Festival History

The Baroque Music Festival at 25
Notes by Burton Karson for the Festival’s 25th anniversary (2006)

he idea germinated at a small dinner party at the Bayside Drive home of Irmeli and Bud Desenberg in late summer 1980. We lamented the dearth of classical music events in Corona del Mar or in all of Newport Beach. Except for a few Orange County Philharmonic Society concerts at Santa Ana High School auditorium, we were driving to the Music Center in Los Angeles in order to hear good music or, in the summer, to the Hollywood Bowl.

We discussed the feasibility of a small music festival in June, when our academic and social calendars would be empty, and created a Festival Committee to research possible venues and dates. The group, all local friends with an interest in good music, included Bill and Mary Gazlay, Donaldson (first president) and Dietgart Heller, Bill Hendricks, Jerry Stewart, Snoozie Ullman, plus Irmeli, while I served as Artistic Director.

As no auditorium existed (then or now) in our village, we accepted Dr. Hendricks’ offer of the beautiful Sherman Library and Gardens, where he was, and remains, Director of the Library (and also served as our second president). The Gazlays, who sang in the choir at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, negotiated our use of St. Michael’s and its fine pipe organ, and, through friends, the beautiful Community Church Congregational.

he inaugural series, June 17–21, 1981, opened on Wednesday at Sherman Gardens with the Trio Camerata (Su Harmon, soprano, Andrew Charlton, recorders, Burton Karson, harpsichord, with guest Baroque guitarist Scott Zeidel). Irmeli Desenberg gave a Thursday evening lecture on Baroque art, and David Britton played a Friday evening organ recital at Saint Michael’s with our newly created Festival Orchestra and Lawrence Sonderling as concertmaster. The choral-orchestral concert on Sunday evening at the Community Church began with a brass ensemble al fresco, and offered music of Gabrieli, Schein, Briegel, Heinichen (the G minor oboe concerto, heard again this year), Bach, Gabrieli, and Buxtehude. The Lutheran Chorale of Los Angeles, of which I was director, served as the Festival Chorus. Our first-year soloists included sopranos Su Harmon and Carol Draper, alto Jean Galanos, tenor Paul Harms, baritone Christopher Lindbloom, and oboist Laurence Timm.

ur printed program for that first season listed 37 Patron Subscribers (significantly, Elaine Redfield was the first) and 71 regular subscribers to the series, many remaining patrons to this day, especially our longest-serving board members Walter and Dagmar Rios. Presidents subsequent to Heller and Hendricks were Irmeli Desenberg, Dr. Winthrop Hopgood, Heather Goss, Sigrid Hecht and, currently, Frank Remer.

We continued annually, buoyed by Daniel Cariaga’s Los Angeles Times review of our first year, “The no-man’s land between the winter and summer seasons raises some strange one-time-only blooms, but the little Baroque Festival which emerged in Corona del Mar last week deserves to blossom annually,” and by subsequent encouragement by the Times and Orange County Register, from the generosity of patrons, community support from advertisers in our programs, and grants from the Newport Beach Arts Commission.

partial roll of distinguished soloists through the years includes: sopranos Mary Rawcliffe, Susan Montgomery, Amy Kane Jarman, Jennifer Smith Foster, Kirsten Blase; mezzo-soprano Debbie Cree; countertenors Brian Asawa, Jason Snyder, Joseph Mathieu; tenors Gregory Wait, Mark Goodrich, Jonathan Mack; baritones Leroy Villanueva, Earle Patriarco, Aram Barsamian; flutists Susan Stockhammer, Cynthia Ellis, Louise Di Tullio, Stephen Schultz, David Shostac; oboists Donald Leake, Gonzalo Ruiz, Michael DuPree, Marianne Pfau; clarinetist Kalman Bloch; bassoonist Michael O’Donovan; trumpeter John Thiessen; violinists Peter Marsh, Robin Olson, Clayton Haslop, Rob Diggins, Jolianne von Einem; cellists John Walz, Mark Chatfield, Elizabeth Le Guin, Todd French, William Skeen, Timothy Landauer; guitarist David Grimes; harpist Lou Ann Neill; harpsichordists Malcolm Hamilton, Lucinda Carver, Yuko Tanaka, Gabriel Arregui; organists Douglas Haas, Samuel John Swartz, John Walker, Ladd Thomas, Robert Bates, Mary Preston, James Welch, Craig Phillips, Daniel Kerr, Thomas Annand, Andrew Arthur and Gabriel Arregui.

hile programming from a long list of Baroque composers, we have given first performances by contemporary composers Andrew Charlton, Alan Chapman, Lloyd Rogers, and — on commission for us — James Hopkins, Craig Phillips, Michael Eagan, Robert Linn, and Tania Gabrielle French.

In addition to the many volunteers who made possible our twenty-five seasons, we salute above all, and with gratitude, our enthusiastic and supportive audiences!