Orchestra performance greets spring break holidays

By Jack Sanchez

VCNC reporter

Dr. Burns Taft, the artistic music director of the Ventura College Community Orchestra, brought some of his favorite musical pieces to the Ventura College Theater Friday, March 14.

One of the highlights of the evening was the conducting debut of Max Gualtieri, a student at Ventura College where he studies music theory. Gualtieri hit his marks and was in control, leading the orchestra to British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Welsh hymn “Rhosymedre,” which translates as “Lovely.” The piece earned thunderous applause for the young maestro.

The program featured compositions that Ventura College’s orchestra handled with ease, setting the mood of magic, mysticism and the search for the Holy Grail on this Good Friday night.

“Around this time of year, the time of Lent, people’s minds turned toward some of the great events in Jewish and Christian history,” Taft said in his introductory remarks. “During the Middle Ages it became a passion and almost an obsession to get some sort of a relic or a memento of a martyr or a saint or a holy religious person.”

Taft conducted “The Quest for the Grail” by American composer Michael A. Mogensen, unveiling a message filled with optimism and hope.

“Maybe the Grail was a cup that Jesus drank maybe it was a child that Jesus had,” Taft said. “There’s been all kinds of speculation but nobody has actually found it. … But that doesn’t mean that they still don’t talk about it.”

The orchestra mesmerized the audience as Taft raised his baton as in battle, bringing to the masses the sounds of Richard Wagner’s “Good Friday Spell.”

Audience members were thrilled by the program. “I think it’s wonderful,” said Helen Allen of Ojai, who drove down for the performance said. “I mean, to see classical music and young, old, men, women coming to see classical music still being performed.”

After intermission, Taft introduced piano soloist Louise Lofquist, professor of music at Pepperdine University, and she joined Taft and the orchestra in a performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor.

For information on upcoming performances call 805-647-0139 or 805-525-0144.