Cynthia Lee Wong became the second New Voices composer selected by the San Francisco Symphony, the New World Symphony (MTT's youth orchestra in Miami) and music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. The reward for the prize: the 31 year old New Yorker was commissioned to write two new pieces, one of chamber music, the other for orchestra to be performed by both the SF Symphony and the New World Symphony; and to be shepherded in the process by mentors like of MTT or Berkeley composer John Adams.

Today through Friday, the SF Symphony serves the West Coast premiere of Wong's Carnival Fever, an orchestral piece described after the Miami performance as snappy and rambunctious, … a terrific overture with a postmodern, cynical tone. We asked Cynthia to describe her approach to composing Carnival Fever as she was rehearsing for this week's series. Below, we review MTT's seventieth birthday party.

After Zosha di Castri, you are the second composer selected by the New Voices series. How do you apply for this?

Cynthia: Basically, they contact you and they tell you to apply. Someone from Boosey & Hawkes contacted me. I guess I've been on their radar for a little while, I'm not sure how they had heard about me. They actually invited me the year before, but I decided not to apply as the first composer for their New Voices Initiative. I had other plans, I wanted to make sure I had enough time to dedicate to the project if I were selected. The second year, they asked me again if I wanted to be considered and at that point, I said ok, I'll do that, I have more time on my schedule. So I applied and then they asked me to send some pieces and recording. Eventually I was very happy to be selected and very honored to work with all three organizations. It's really wonderful to give young composers a chance to have their work heard.

What input do the three organizations have upon the finished work. Are there quite a few cooks in that kitchen, or are you free to do what you want?

Cynthia: There are different people who are involved. With Boosey & Hawkes, I worked with their editor, who has very good point about the score layout, the appearance of the score, what might save on rehearsal time. It's a very important considering when you have limited rehearsal time. You want to make sure everything is very clear, that you make the best use of the time you have. If you have a lot of strings divisis, which I do, how to make it clear in the score to specify which section of the strings are playing which line. This piece is not as complex as others, it goes into four into three into two divisis. In another piece, I have the entire cello section with separate lines, it basically has seven separate solo strings. That score was very complicated and I asked the editor at Boosey & Hawkes how she would suggest I set up that score if I were to revise it. What happens when you have so many divisis and the conductor turns the page, it looks like the score shifts, because they are consolidated into one part. And that could be aggravating for the conductor. You know, things that are very technical from the side of Boosey & Hawkes.

I also had mentorship of John Adam, and he was terrific. When he looked at the score, he had good advice as to the structure, to shorten what I had, to make it more of a concise statement. It gave me a new perspective as to how I can listen and perceive the work. Essentially, it made it much more stronger than the original first draft.

Then MTT also had great ideas during initial rehearsals with New World Symphony. I enjoyed working with him. He would say, "oh, maybe if you had a touch of flexatone at this moment, because you're thinking of doubling a line that was very quiet, and you want to hear it more clearly." Since the piece has a lot of fun and a lot of color and humor, he had made that wonderful suggestion. The very talented percussionist was able to play the line on the spot that was interested in having doubled.

Your piece Carnival Fever is based upon a chapter of Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, where the count and two young guests watch an execution and attend the following street party. Is it more Fever than Carnival?

Cynthia: It's both Carnival Fever. It's basically my exploration into dramatic musical work. It has a programmatic context, eventually I'd like to compose an opera or a musical. My intent is to bring out the drama and theatricality of the literature, but it's the music that always begins first. I have musical ideas, very short musical impressions, perhaps one or two minutes. Then I find a work from literature, either poem or chapter in this case, or some short story (Edgar Allan Poe was an inspiration of another piece) that carries the inspiration through the rest of the composition. This is my study into dramatic work. The reason why I was attracted to the chapter it's because it has elements that are extroverted, celebratory, but also the opposite: dark, vengeful, a hidden part that's a very intense subtext.

Amongst the festivities, it's just on the surface. Then you have a subtext that menacing and foreboding. That's what attracted me to this piece. There are little hints of this subtext, it's subtle actually. It seems very festive and colorful. For example, you have slide whistles, flexatone, squeeze horns (it's used famously in Gershwin), these percussion toys in the orchestra. You have wind machines, a lot of funny things. You can imagine people wearing masks in their costumes. There is a section in the chapter where the carriages are racing, you can imagine crowd scenes.

This is experienced by young Albert (the son of the Count's former best friend who has betrayed him and of his former fiancé). Albert is a very innocent, naive young man and the count is planning his revenge, watching Albert the whole time, trying to get into his confidence, watching like a hawk looking at his prey. That part is essentially in the middle of the piece, and there are hints throughout where it gets very dark. There is a section with the double bass and the piano playing a very static line. This comes through as a subtext. And it switches back into the festive atmosphere. It's very subtle hints.

