As part of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music based here in Santa Cruz, I recently had the opportunity to hear some wonderful music performed in the beautiful Old Mission at San Juan Bautista. The mission is known as the ‘Mission of Music’ thanks to one of its more talented Padres and the festival musicians did a wonderful job keeping up these musical traditions.
Wendy Sutter played the cello concerto that Philip Glass wrote for her. It was a fascinating to hear some of the newest classical music in the repertoire in one of the oldest buildings in California, but it’s the perfect place to hear the four spiritually-inspired works that made up a concert subtitled “In Aeturnum”.
Nestled in the San Juan valley the mission was founded in 1797 and the cornerstone for the church still standing there today was laid in 1803. Its a wonderful building rich is cultural and historical interest.
The interior is beautifully decorated adobe in all shades of yellow and orange and the alter is made of redwood and painted with vegetable dye by local Indian artists. The original stone floor tiles come complete with little paw prints from a monastery cat who must have wandered across them all those years ago and the ornate figures of saints were imported from Mexico.
The largest of California’s 21 missions it was built around a courtyard where today there are well matured palm trees and the most abundant collection of roses.
The cemetery on the church’s northern side contains the remains of over 4,000 Christian Native Americans and Europeans who lived and worked in the monastery. The Mission has undergone many restoration projects in its time and is in need of more as you can see below but that it has survived this long is no small miracle seeing as how the land around the mission sits directly atop the San Andreas Fault!
made by nelle 
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