The first half featured two pieces by Crawford. The first, Naushon (2011), is one of a set of four choral songs in memory of Christopher and Dana Reeve. (Christopher Reeve was the composer’s nephew.) The piece is deeply personal, as the text was also written by another family member, circa WW II. While this piece was not related in any way to Bradstreet’s works or time, it opened the concert with a sense of nostalgia; scalar figures rise and fall over tranquil harmonies. Scored for SSA, Naushon was sung by the women of the group with spot-on intonation. The affect of the piece (and its brevity) left me wanting to hear the other three songs in the set.

Crawford’s Portrait of Anne Bradstreet took a vastly different stylistic approach. The two poems set in this collection were also disparate. To My Dear and Loving Husband portrays Bradstreet’s contentment with her Puritan life with her extraordinarily wealthy husband, whereas Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666 depicts the fear, sorrow, and reflection of the author as her North Andover home famously burned to the ground. The piece opened with spoken monologues with instrumental interludes, featuring guest instrumentalists on recorder, violin, baroque guitar, and harpsichord. Soloist Adriana Repetto’s performance was convincing and inspired, both in the spoken and sung portions of the piece. But the pseudo-Baroque stylings of the musical interludes and some of the accompanying music were generally hackneyed, twisting the historical conventions of the ensemble only on the surface, failing to offer an interesting commentary on the tradition or even to expose that tradition in an interesting way (the composer cites “expressionist touches” in her notes on the piece, but even these were under-motivated). Some of the same sentiment was expressed when this piece was performed and reviewed in BMInt by Sudeep Agarwala last season (see the review here). Much of the piece is salvaged in the final movement, where the composer more persuasively summons the shock and frantic emotion of the poet’s despair through driving, syncopated rhythms, poignantly reflecting on thematic material from earlier in the piece.

The accompanying pieces by Isabella Lenoarda (Beatus vir, Psalm 112, and Magnificat, both op. 19) highlighted the distinct, albeit idiosyncratic, music of the most prolific of Ursuline convent composers. Beatus vir is more cohesive and consistent, a truly awesome work. And it exists, like the more temperamental Magnificat, in an aesthetic that is truly Leonarda’s own.

Representing a completely different aesthetic of the time, Barbara Strozzi’s madrigals are exemplary blends of sincere inspiration and phenomenally well-honed craft that soar far beyond the majority of composers of her generation composing in the “Seconda prattica” tradition, male or female. Director Amelia LeClair deserves recognition for choosing some of the best examples Strozzi has to offer, and the ensemble performed each of the madrigals with ardor and craftsmanship. It is no surprise to see that Cappella Clausura is well-acquainted with the works of these two great composers; the pieces, in particular Leonarda’s Beatus vir and Strozzi’s Con le belle and L’Amante modesto, were performed with the veracity of scholars and the zeal of musicians who genuinely love this music.

Hilary Tann’s settings of Bradstreet’s Contemplations stood out as the real zenith of the evening. “Contemplations 8, 9” covered a wide range of stylistic terrain. The piece opens with rolling, rhythmic textures over pentatonic harmonies, building into a massive sound that eluding the chorus’s actual size. Predictably, the small portions of Bradstreet’s texts in Latin dwindled to chant-like monophony, and in the first piece ended in a lilting coda over “Praise ye him, all his angels.” Somehow, the integration of all of these influences worked well, particularly in those two “Contemplations.” “Contemplations 21, 22” had some more jarring moments and ended a bit awkwardly. But both pieces showed the composer’s ability to work freely with a text: never reciting the poem merely from start to finish, but bending and shaping the text in the way that best ties it to an intriguing musical narrative that captures its essence. The pieces showed an immense command over the compositional possibilities of a vocal ensemble and were a worthy conclusion to a stellar program.

The program will be repeated this Saturday and Sunday, at Cambridge’s University Lutheran in Harvard Square and First Church in Jamaica Plain, respectively. I would highly recommend making it to one of the performances, particularly for the exceptional realizations of the Strozzi madrigals and to acquaint yourselves with the outstanding new pieces by Crawford and Tann.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

While the group struggled a bit to achieve a satisfying balance and blend in the first few sacred selections (Surrexit Pastor Bonus, Adoramus te, Christe, and Beati pauperes), the Adoramus, which featured the women of the ensemble, stood out as the most entrancing. Cantus singers Anney Gillotte, Sacha Peiser, Vicky Reichert, Margot Rood, and Altus singers Emily Isaacson and Allegra Martin created an ethereal and warm atmosphere in the simple sacred motet.

