SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Concert Review: Aura puts sparkle into composers' conference

03/01/2005

Mike Greenberg
Express-New Senior Critic

Aura, the contemporary ensemble of the University of Houston's Moores School of Music, brought some well-polished gems to the UTSA Recital Hall Friday.

Aura's concert was the fifth of eight during the Society of Composers Inc.'s Region VI conference, which had opened with a conservative thud the night before.

Refreshment arrived right off the bat Friday night with Karim Al-Zand's "Music Box." Conductor Rob Smith, alone on stage, started laying down the beat before the six instrumentalists sat down one by one.

As the layers of scattered, staccato notes accumulated in intricate counterpoint, they took on the aspect of a mechanical music box — which wound down at the end of this very charming piece.

The same ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion remained on stage for Bill Ryan's "Launch," an energetic, rhythmically eccentric piece influenced by Steve Reich's layered patterns, but with a distinctive color palette and complexity.

In Ryan's "Blurred," for saxophone quartet, two cellos, acoustic and electric bass and piano, a near-drone of quiet repeated notes on the piano grew into vast waves of sound.

Dana Wilson's "Howling at the Moon" for saxophone quartet drew from jazz and blues. The bracing first movement was very busy without feeling padded; the slow second was like a beautiful R&B ballad; the bouncy third, notable for delightful shifts in harmonic color, ran in a propulsive, angular groove.

Tim Kramer's "Mimetic Variations," for paired oboes, clarinet, horns and bassoons, was a handsomely crafted, eventful piece built in part from layers of varying patterns, often recalling Stravinsky's neoclassical counterpoint. Its central slow section developed like a thoughtful conversation.

Paul Steinberg's "A Song for Chris" appropriated popular idioms in a taut, seamless and very lively collaboration between electronic tape and a live ensemble of woodwind, electronic keyboard and percussion.

Saturday's final concert was notable for three pieces.

In Michael Twomey's "Plank," brief statements for solo shakuhachi, each like a single character in Japanese calligraphy, are interposed with spoken lines from Glori Simmons' poem about the murder of a woman. Martha Fabrique was the excellent performer.

Lesley Sommer's "Five Pieces on Poems by Robert Frost," for piano solo, might have been more appropriately inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It's a sort of salvage-yard music in which disparate idioms — including a quote from "Falling in Love Again" — coexist in odd juxtaposition but somehow add up to a coherent if bizarre picture.

Mark Snyder's "Floyd Ave." for flute, clarinet and piano was a spirited, dizzying piece that drew from klezmer band and Hebraic chant precedents.

mgreenberg@express-news.net