The music is very colorful, and very exciting. I wanted a lot of variety, a lot of versatility. A piece will have its ups and downs, something that's not flat, but by the end, I would hope that one would feel a sense of excitement, or some emotion that they would receive by the piece of music, rather by being unmoved at the end.

Orchestrating has come naturally to me, I started when I was ten years old. The element of orchestration is one of the elements I come most naturally. In terms of the learning process, I'm more interested in basic things, the structure, the thematic development. I feel like I can improve on elements like that.

One of the power of the arts is to rouse the audience emotion. In this piece, there is some sort of dramatic context, but in other pieces, it's a sense of tenderness. There is a piece I wrote for my father who passed away with cancer, I would like the audience to have more compassion for other people. Another piece might be uplifting or inspiring. The power of music and the arts in general, is that they can really move the listener, depending on the angle and perspective. That's one of my aims in composition.

Each of my pieces has a different goal. I like to hone my craft. I'm interested in many different types of music. Musical theater is more emotional, but I've also written music that is less programmatic and more abstract, because I wanted to gain some technique. Eventually, I would like to put all of it together as a synthesis. When you are a composer, at first you are absorbing styles and techniques and you learn your skill and your craft, you have many different influences and ways that you can write. Once you master that, you can become much more experimental and adventurous, and can have something very substantial to say. It would interest me to look into social causes or to have some social import in my art and my music. That's an aim that I have to reach a certain level of skills before doing as big as an opera or something much more intense.

How would you describe your voice as a composer?

Cynthia: I feel I've never tried to rationalize development, but I have some of my voice, at least in this piece. My previous piece, which is a chamber work that will be done here on April 9-10, called Snapshots, has even more elements of my voice. It's a more private work, a chamber work, rather than a public work like a big orchestral work. I like this whimsical, playful, very free quality when I write music. I think that it comes across in Carnival Fever and in Snapshot.

MTT's 70th Birthday Celebration On December 21st, long time music director of the San Francisco Symphony MTT turned 70. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tilson_Thomas For his 50th birthday, he got handed his current sweet gig with the SF Symphony. And last week, the SF Symphony celebrated him and their twenty seasons together, decking the hall with blue balloons and throwing a big party. If it was us organizing, we would hide everyone behind the seats of Davies Symphony Hall, MTT would be led on stage under the pretense of checking something, the lights would turn on, everybody would pop up yelling "surprise!" and MTT would pretend like he had no idea. But we did not, and MTT had to work hard for this, conducting the orchestra and playing a fiendishly difficult score on the piano.

These big galas and parties tend to forget they are musical concerts, but not this time: it was as much a celebration of MTT's craft as a music director as of his own personality. The first half stringed together a series of piano concerto movements displaying an eclectic range of interests from the conductor and the versatility of his orchestra. Marc-André Hamelin romped through a fiendishly difficult Shostakovich, Emmanuel Ax romanced us in a Mozart slow movement, and Yuja Wang did that Yuja Wang thing of making it look easy when playing an impossible bravura movement from Litolff. Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Jeremy Denk joined into a Schubert four hands jewel where MTT tried to become page turner and did not exactly succeed.

If you kept track, we just name-dropped the cream of the crop of today's piano stars, the 2015 keyboard dream team. It's pretty darn impressive of MTT to have them drop by his birthday bash. On the down side, if we should look for one, it made the performance of Liszt's Hexameron, a bit uneven. A rare piece which lines up six pianos on the stage, MTT joined on the bench the other five aforementioned soloists while Teddy Abrams led the orchestra. Each pianist takes turn playing variations on a theme by Bellini, and while it's fun to see MTT revert to his soloist past (he came to conducting full time after an accident stopped his piano career), it is impossible to match Yuja, Marc-Andre, Jean-Yves, Jeremy and Manny in their full tone and technical ease.

The orchestra was featured as well, in particular the wonderful trumpetist Marc Inouye and concertmaster Sasha Barantschik in excerpts of Nutcracker and the ensemble as a whole, who joyfully ripped through (MTT's mentor Leonard) Bernstein's Candide Overture with the conductor seating on a chair and doing exactly nothing but enjoy the show. We kept thinking there was a trick, some hidden conductor somewhere in the wings, but there was no magic beyond the incredible talent of the orchestra, all sixty-some musicians playing like one through the syncopated rhythms and varied dynamics of the score, playing the large orchestration with the immediacy and transparency of a string quartet. There was no better way to wish MTT a happy seven oh!

MTT celebrated his birthday by playing alongside Yuja Wang and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (and, not pictured, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Emanuel Ax and Jeremy Denk). Picture Moanalani Jeffrey/SF Symphony.