An interesting element of Schola Cantorum’s program was its grouping of pieces under subtitles; the opening sacred pieces, “For the Church,” were followed by “Naughty Love Songs,” a selection of very secular works by Lasso. To give the general idea: Lasso’s works in the first set, beginning “The Good Shepherd is risen. . .” is followed by “A young monk left the convent, and met a young nun with a nice body,…” (You may fill in the rest). These “indecent” works are by far Lasso’s best, as he better incorporates his wonderful sense of wit into the setting of the often hysterical texts. The ensemble performed the pieces with the context in mind, reminding us that these pieces would most likely have been performed with copious amounts of wine. Une jeune Moine est sorti du couvent was perhaps a little overly rambunctious, particularly in the lower voices, though the attention to dramatic expression was appreciated.

The following selections from Cipriano de Rore showed the breadth of the composer’s compositional output. With Cipriano, also, his secular works stand out far beyond his sacred ones; and while the liberally brisk tempo in the magnificent parody of Ancor che col partire may have been a bit excessive, it was intriguing to hear the secular tune and the sacred parody juxtaposed. Andrea Gabrieli’s reprise of Anchor. . .  illustrated some of the interesting international cross-pollination of Flemish and Italian styles and provided the low voices of the group — Arthur Rawding, Ben Skerritt, Jason Wang, Fred Jodry (Schola Cantorum’s director), Ari Nieh, and Ian Pomerantz — a moment to shine.

Lasso’s Mia benigna fortuna and Cipriano de Rore’s O Sonno and Ben qui mostra were grouped together as “Sublime Madrigals.” And indeed, sublime they were! Being a few of the most exceptional works on the program, they were performed with an immaculate attention to detail. Ben qui mostra received a fantastic performance, doing justice to a gorgeous setting of a serene text. My only gripe was the distraction of a strange practice of singers voicelessly enunciating the consonants in other singers’ parts at the start of lines (perhaps for unity, or articulation purposes). And across the program, the group often exhibited what we electronic musicians call a “disco smile” — an EQ [equalization] pattern that accentuates the high and low frequencies and attenuates the midrange. In this case, there was often a whole lot of high voice and low voice, sometimes at the unfortunate expense of the inner voices (which, in this music, are often the most important parts).

Ending the program with “Silly Songs for Carnival” was fitting for the general theme of the concert but seemed merely to serve as comic relief to the madrigal. Hört zu ein neues Gedicht was particularly humorous, complete with feigned sneezes in a song about noses (“broad ones, pointed ones. . . three-sided and bulbous ones, four-sided and troll-like ones. . .”). You get the idea. I probably could have done without the closing number, Chi la gagliarda. Overall, it was quite a dynamic and particularly diverse program, particularly considering that it all revolved around only two composers. Though Schola Cantorum is in its 25th season, this is the first time I have heard them perform. No doubt, I will be adding their performances to the growing list of Boston-based early music ensembles to attend.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The Callithumpian Consort’s performance in Jordan Hall on January 25th featured an interesting mix of improvised and non-improvised performance. The composers represented on the program, Debussy, Nicholas Vines, Zorn, Murail, and Ikue Mori, represented a refreshingly wide array of styles and aesthetics.

Being the only pre-21^st-century piece on the program, Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp was perhaps the most familiar work of the program. It is more harmonically conservative than most of his late works but has all of the textural and figurative appeal that makes Debussy’s music so unique. Karina Fox, Jessi Rosinski, and Franziska Huhn’s playing was crisp and animated: qualities that played particularly well to the Finale. While the placement of the Debussy seemed a bit odd on a program otherwise consisting entirely of pieces composed in the last eight years, some link between Debussy and Murail’s Lachryme, after intermission, appeared to be the motivation for such programming.

Nicholas Vines’s Economy of Wax, a setting of an excerpt from Darwin’s The Origin of Species for soprano, flute, viola, and harp, features a peculiarly scientific description (in prose) of an experiment involving bees constructing and maintaining their hive. The piece had some nice moments of lyricism between soprano and piccolo and exhibited a masterful control of contrapuntal texture. Since the text hardly has an ounce of expressive potential, Vines chose to focus more on vocal acrobatics than clarity of text. The writing contained itself to a single contrapuntal consistency, wonderfully evocative of the relentless swarming of Darwin’s bees, but ultimately it came across as rather stagnant and undermotivated. The piece was handled excellently by the performers, though balance was an issue at times.

John Zorn’s Orphée offered an interesting balance of notated music and improvised material. The piece opens with a noisy clash of dissonant and punctuated sonorities separated by awkward and immediate non-transitions: a block-structured caricature of modernism. The piece suddenly shifts into a very distant Minimalist territory, thorny stabs of dissonance now replaced with triadic, predictable bliss. Zorn thrives in the territory of these postmodern musical decisions and makes them appear much less arbitrary than many of his counterparts. Admittedly, the piece becomes “about” these stylistic shifts instead of the inner workings — which have the potential to be far more interesting. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of idioms was quite convincing, comical as they were.

