In Monday’s (7/28) Cape Cod Times (Massachusetts), Kerri Kelleher previews Brett Abigaña’s Through the Bent and Twisted Arm, a world premiere marking the centennial of the Cape Cod Canal performed on July 28 by the three Cape Cod youth ensembles. The Cape Symphony Youth Orchestra, Bay Youth Symphony from the South Shore Conservatory, and the New Bedford Symphony Youth Orchestra performed it “under a tent in Buzzards Bay Park. ‘Here’s a bunch of kids who have been thrown together in a pot and told to play their best,’ said Jerome Karter, executive director of the Cape Cod Symphony & Conservatory.… ‘I think it’s cool because here I’m the only trumpet player and now apparently I’ll get to play with six others,’ Cape Youth Symphony member Emily Van Rhyswood said…. Six historic sea shanties are woven throughout the piece, to celebrate Cape Cod’s rich nautical history. ‘I liked the idea that, for three centuries, the people of Cape Cod have shaken their fists at the Atlantic and have dared it to bring it on,’ Abigaña said. ‘I want people to have some sense of the huge human undertaking that was the building of the canal. If nothing else, the kids in the orchestra are going to have a connection to the canal now.’ ”
Posted July 30, 2014
Photo by Kevin Burke
