financial stability and good attendance, that says something about the community and how much they wanted this in their lives.”

Staff Writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.