Tristan Murail’s Lachrymae, composed for the Callithumpian Consort last summer at Sick Puppy (Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice), returned us to a meticulously controlled form of musical expression. While I have a deep admiration of Murail as a composer, a gripe I often have with his music is its tendency to marinate in its textures (gorgeous as they may be) with little concern for sustaining a sense of continuity through the narrative of the piece. Lachrymae seemed to go in the complete opposite direction, borrowing ubiquitously Classical tactics to organize constantly developing and profoundly moving materials while remaining “Spectralist” in its treatment of texture and harmony. The Callithumpians clearly invest a sense of ownership in this piece, resulting in the most convincing (by far) performance of the evening.

Ikue Mori, who performed live electronics on the Zorn earlier in the program, was again featured in her own composition, Confucius Becomes Popular, for large improvisational ensemble and animated video. It was more or less a collage of miniature narratives summarizing traditional Chinese parables, undoubtedly selected for their particular relevance to contemporary American politics. Musically, the piece seemed to relinquish almost all of its control to the performers’ collective intuition. Mori, in particular, had an unusually convincing grasp of her electronic setup, inventing her own meta-instrument that had both identity and expressive breadth. Her interactions with percussionist Nick Tolle at times were quite intriguing.

Much of the rest of the ensemble was less convincing; apparently they were more concerned with their own stage theatrics than with meaningful dialogue. This improvisational model worked better with the smaller group at the end of the performance, likely due to the presence of pianist Anthony Coleman, a true luminary in the world of free improvisation. Joined by Artistic Director Stephen Drury on piano, the improv session was quite engaging; the focus was purely on the intuitive interactions of the musicians, without any other visual guide. Had I left with much of the audience before this post-program improv session, I would have sorely lost out!

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The performances for the vast majority of the program were overwhelmingly positive. The first two pieces, both collections of songs, Du (1951) and Mehr ‘Du’ (1991), seem to highlight a general theme of the program by outlining the expressive disparity between the composer’s early, meticulously controlled compositions and the later ones, which, although still meticulously controlled, have a certain poetic quality to them. The earlier pieces, in my opinion, are attractive only in their structural elegance on the page—an aesthetic quality that is not transmitted in its intended form to even the most receptive ears. That said, the performance of Du by Sarah Bach and Rodney Lister was so well-executed that it generated a certain appeal on a separate plane than that of the structural organization—a phenomenon not uncommon to Babbitt’s music. Ceceilia Allwein highlighted the more expressive nature of Mehr ‘Du’ with candid feeling, which sometimes felt at odds with the more deliberate approach of the instrumentalists. I much appreciated D’Anna Fortunato’s presence at the concert. Her performance of the Feldeinsamkeit was simply gorgeous. Babbitt’s Composition for One Instrument (2000), performed on celesta by Lister, existed in a strangely engaging place between the eerie and playful, whereas the program’s closing piece Composition for Viola and Piano (1950) seemed cold and sterile.

Perhaps the most interesting contributions were from the NEC Preparatory School students. Pianists Hannah Ryu and Niklas Kniesche showed technical ability and musicianship far beyond their years, as did violinists Tristan Flores and Yuki Beppu in their duet performance of Arrivals and Departures. Daniel Kim, who seemed to be the oldest of the student performers, showed true prowess in the tongue-in-cheek It Takes Twelve to Tango, but really shone with an exquisite performance of Schoenberg’s Piano Piece, Op. 11 No. 1, which is simply amazing.

The focus of the guest speakers in general was on Babbitt’s warm personality, yet there seemed to be an uncomfortable subtext about the “at large” musical community’s attitude towards Milton Babbitt.  The exception was Marty Boykan’s explanation of Babbitt’s historical importance, with praise for the moment-to-moment aspects of Babbitt’s music.  I daresay even Boykan would have difficulty appreciating the narrative qualities of the more rigid, earlier works for which Babbitt is most known. Granted, some of these trying questions would have seemed out of place at a memorial concert, but I do not doubt they were on many minds: what precisely is at the root of such a large portion of the musical community’s rejection of Babbitt’s music? Why have the vast majority of living composers found Babbitt’s compositional system to be a creative dead-end? Listeners’ preconceptions and prejudices are largely to blame, no doubt. The famous essay by Babbit from High Fidelity magazine in February of 1958 entitled, Who Cares if You Listen?, is usually misunderstood by readers who are unable to derive the optimistic subtext of the argument (the title was changed by editors from “The Composer as Specialist” probably to make the article more polemical).  But despite the stalwart performances by the musicians throughout these performances, I still couldn’t help but find the lingering contrast between the cold, calculated nature of the music and the amiable nature of the man a bit mystifying.

