REVIEW: SummerFest Celebrates the Substantial Gifts of ‘American Legacy’ at The Conrad

August 14, 2026

If you ask a dozen persons to define American Music, you will likely receive a dozen differing answers. But most folks generally think of American music as music written by American composers, so SummerFest’s Wednesday program titled American Legacy probably raised a few eyebrows. Half of the composers on that program—Sergei Prokofiev and Francis Poulenc—are clearly not American.

But American Legacy focused on another aspect of composition: the individuals or organizations and foundations that commission works. Two of the four wrks on Wednesday’s program were commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and Poulenc’s Sonata for Flute and Piano was dedicated to Coolidge whose foundation at the Library of Congress funded the sonata. Wayne Shorter’s Terra Incognita was commissioned by the La Jolla Music Society along with two other nonprofits and the Library of Congress. In the history of American music, no single individual has equaled the scope of Coolidge’s philanthropy: she commissioned works from some 150 composers. The La Jolla Music Society is not about to overtake her record, but kudos to the organization for regularly commissioning and programming works from composers they believe in.

Shorter’s Terra Incognita performed on Wednesday was premiered by Imani Winds at SummerFest 2006, and this intriguing, modest eight-minute work has remained in the ensemble’s repertory. Although Shorter is known and acclaimed for his exploits as a jazz saxophone performer, this composition shows no jazz influence but rather reveals an uncompromising modernist bent. In Terra Incognita’s opening moments, hornist Kevin Newton reiterated the two-note pattern on the same pitch that becomes the work’s motto theme.

Other members of the quintet gently clustered around the horn theme, but flutist Brandon Patrick George took off into the stratosphere with Shorter’s rhapsodic expansion of that simple theme. After a short scherzo interlude, oboist Mekhi Gladden and clarinetist Mark Dover offered haunting modal solos. The heart of the work develops a lively contrapuntal texture that brings it to a resounding forte final cadence. Bassoonist Monica Ellis is the fifth member of this persuasive wind quintet, Imani Winds.

Flutist Emi Ferguson’s fluent melodic cascades gave Poulenc’s 1957 Flute Sonata the galant, carefree air that gives the work its irresistible charm. Happily, Poulenc’s much admired Flute Sonata has nothing in common with the labored neoclassical sonatas Paul Hindemith churned out earlier in the 20th Century. At the piano, Zoltán Fejérvári offered a bountiful array of polished flourishes clad in ingratiating harmonies that caressed Ferguson’s diaphanous, elegantly tapered phrases.

Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 50, from 1931 is filled with engaging—often clever—themes, but compelling structure is not his strong point. In the first half of the last century Bartók set the standard for structural genius with his six string quartets, and Prokofiev’s wandering movements seldom measure up. Nevertheless, four SummerFest 2026 musicians—violinists Blake Pouliot and Arnaud Sussmann, violist Ayane Kozasa and cellist Paul Wianco—gave a bracing account of this quartet. Although these four do not regularly play together, they certainly would make a formidable string quartet if they decided to choose that route.

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring can be regularly encountered in its full orchestra arrangement, but Copland wrote it in 1944 for a mere 13 musicians in a marvelously compact, colorful score that was designed for Martha Graham’s acclaimed modern dance troupe. It was also Graham who named the piece, so any attempt to find the composer’s depiction of Appalachian landscape or weather conditions in the score are baseless.

Led by violinists Tessa Lark and Blake Pouliot and graced with the sterling sonorities of three members of the Imani Winds—Barndon Patrick George, Mark Dover, and Monica Ellis—this ensemble gave a glowing, transcendent account of Copland’s remarkable original score. I wonder if the composer had the slightest inclination that the use of a then obscure Shaker hymn tune by Elder Joseph Brackett, “Simple Gifts,” in the score’s second half would become such an iconic musical symbol of American spirituality. Certainly Copland’s bold but earnest setting of its homespun phrases contributed to its popularity and use outside of this modernist ballet.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on August 12, 2026.