Freshly returned on Saturday night from the second night of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in town for its annual transformation of the Santa Cruz Civic from a roller derby arena to a postmodern temple of exploratory soundscapes, I’m still vibrating with reverberations of Julia Wolfe’s ironically titled “Pretty” echoing in my head, a relentlessly propulsive symphonic onslaught of some 70 musicians blazing their way through a complex composition that scarcely pauses even between movements of momentous intensity, a rhythmic tour de force that had the audience slammed backward in their seats and, after a brief silence at the abrupt end, on their feet with a sustained ovation.

Please do not mistake this for a review. I am not fluent enough in “classical” let alone “new” music to

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