So how do we reconcile the counterpoint between Milton Babbitt’s music and his personality?  The reality is that our recollection of his warm, personable nature­—his love of Broadway, beer, and football—and the tales of his interactions with his students will eventually fade from our cultural memory.  Even his significant contributions to electronic music and academia’s role as a patronage system for composers will shift with the ever-changing artistic landscape of contemporary music in the United States. What will remain, however, is his body of work.  And if the entirety of Babbitt’s character is to live on past the anecdotes of those close to him, the performance practice of his music will have to incorporate a more subjectivist approach.  In many cases (particularly with his earlier serial compositions), this will mean re-conceiving the musical interpretation of his work, most likely in a way that is at odds with the principles inherent in the composition of these pieces.  Perhaps a freer interpretative approach to the performance of Babbitt’s music is the best way to communicate his artistic intentions.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The four movements of David Cutler’s Weekend Traveler were spread throughout the program, which made it difficult to note any particular large-scale continuity within the piece as a whole. Nonetheless, I’ll share my views on the piece as a whole. The concept of the piece included asking each of the ensemble’s players to choose a style from somewhere around the globe, which was then composed as a movement featuring that player’s instrument. Beads, Bourbon, & Binoculars featured the baritone sax in an off-axis, quirky tribute to early New Orleans jazz. The movement quickly verified Hays as a formidable addition to the ensemble’s permanent roster. The second movement, No Patios en Los Patios was the most interesting number of the evening. While the opening clapping of the hallmark Cuban son clave rhythm may have seemed gimmicky at first, the development of familiar Afro-Cuban rhythms into dense, interesting polyrhythmic composition was exceptionally compelling. As alto sax player Chris Hemingway topped of the movement with a spectacular breakneck cadenza, it became clear Cutler was taking full advantage of the virtuosic capabilities of his ensemble. The movement ended with an interesting commentary on its derived style; the clapping returned, but this time in son clave montuno form (a sort of backwards son clave, which was vastly important to the development of salsa). Any Cuban music purist will say that the two fundamental rhythms are incompatible in the same piece – it’s either one or the other – so Cutler did his duty as a contemporary composer in combining the two.

Tenor saxophonist Stephen Pollock’s movement, En Route to Edinburgh­ – Trapped at Carousel C, featured a sensitively interpreted Scottish tune with some jazzy ornamentation, while Wedding Crasher, the final movement featuring some heavy virtuosity on soprano saxophonist Michael Stephenson’s part, deconstructed Bulgarian wedding music into an eccentric joyride. Most of Cutler’s music heard in this piece relied heavily on repetitive bass lines and “looping” of rhythmic figures, which may have limited the pieces expressive potential at times. But for the most part the composer managed to develop these ideas into really interesting and eclectic musical narratives. Cutler and NCSQ have surely contributed a worthy and addition to the growing repertoire of new music for sax quartets.

Other notable performances included Piazzolla’s Bordel 1900 from L’Histoire du Tango, which featured some smart use of key clicks in the arrangement. A Paul Harvey arrangement of a suite of set poems by Robert Burns had its moments. Stephenson played an impassioned melody over My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, and the ensemble provided an uncanny mimicry of bagpipes in Bannocks O’Bearsmeal.  There were a number of arrangements of folk-inspired tunes arranged by Glenn Haynes spread throughout the program. Though some of them were quite beautiful (in particular My Lord, What a Morning), the tended to homogenize the program in the direction of tiresome folk music arrangements.

The ensemble’s final piece on the program was a well-arranged rendition of Shostakovich’s Folk Dances, which the group played from memory. Though not among the composer’s masterpieces, the work (originally the third movement of the Native Leningrad suite) has become popular among wind ensembles and orchestras in the U.S.  New Century’s performance of the piece was energetic and impressively tight. The group returned for an encore of a jazz/gospel tune that featured more of Hemingway’s consummate jazz chops.

