An American Requiem

THE TRIP OUT

I’m not one to dramatize the already dramatic, so taking that first post-9/11 airplane ride was no big thing. I arrived at Newark Airport an hour and a half before the scheduled 8 a.m. departure on November 12 and was surprised by how relaxed everyone in the terminal seemed.

Check-in took no more than two minutes. Although the security line was much longer than usual, the forty-five minutes passed quickly and pleasantly enough-though the sight of numerous Army and National Guard officers, packed to the max, gave pause.

The National Airlines flight to Las Vegas was uncrowded-no surprise, since passengers were staying out of the air in droves-and downright cozy. My first real jolt of nerves came during the half-hour layover in Las Vegas, when I overheard another passenger on his cell phone discussing a flight that had left Queens less than an hour after ours, only to crash in a neighborhood near the airport, killing all 250 people on board. I called my wife, who told me that the Holland Tunnel had closed immediately after she passed through its entrance on the way to a Midtown business appointment.

These events colored my thoughts as our America West carrier headed out from Vegas on the second leg of the journey. How easy it would be for someone to take the wheel and drive our flight directly into the dusty mountains rising out of the desert. But it didn’t happen, and less than an hour later I was in Costa Mesa, California, checking into the Wyndham Gardens Hotel, located across the street from the Performing Arts Center where Richard Danielpour’s An American Requiem would be premiered in two days.

Costa Mesa seemed a strange place for Danielpour’s Requiem to receive its first performance. A native New Yorker who lives and works on the Upper West Side when he’s not traveling the world to attend performances of his music or teaching composition at the Curtis Institute, Danielpour had been staying at the MacDowell Colony, putting the finishing touches on An American Requiem, when word of the tragedy reached him by telephone on the morning of September 11. At that very moment, he was completing the dedication, which he quickly revised to include reference to all who suffered that day.

Situated at the junction of Routes 405 and 55, Costa Mesa is essentially a post–World War II creation, serving the area’s wealthy white population. Just north of Laguna Beach, this Orange County community was developed by several large land-owning families, the Segerstroms in particular, who correctly bet that Los Angeles’s shortage of land would drive up property values in surrounding areas.

MONDAY NIGHT

After attending a Monday night rehearsal-where balance issues were addressed and the orchestra was able to dig into the work for the first time as a group-I met Danielpour, his fiancée, and several others for a late bite at Bimaroetti’s, an Italian restaurant in the South Coast Plaza Mall, a block from the Performing Arts Center.

A feverish baseball fan who spent three summers in Florida as a boy for the Atlanta Braves, Danielpour recounted a day when he and his friend Marvin Hamlisch spent time on the field at Yankee Stadium talking with Joe Torre as the Yankees warmed up. Asked why he kept a struggling Paul O’Neill in the lineup, Torre replied that learning to deal with failure is an essential part of the game.

Danielpour then graciously yielded the floor to his students and to representatives from Schirmer, his publisher, who were on hand to ensure that the scores were properly prepared and the performances would run smoothly.

TUESDAY

I woke early on Tuesday. Foregoing the run I usually take while on the road, I had breakfast, rented a car, and drove to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. Time has softened the animosity many of us once felt toward Nixon, and walking through the modest home where he was raised-built by his father from a catalog-and the museum grounds purchased and donated by Bob and Dolores Hope, it’s hard not to admire the young man who emerged from this farm community. Through intelligence, determination, and yes, ruthlessness, Nixon became one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. He’s dead too, I thought-and Danielpour’s Requiem must embrace him as well.

I then headed south to Laguna Beach. Is the moon any farther from the ruins of the World Trade Center, I wondered, than this sand beneath my feet? How little the area seemed to have changed since the days of the Beach Boys, hot rods, and Willie Mays. Trinkets sold to aid the victims of 9/11 along the boardwalk were the only visible sign of the new order.

Winding through narrow streets and pricey neighborhoods, I eventually parked at a cul-de-sac near Alta Laguna Park, facing a magnificent stretch of the Pacific Ocean. How new this coast must have seemed to those landing here for the first time. New-like our world is new.

The nights have been spectacular, and Costa Mesa is immaculate, without blemish. What a contrast to Manhattan. Three weeks after the attack, we drove downtown for dinner on a Saturday evening, making it only as far south as 14th Street, which served as a kind of Maginot Line in the weeks following September 11. Waves of citizens moved silently on foot to Centre Street, a block away, to gaze at the smoldering site. The veil that normally separates police officers and firefighters from the public was gone; they accepted comfort openly from strangers eager to ease their pain.

None of that was reflected in the pristine façade of the Pacific Arts Center. Its imagistic metal front-like a giant bird with wings spanning a half-moon window-gleamed under spackled lights, undisturbed, rising like a pyramid into the night.

“There’s never enough rehearsal time,” a surprisingly relaxed Danielpour remarked as he and a student rewrote voicings backstage during the second and final rehearsal Tuesday evening. The orchestra administration wanted the performance to be as strong as possible, but practical concerns like overtime loomed.

