Interview with Gabriela Lena Frank
Part Eight: On Current Work in the San Francisco Bay Area

Eighth of an eight-part interview by YoWangdu’s Yolanda O’Bannon

YO:  Can you talk about your musical connections with Bay Area musicians? You do most of your composing here at home, right?

GLF:  I do now… because I’ve made the effort to be here more. For a while I was very quiet in the musical community around here, because I worked so much on the road that I wanted to come home and be quiet. I didn't want to be going out to a lot of concerts here even though it's a great scene. But, I mean, I was played by the San Francisco Symphony already, the Kronos Quartet, which is based here, Chanticleer, a San Francisco-based male vocal ensemble, so I’ve been very honored to be played by great local groups. I’m going to be more involved now, coming up, because I’ve decided that I want to travel less.

YO:  Are there musicians around here you can just like call and…

GLF:  Yeah, I do now. I’m even orienting my future projects around my resources, which I really like. A conductor I’m really looking forward to working with is Joana Carneiro – she’s going to be the new conductor of the Berkeley Symphony actually, taking over after Kent Nagano. She premiered a work of mine last year at the Los Angeles Philharmonic with their new music group . And it was not an orchestra work, it was a smaller work that she conducted [Gabriela's New Andean Songs]. She did a great job – had two singers, a very evocative, dramatic piece. Beautiful poetry from Peru -- indigenous poetry, very nature inspired, but haunting stories, also, behind it. I really like stories. I like abstract ideas when it’s still under the guise of a story. I’m still Mark Twainish in that way, going back to my father's lifelong work at the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley. This guy could talk about deep themes of life in a good ol’ story. I love that.

Anyway, the Berkeley Symphony had a job search last year. Nagano, who was our conductor for the last 30 years, really shot to international fame in the last 15 years , so he is now the new conductor at Montreal Symphony. Joana Carneiro is a young Portuguese woman, 33-34. She’s a dynamo, intense, huge heart. She’s deeply honorable. And the orchestra loved her.