The quality of performance by NCSQ could hardly be drawn into question, yet the overall programming may be another issue. In an interview published on Gloucester’s Wicked Local site, Pollock noted that “this concert might be lighter in nature, but we definitely don’t think it’s trite.” But with the Cutler premiere broken up throughout the concert, the rest of the program was ultimately filled up with rather short crowd-pleasers – many of which fit comfortably into the category of ultra-conservative arrangements of folk tunes. Add that to the general excess of comic rituals throughout, and it might be safe to say that the ensemble underestimated the audience’s ability to appreciate a wider range of musical styles. The want for some more adventurous programming aside, the quartet provided an evening of performances that was engaging, nuanced, and relentlessly entertaining.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The four pieces performed offered a good snapshot of Ziporyn’s compositional style, which although heavily influenced by Minimalism, tend to favor constant development in the context of block structures, driving rhythms, and definitely virtuosic demands of the performers. Hive, In Bounds, and Typical Music (the last three pieces on the program) all shared this unique mix of Post-Minimalist and Totalist (a response to minimalism) leanings, and received the kind of spot-on performances you can only get with abundant collaboration time spent with the composer.

The opening performance, Tsmindao Gmerto (for solo bass clarinet) stood out stylistically from the others. After a congenial introduction by the composer, he described the piece as an attempt to mimic the sounds of a large group of men singing Georgian chant with a single bass clarinet. The music that followed was a string of flowing, chant-like phrases composed of multi-phonics and trills, jittering on the surface, but moving slowly through evocative pre-tonal harmonies. I had the opportunity to hear the piece performed a few years ago in a large, stone chapel in Miami, and must say the piece benefits from a large, reverberant space to help blend together the sounds of the performer vocalizing while playing (one of a few methods of achieving multi-phonics on the clarinet). In this performance space, the inner parts were more in the foreground, which (based on my observations of nearby listeners) appeared to be too discordant for some to enjoy. Personally, I find the piece’s arching phrases of dense and varying timbres to be quite beautiful.

Pianist Vicky Chow completely won over the audience with her vigorous and animated performance of In Bounds. She danced playfully through the piece, despite its severe difficulty; one only had to see the subtle fear in the page-turner’s eyes as he worked to keep up with the myriad of notes and pages that flew by as the Chow’s hands moved at an unfathomable pace.

Hive, for four clarinets (two B-flat and two bass) quartet featured Ziporyn on bass clarinet, joined by fellow clarinetists Rane Moore, Eran Egozy, and Alicia Lee. Some of the pieces materials are derived from Tsmindao Gmerto, but as part of a much more eclectic array of other styles. The narrative of the piece, as Ziporyn explained, was inspired by his observations of bees (he recently has taken on the hobby of beekeeping).  Rapidly moving lines bounce back and fourth between the players, who effectively made clear the interactive and often antiphonal nature of the piece. The closing piece, Typical Music for piano trio, takes some of the stylistic eclecticism of Hive and truly runs away with it. Chow returned, joined by violinist Todd Reynolds and Ashley Bathgate for a riveting performance. Overall the piece made a positive impact, though I must admit I found some of the moments where the players drifted into jazz/blues material to be rather dry.  The final movement contained some very exciting ideas. Included in this movement was a very exposed moment of paradiddle rhythms, which I couldn’t help but think was a shout out to the composer’s long-time friend and colleague, Steve Reich (referencing Different Trains).

The Rockport Chamber Music Festival undoubtedly deserves commendation for programming an entire concert dedicated to a living composer. While most of the programming this summer at the Shalin Liu falls into the ultra-traditional category, hopefully programs like these will prove popular among their subscribers and rouse more programming of contemporary music in the future.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Steven Drury at last year's SICPP (Andrew Hurbut photo)

New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP, aka Sick Puppy) has established itself as one of the most prolific contemporary music festivals the East Coast has to offer. Running from June 18-25, the festival offers a multifaceted program for composers, instrumentalists, and vocalists through participant ensembles, master classes, and workshops in electronic music and performance. Artistic Director Stephen Drury has assembled a notable faculty of distinguished composers and performers, making participation in this festival a coveted experience for enthusiastic contemporary performers and emerging composers alike.

But the big perk for the rest of us music lovers is an action-packed week of performances by Drury’s Callithumpian Consort and the festival musicians. Starting on Monday, June 20, Jordan Hall and Brown Hall will host a concert every evening, featuring faculty composers and performers. The unique daily concerts will include premieres of works by Tristan Murail (the festival’s composer-in-residence), John Luther Adams, and Nicholas Vines, and a diverse array of works by Fredereic Rzewski, John Corigliano, Joshua Fineberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tamar Diesendruck, Lei Liang, Charles Wuorinen, John Zorn, and more.

