REVIEW: SummerFest Premieres Steven Banks’ Bold Cantata ‘to be free’ at The Conrad

August 23, 2026

Although SummerFest at 40! was Friday’s program title, that really is the byword –with its exclamation point–for this entire La Jolla SummerFest season. Music Director Inon Barnatan’s stellar programming continues to confirm the festival’s status as an international chamber music Mecca now enjoying its 40-year milestone.

Steven Banks’ commissioned work to be free, a single movement modernist cantata for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, displays the caliber of new music that defines a major festival. Chamber Music Northwest, one of the other commissioners of Banks’ work, gave the world premiere of to be free last month at Portland State University with the amazing mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano as soloist.

No doubt Chamber Music Northwest would take umbrage if I characterized their July performance of to be free as a dress rehearsal for La Jolla’s presentation of to be free on Friday, but it was clear that Cano’s commanding performance at The Conrad revealed the confidence of a singer comfortably secure with Banks’ daunting musical demands.

Although Banks has devised his vocal line as a vocalise, i.e. a work without text but sung on a single open syllable, his title to be free implies its serious message about freedom in America because it is taken from the title of jazz composer Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Be to Be Free,” a song made famous by Nina Simone’s recording on her 1967 R.C.A. album Silk and Soul. In program notes, Banks has explained that Simone, a prominent African-American performer who was active in the forefront of the Civil Rights and the Black Power Movements, is his inspiration for to be free.

Cano’s ample mezzo-soprano, equally powerful from its low contralto beginning to its fruition in unexpected dramatic soprano territory, evoked the vocal rage of Nina Simone fused with the operatic opulence of Leontyne Price as she powerfully communicated the cantata’s ecstasy and exultation. From a modest instrumental crew—string quartet plus soprano saxophone, flute and piano—Banks easily moved through intricate, transparent modernist textures to brawny orchestral cadences with welcome consonances: a fresh yet ingratiating sonority. We can be confident that the instrumentalists were playing what the composer intended, since the versatile Banks was playing soprano saxophone in their midst.

Banks’ work was paired with an earlier SummerFest commission, John Williams’ Quartet La Jolla, written as a gift in 2011 to then Music Director Cho-Liang Lin, who graciously returned to SummerFest and performed the violin part of this unusual quartet for violin, cello, clarinet, and harp.

Although John Williams’ original scores for blockbuster motion pictures have made him a household name–he has won four Academy Awards for Best Original Score and holds the record for most nominations for that award–Williams’ Quartet La Jolla reveals the composer’s formidable classical side. Over five well-structured movements Williams offers arresting counterpoint, suave themes tailored to the strengths of each instrument, and a rewarding emotional journey. Clarinetist John Bruce Weh, for whom the quartet part was written, essayed winning accounts of the intoxicating clarinet solo in the opening movement and a moody intonation in the “Cantando” fourth movement.

Flashy duets between violinist Lin and cellist Jay Campbell smartly opened the first movement as well as the bracing “Scherzo,” which also includes a snappy fughetta. Williams uses the harp as an integrating sonority in this unusual set of instruments, and Julie Smith Phillips’ laudable range, from sparkling high-pitched ostinatos in the “Aubade” to roiling arpeggiations in the brilliant “Finale,” met each challenge with her customary panache.

As I recall the early years of La Jolla SummerFest, programming hewed to established major works, so including Tchaikovsky’s Sextet for strings in D Minor, Souvenir de Florence, proved an apt choice for this program. With Benjamin Beilman and Cho-Liang Lin as violinists, Paul Neubauer and Teng Li as violists, and Jonathan Swensen and Nina Lee as cellists, this powerful Souvenir de Florence was as sonically plush as it was emotionally driving.

An unexpected gem opened the concert. Witold Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini for two pianos is a challenge only bravura pianists would undertake, and Inon Barnatan and Jeremy Denk proved the quintessential duo to triumph over this short, treacherous competition.

The evening’s Prelude featured the Prometheus Quartet’s ebullient account of Dvořák’s beloved American String Quartet in F Major. The members of this quartet in residence–violinists Roger Shao and Anthony Chan, violist Brian Jennings, and cellist Wilson Vanderslice–brought refreshing clarity and pellucid phrasing to this familiar work, welcoming an old friend with new insights.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Chamber Music Society on August 21, 2026, at The Conrad in downtown La Jolla.