A polite nine-year-old boy and his mother waited nearby for a moment of the composer’s time. Danielpour greeted them warmly and handed the boy, Alexander, a full-sized score of the piece. He told me the child was a tremendously gifted young musician whom he might help place at Curtis as a prodigy composer and pianist. During rehearsal, I glanced over to see Alexander—his bright blue sneakers dangling far above the floor-calmly turning pages as the orchestra read through the Requiem.

WEDNESDAY

Feeling rested, I took my morning constitutional, though downtown Costa Mesa proved sterile on foot. After dressing, I asked the young Latino at the desk where I might find breakfast, a baseball field, and a library where I could research local history. I had no idea how lucky I’d be.

At ten in the morning, most shops at the intersection of Santa Ana Boulevard and French Street were just opening, but Taqueria Guadalajara looked like it had been busy for hours. To this gringo, the place felt like a cross between McDonald’s, a bodega (I eyed stacks of Corona in the freezer), and a diner. Trumpets that sounded like they were coming from a shoebox, a tuba playing bass, and a string orchestra coagulated in 3/4 time over a radio or CD-no announcers in evidence. The teenage girl behind the counter took pity on me and asked for my order in English before I could reveal my lack of Spanish.

After huevos rancheros and coffee, I met Calvin on the street, who asked for some change. Born on 130th Street and Lenox Avenue, Calvin described himself as a fifty-five-year-old drunk and avid reader, currently absorbing Sheba by Jack Higgins along with whatever spirits he could lay his hands on. Eager to exercise his critical faculties, Calvin analyzed the relative merits of Higgins, Tom Clancy, and Ludlum. Higgins, in his view, was the man.

Calvin last visited New York in 1994 and has had no contact since with his thirty-eight-year-old son. “That kid runs with pimps, the mafia, and drug runners,” he said with disgust. “I want nothing to do with him.”

Asked about relations between wealthy Costa Mesa and working-class Santa Ana, Calvin shrugged. “Costa Mesa is money, man. But the drunks up there are just like the rest of us.” He told stories of alcoholics he’d met through church-based shelters-one a PGA pro, another sleeping on his yacht until he sobered up. “I bet only five percent of alcoholics live on Skid Row.”

He wasn’t jealous, he said, but he did wish for more loyal friends. Months earlier, while drinking in a park late at night, he’d wandered into an alley to urinate, suffered one of the mild seizures that had begun to plague him, and collapsed. When he woke, he was alone.

Sometimes you just get lucky. My lucky break came when I found the Santa Ana Public Library a few blocks away. Directed to the Santa Ana History Room, I encountered Edward T. Grijalva-and heard a story worth the trip by itself.

Eddie Grijalva, born in El Toro in 1930, moved to Santa Ana with his family in 1942. “Santa Ana was always the place for diversity,” he said. “It was the first place around here where Blacks could buy a house.” Yet his feelings about the area were complex.

Asked about President Bush’s declaration that America was engaged in a battle between good and evil, Eddie paused. A full-blooded Gabrielino Indian on his mother’s side, he spoke quietly but forcefully. “The white men don’t stop and think,” he said. “They came over in 1492 and acted like the land was here for them.”

He spoke of forced removal, reservations, disease, and genocide-drawing parallels between historical atrocities and contemporary events. “Was that good or evil?” he asked. “But it’s history. Many years ago.”

In retirement, Eddie began researching family legends and uncovered documentation-written in old Spanish-that proved his ancestor had received a land grant in 1775 for service as a sergeant in the Spanish Army, covering what is now Santa Ana. With help from linguists and historians, his work was ultimately validated by Cal State Fullerton’s oral history project.

“Without my research,” Eddie said, “my heritage would have faded away.” His efforts even led to the renaming of a local park: Grijalva Community Park. Like Danielpour, I thought, Eddie was working to honor the dead-to ensure they would not be forgotten.

OPENING NIGHT

As the crowd filed in, I sat next to Norman Ryan, Manager of Promotion and Creative at Schirmer, who handles Danielpour’s business with the publisher. “Richard’s music has a stunning impact on people,” Ryan said. “It affects you on first hearing-viscerally. He communicates easily, and you hear that in his music. You can sit down with him for a drink and feel like you’ve known him for years.”

The concert opened with remarks by conductor Carl St. Clair honoring overseas soldiers and the victims of September 11. The second half was devoted to An American Requiem, just over an hour long. When it ended, the largely white, clearly affluent audience responded enthusiastically.

At the post-concert cocktail party for Pacific Symphony donors, Danielpour was humble and generous, but visibly drained. And his work was not finished. After a single day off, the orchestra and chorus-nearly one hundred musicians-would reconvene to record the piece for Reference Recordings.

As for me, it was time to go home. On the return trip to Newark, I reflected on how odd it felt to experience the premiere of An American Requiem in Orange County-so far from New York, and seemingly far from the realities of the newly minted world we now inhabit. As my uneventful journey ended, I couldn’t help wondering whether Richard Danielpour hoped his work-already considered by many a masterpiece-would someday come home to New York as well. 11/22/2002

Gary Eskow