The concerts on Monday and Wednesday both feature performances by the Callithumpian Consort. Drury himself will perform Zorn’s fay ce que vouldras. But perhaps one of the most anticipated evenings of the series will be Wednesday’s concert, at which the ensemble features resident composer Tristan Murail. He is one of the world’s most celebrated living composers, known primarily as one of the innovators behind the compositional practice, Spectralism. In addition to a performance of Le Lac will be the world premiere of Lachrymae, composed for the Callithumpians. Also on the program is the virtuosic Territoires de l’oubil, to be performed by William Fried; Okanagon by Giacinto Scelsi, who had a profound influence on Murail’s unique style; and Counterfactual by Boston’s own Joshua Fineberg, protégé of Murail

On Tuesday evening, pianist Ursula Oppens, a bona fide contemporary music legend, will be performing Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, for which she received one of her three Grammy nominations, as well as Corigliano’s Etude Fantasy and Wuorinen’s Oros, both of which were commissioned and premiered by Oppens in the last couple of years.

Thursday’s performance includes a performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte, with Drury at the piano and percussionist Stuart Gerber; Gerber’s ties with the composer are sure to guarantee a stalwart performance. Also on the program is the Boston premiere of Four Thousand Holes by John Luther Adams, who has recently been in town as a visiting lecturer at Harvard.

Friday’s performance features musicians Corey Hamm, Yukiko Takagi, Jessi Rosinski, Stuart Gerber, Karina Fox, and Martin Stragier in a program featuring the faculty musicians as soloists.

The festival culminates on Saturday, June 25, with the SICPP Iditarod, a six-hour-plus marathon concert. In addition to performances of works by the festival’s composition fellows, they also will perform works by Saariaho, Stockhausen, Carter, Schnittke, Hurel, Grisey, Xenakis, Cage, Wolff, Foss, Crumb, Kurtag, and Scelsi, as well as more music by Murail, and Steve Reich’s masterwork Music for Eighteen Musicians. The Iditarod will also feature the premiere performance of New England Drift, commissioned by Callithumpian Consort and SICPP composed by 2009 SICPP fellow Lee Weisert.

All these concerts are free and open to the public. And with such a broad and inclusive collection of contemporary milestones, Sick Puppy’s upcoming concert series is one not to be missed.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Nikola Tesla with Chorus of Bees (Keith Collier photo)

Juventas New Music Ensemble gave the opening performance of their 2011 Opera Project, Light and Power, on Thursday evening, May 19, at the Cambridge YMCA Theater in Cambridge. The full length, two-act opera takes an interesting spin on the story of Nikola Tesla and his interactions with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and George Westinghouse. What makes the narrative really effective is how the story, told in reverie as Tesla’s lab is burning down, shifts between his own interpretations of his contemporaries and a bizarre, science-fiction-esque internal dialog with Nova, a “cyborgian hive queen” (as described by librettist Jillian Burcar and presumably meaning a merger of human and technology).  One of the really refreshing elements about this production was that, unlike what seems to be the norm of many modern operas, the breaking of time and the shifting between reality and abstraction was handled with a careful sense of clarity. The collaboration between Burcar and composer Isaac Schankler was very evident; one got the sense that the entire production was bound to a unified vision. This is no easy feat for operas that have been produced hundreds of times, let alone a world premiere.

Schankler’s music is extraordinarily eclectic – where traditional operatic roles may have themes or motifs associated with characters, Schenkler attached entire musical idioms to them. The mystical Nova character (Christine Teeters, soprano) is given some spectralist qualities to her music, while the idiom for Edison (Davron Monroe, tenor) leaped into ragtime. All of the music was masterfully composed. The divergences of styles were effectively informed by both the tradition of opera and the tradition of the American musical. The use of electronics, varied and sensitive, was always complementary to the musical drama. There were also more than a few musical surprises: interesting uses of musical shifting between disarray and uniformity, as well as “phasing” in the chorus parts. Other highlights (which may also have been under the influence of Steve Reich) were scenes where the instruments mimicked the actors’ speech patterns. It was very effective with Barratt Park’s presidential speech, less so with Henry Ford’s character later in the act.

Chelsea Beatty as Nikola Tesla (Keith Collier photo)

The performances of Chelsea Beatty and Christine Teeters played off each other extremely well. Beatty’s performance was a well-rounded package – her quality vocal performance was enhanced by a captivating stage presence and convincing body language – whereas Teeters’s enrapturing, powerful voice alone was simply a show stealer: as much of a spectacle as were her and her Chorus of Bees’s outlandish costumes. Monroe portrayed Edison with wry charisma, complemented by the contrastingly shy character of Ford, played by Rachel Selan. The chorus and the pit, under the direction of Lidiya Yankovskaya, also deserve special commendation.

