Mendo Music Festival offers unique setting, hospitality and musical selections

MENDOCINO, 7/9/24 —There is no room at the inns of the Mendocino Coast this July. But cellist Kathleen Balfe and other top orchestral musicians from the Bay Area and beyond will enjoy free classy digs for the two weeks of the upcoming Mendocino Music Festival. The July 13 opening features black country music performer Miko Marks, followed by Sunday’s festival orchestra performance. The festival continues daily through July 27.

Eighty-two Mendocino Coast host families will be sharing their homes, kitchens and art studios in 2024 for a long-standing exchange of friendships as well as mattresses.

“This arrangement is fairly typical among music festivals. But the Mendocino Music Festival is unique in that it presents a full orchestra more or less in the middle of nowhere,” said Barbara Faulkner, executive director of the Mendocino Music Festival.

“Most of the Festival Orchestra players are Bay Area orchestral professionals on their summer breaks. Ticket buyers benefit because volunteer artist housing keeps ticket prices much lower than if we were paying for housing. It’s a multi-layered thing that creates an extraordinary sense of place during the festival — artists, audience members, locals and visitors all happily co-mingle throughout Mendocino and not just in the concert venues,” Faulkner said.

The melodies of the music festival emit from bright white circus-style tents perched on the edge of cliffs that plummet 50 feet down to the rocks and surf. This Saturday’s opening night features Miko Marks, a country music pioneer from Oakland who recently made her third appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Festival Associate Artistic Director Susan Waterfall features annually one great classical musician, whose work is covered in different genres. This year it is French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845 –1924). On Sunday the Festival Orchestra takes the stage. 

Cellist Kathleen Balfe is making her way from Spain to Mendocino this week to perform. Balfe is first cello for the City of Granada Orchestra in Spain, so travel is part of the job. She would also enjoy being a spectator at the Mendocino Music Festival. “The festival offers a huge range of music. I would be happy as a clam being based in Mendocino and watching everything,” she said. 

She and her partner “discovered” Mendocino mostly by accident on the way back from the Trinity Alps. “It was a foggy night, and we felt like we had stumbled back in time when we found the beautiful romantic Mendocino Hotel,” she said. ”They had one room left, which was ours. I thought it was a beautiful area, and put it on my list of places to get to know better. Last summer I made my second visit to the area. My father and I took a little road trip up the coast. I am the interim president of the American String Teachers Association, San Francisco Section. I wanted to meet members who could let me know more about the state of string teaching in the further reaches.”

That trip north turned into a grand opportunity. “Amazingly, about a month ago, one of the regulars [who plays at the festival] needed to miss a concert, so they invited me to come play this year,” Crossing oceans is merely a commute for Balfe. She is also teaching cello  at the Santa Rosa Symphony Summer Music Academy this July.

Balfe will be staying with Liz Helenchild, a Mendocino icon in local radio for more than 40 years. Helenchild and her partner live in one of the tiny, eccentric houses that delight visitors and artists alike. For the true Mendo experience, Helenchild has turned their bed over to the Balfe, and she and her “sweetheart” will sleep in the loft. Helenchild is looking forward to the fun of the festival and learning about new music. But she realizes the  musicians have little time to spend with their hosts. 

“I might have breakfast for them, but they are usually gone very early to rehearse. They  rehearse a lot,” Helenchild said. She spent decades as “Late Night Liz” with an eclectic radio show on KMFB along with other resident record spinners until the Fort Bragg radio station was purchased more than a decade ago. The new owners dumped the local programming. Helenchild now hosts the Bach Door Serenade & Across the TuneIverseshow on KZYX as  “Bessie Mae Mucho.”

Many of the hosts have personalities and community knowledge as delightful to the visiting musicians as the chilly July weather. Tom Wodetzki of Albion has been a community activist for as long as Helenchild has been on the radio. He was known as “Moonlight’ back in his hippie days. Recently, he was one of a group of volunteers who worked tirelessly to restore the old Navarro Roadhouse for California State Parks. In the early days of the festival, Wodetski and his family hosted a viola player. This year, Wodetzki is likely hosting an opera singer.

The local hospitality tradition for visiting theater companies and performers dates to medieval times, allowing play companies, musicians and even painters to travel and thrill locals. It created the modern tradition of rock and roll bands touring.

Mendocino also has inns that participate in the festival using old-fashioned Mendo money- barter. Faulkner said, “We also rely on and appreciate the generosity of the 12 or so inns who are our hospitality sponsors. During their busiest season they support us by giving us rooms for the visiting bands, in trade for being the only businesses who get ads in our ticket brochure.”

Helenchild wonders what will happen to the magic of orchestras now that classical music can be created by AI without musicians or instruments. “They can do it so it sounds so much like each of the instruments you can’t tell them apart,” Helenchild said.. “I am not sure how this will change music. Because it no longer has to be a cooperative effort.” AI “composers” and musical sounds made on computers improve constantly.

“I am just watching it,” she said. “I want to keep an open mind. I know that all music and language evolves according to what is going on in the world and in technology.”

The issue has become a hot topic in the music and conventional press this year.

Balfe explained that Evan Kahn, first cello of the New Century Chamber Orchestra and of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will perform Edward Elgar’s “Cello Concerto.” “This will be my first time hearing him play, and I have great expectations,” said Balfe.

The cello is featured at the festival this year. The instrument, whose full name is violoncello, is third on the size spectrum of stringed instruments, starting small to large with the violin, the viola,  the cello, and finally the bass, or double bass. The bigger the instrument the lower the notes The violone was the ancestor of the double bass but is no longer played in orchestras.

Ireland to Africa to Folk

The 2024 performances range from the Irish bluegrass band JigJam to folk singer Gwyneth Morgan and jazz musician Julian Pollack, both of whom have Mendocino roots but now have much wider audiences. Helenchild, whose show features world music, is most enthusiastic about Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Zulu a cappella singers in the local styles of isicathamiya, which developed in the mines of South Africa. After performing with Paul Simon on his 1986 album Graceland, Ladysmith Black Mambazo won multiple awards, including five Grammys.

“They are amazing.This is going to be a fantastic evening,” Helenchild predicted. Faulkner said there are only a few tickets left for Black Mambazo.

Faulkner explains the mix of music: “For the first few years the festival was entirely classical, but the founders love all sorts of music and eventually started presenting some other genres. The extremely popular Festival big band concert originated as a one-time fundraiser but was such a hit that it’s been happening ever since.”

Learn more about the Mendocino Music Festival and how to buy tickets at mendocinomusic.org. 

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