What is perhaps most impressive about this entire production is the scope. While there were not any substantial set changes in the opera and the staging was confined to a relatively limited space, the costumes, set, lighting, and stage direction were all quite elaborate. With the recent emergence of a handful of low-budget, grassroots-based opera companies in the area, one can justifiably question the ability of a contemporary music chamber ensemble to successfully take on such a monumental project. Juventas’s success is undoubtedly by virtue of the dozens of production staff members, many who volunteer, that have a passion about what they are doing. It is comforting to know that there are not only outlets for the premiering of new operatic works, but that there’s a receptive and enthusiastic base of supporters to bring these works to life with quality and authenticity. Light and Power will be running at the Cambridge YMCA Theater all weekend.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

John Harbison’s Songs America Loves to Sing, co-commissioned by the ensemble in 2004, sets ten well-known traditional songs (senza singer) for pierrot ensemble —flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The piece is inspired by the (perhaps lost) family ritual of singing traditional songs around the piano. In a similar sentimental way, the piece engages a large amount of the American musical canon. The opening number, a setting of Amazing Grace, embellishes the familiar tune in the flute, played with sensitivity by Christina Smith. Toying with the tonality of the original tune, the song meditates on the overtone series with lifting piano lines and cello harmonics. Much of the cycle operates on the fringe of tonality reminiscent of Charles Ives, shifting within a wide and beautifully nebulous spectrum between consonance and dissonance. Some of the songs, such as Canon: St. Louis Blues dive head first into the gospel/blues idiom, albeit with a good deal of added complexity. The musicians, especially pianist Paula Peace, were able to step successfully out of the typical rigidity of chamber playing to portray convincingly the movements that were a bit more c aricaturish in nature. Clarinetist Laura Ardan’s playing in the cadenza-like Solo: Poor Butterfly was a particularly revealing moment of exceptional writing married with captivating performance. Anniversary Song ends the set with the instrumentalists all playing harmonicas, repeating the melancholy tune with a certain unexpected quirkiness.

The ensemble then treated us to the Boston premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s Canzona Nova: Fractured Fairy Tale, which was commissioned just this season by the Atlanta Chamber Players. The piece (scored for oboe, string trio, and piano) is a fast-paced amalgam of rapidly moving inner-parts and broad lyricism. The piece is saturated with imitation, building off of the sixteenth-century instrumental canzona with surface motion and narrative style; in a brief intro to the performance, Gandolfi described his work as a “pre-sonata piece in a post-sonata world.” While harmonically conservative, Conzona Nova is quite adventurous in its layering of complex rhythms. The piece opens with a visceral energy that remains throughout. Gandolfi cites jazz/rock influences, which were particularly evident as musical themes characterized by expressive, falling triads in the strings were repeated, transposed up a whole-step (a trait more conversant with popular music forms). In one of the most absorbing new pieces I’ve heard lately, the music eventually dissipates into the motoric clockwork of the cello and piano – a truly compelling ending. The musicians, Elizabeth Koch, Justin Bruns, Catherine Lynn, Brad Ritchie, and Paula Peace deserve special note for a meticulous performance. The ensemble skillfully balanced the mechanical precision the piece calls for, while highlighting the piece’s larger gestures and inherent musicality.

Arthur Foote is known for being one of very few late nineteenth-/ early twentieth-century composers to receive his musical training exclusively in America. That said, there seems to be nothing of his style that differentiates it from his European counterparts; he is just as much a product of the European tradition as Brahms or Fuchs. Nonetheless, Piano Quartet in C Major, Opus 23 is an exemplary and sophisticated artifact of late Romanticism. The Scherzo stirred with excited energy, and the Adagio was part to a beguiling interpretation by violinist Justin Bruns. The ensemble gave an inspired performance, and deserves the highest praise for not only championing the music of living composers, but the music of composers whose music they feel is undeservingly disregarded by concert programmers at large.

The program credits support from the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterworks Program, which helps many groups like ACF disseminate their wonderful interpretation of American Composers’ works to audiences around the country. Hopefully we will find that this (and the rest of NEA’s) programs have survived the cuts when the new federal budget is made public.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Jaime Fatás’s Flamenco sin Limites for solo saxophone opened with a lyrical fantasy, wittily reinforcing the piece’s inner tension between idiomatic Flamenco elements with more free-improvisational style. The first, most abrupt exclamation of this comes as unexpected foot-stomping to interrupt an otherwise timeless and flowing musical surface. The piece was short and sweet, but in its limited duration featured evocative use of timbral trills, short micro-tonal colorations, alongside some more typical harmonies reminiscent of Spanish/Romani styles.

Two pieces for alto sax and cello by the youngest composer on the program, Juan Ruiz, followed Fatás’s solo piece. The more interesting and successful of the two, Avenida la Playa, opened with acrobatic percussive use of the cello, effectively executed by Diana Flores. The sax joined in for a brief, syncopated rhythmic dance that was the entirety of the piece. It seemed restrained, as if more energy was on the page than on the stage, and might have benefited by a more up-tempo performance.

The following piece, Lejanias, opened with an thick, consonant lament ripe with some adept and sensitive use of dynamic contrast but soon transgressed into a series of rather unremarkable pseudo-tonal sequences. Both pieces seemed to inspire (or be inspired by) original poems by the composer included in lieu of program notes, both of which were beautiful pieces of literary art in their own rights.

In Radnofsky’s notes, he professed a recently found affinity for early-twentieth-century Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s Trio, Op. 35. The piece, originally scored for piano trio, worked well as edited by Radnofsky for flute, sax, and piano. Flutist Marcos Granados and pianist/composer John McDonald joined for the performance. The adapted instrumentation seemed to aid the Prelude and Fugue during duet passages between the flute and saxophone. The color of the wind instruments provided a deeper level of intrigue than the typical homogenous sounds of violin and cello for which the piece was originally scored. Despite its attractive moments and exceptional performance this evening, the majority of the piece is painfully uninventive and falls into timeworn maxims and nearly exhaustive levels of predictability at every barline. In my ear, the piece does little to integrate late-nineteenth-century Spanish popular music into a post-Romantic style, but rather uses popular music’s influence as an excuse for half-baked musical ideas and poorly executed formal structures.

The second half of the concert opened with a far more satisfying exhibition of elegant simplicity. Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileras No. 1 (originally for orchestra and solo cello) received a wonderfully sensitive performance. Set for string quartet and alto sax by Jorge Hoyo and featuring a string section of members of A Far Cry and Discovery Ensemble, this arrangement seemed to be tailored for Radnofsky’s whispery thin, delicate tone. The blend between the quartet and saxophone provided an interesting new perspective in this lush, beautiful piece.

John McDonald’s Reunion in Solos and Duets, five miniatures alternating between solos and duets, were written in celebration of the composer’s chance to again play with Radnofsky (on  flute) and Marcos Granados (as pianist on the Turina and closing pieces by Cristian Yufra); McDonald became acquainted with the other performers in his high-school and college years. The pieces intelligently mingled the two instruments using very limited — but decidedly not limiting! — material from the slow movement of Bach’s fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Featuring palindromic inner solo movements, the set as a whole was mostly characterized by restrained, often meditative developments. As if being suddenly awakened from a trance, the fifth miniature, “Duet: Maestoso” allowed the flute and saxophone to dance excitedly around enticing and erratic rhythms, closing playfully with a satisfying quip for the premiere performance of a truly exceptional piece.

Cristian Yufra’s longer movements, also in a set of five, were characterized by familiar modality and persistent consonance (often to the point of excess). Amancer (Dawn) opened with exuberant Lydian melodies in Radnofsky’s soprano sax. The consistent, regular rhythms of all of the movements were aided by the addition of Juan Ruiz (the multi-talented young composer heard on the first half) playing the bombo leguero, a large Argentine folk drum. The program notes, which were entirely in Spanish (and I shall not let my upbringing in Miami go to waste!) briefly describe the folk roots and inspirations of each of the movements. The playful second one, Ayelen, is dedicated to the composer’s young niece. La fresca was something of an Argentine pastorale. Most of the pieces were enjoyable and understated, if under-stimulating (and perhaps too fatiguing, judging by the unfortunate case of conspicuous snoring from the audience). The quartet of Granados, Radnosky, McDonald, and Ruiz proved a good blend, most effective in the final movement, Desesperación. It contained some of the few moments of the evening that featured the more compelling sort of rhythmic constructions one might expect from a program featuring contemporary Spanish and South American music.

The program as a whole was quite successful, as it allowed Radnofsky and the fine musicians that accompanied him to share their music with a receptive audience. My only grievance (which may, no doubt, be the source of many other audience members’ praise) is that the program offered only a narrow extreme of the spectrum of Spanish and Latin American-influenced contemporary music. I celebrate Kenneth Radnofsky’s right, especially at his level of stature, to commission and perform the types of music he prefers. But in a program boasting multiple world premieres and predominantly newly commissioned works, I would have expected to hear much more music outside of the ultra-conservative vein. Of course, it’s not every performer or concert presenter’s obligation to challenge the audience. But after the concert, I couldn’t help but feel that a the vast majority of Spanish and South-American compositional styles were severely underrepresented.

Ed note: This fine review was received “at the editor’s desk” a week ago, then was transferred to a laptop to be worked on while on-flight from San Francisco. This proved unworkable. From hence this soldier was “hors de combat” for two days and the review in limbo until reclaimed.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.