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Review of concert Socially Awkward ComposersThursday, May 4, 2006, 7:30 PM It's good to know that the concept of composer consortia remains viable in Beantown over twenty years since the first Composers in Red Sneakers concert. And give bonus points to the group Socially Awkward Composers, now in their third season, for their name alone. As it turned out, much of the music heard pleased as well. This collective prefers to produce events featuring accessible work in non-traditional venues, and tonight saw them adhering strongly to this principle. And things don't get much more crowd-pleasing than Colin Stack's singer-songwriter entities, Goodbye to My Old Playground and I Drink till I Have My Fill . The first, for two guitarists and singer, suggests a jazzy updating of James Taylor, while the latter, scored for vocalist and eight players, ably mixes Kurt Weill's and Elvis Costello's ways of thinking. This attractive stuff avoids traditional verse/chorus approaches and revels in clever lyrics. For cello solo, Dionysian Dances by David Cucchiara delightfully cannibalizes world music, folk idioms, and American pop within its four fetching movements. Possessing elements of etude and character piece, one encounters Irish, Indian, Middle Eastern, and hip-hop colorings. It's the sort of thing folks like Matt Haimovitz or the Kronos Quartet would welcome on their programs. Montserrat Torras's Margaridita features solo accordion interacting with a prerecorded background based on accordion sounds to good effect. Its improvisational spinning of material, wide-ranging harmonic style, and varied extended techniques would earn Pauline Oliveros's seal of approval. Canary pt. 1 by Michael Miller is a work-in-progress which on subsequent performances will add layers of sound onto the version encountered tonight. It proved to be a soulful, slowly unfolding essay for scordatura string trio this go around. Like an Oreo cookie, it's small but sweet. Michael McLaughlin was represented by two diametrically opposed entries aesthetically. The violin solo …and Mr. Bailey Kisses the Sky is a non-triadic grab bag of effects heavy on glissandi and jagged fragments, eccentric and scattered, but often intriguing nonetheless. South Border Road , by contrast, is charming fare that betrays a strong bluegrass ethos not only in its violin/mandolin scoring but also in its employment of folksy triadic speech and patterned textures. Andrew Bisset was the only member not heard from tonight. Ironically, the weakest selection came from guest composer Katarina Miljkovic , a New England Conservatory faculty member. Her piece Crescent for amplified alto sax -- sound modified heavily by feedback and delay -- unfolds slowly, traffics in non-traditional if by now rather standard-issue effects, and delineates a rather aimless series of up-and-down roller coaster rides structurally. Performances were generally good. Cellist Nicole Cariglia impressed most, featuring crackerjack digital control, a sturdy tone, and savvy interpretive smarts in Cucchiara's opus. Kent O'Doherty exhibited fine prowess in handling Crescent's extended technique demands, while McLaughlin played both mandolin and accordion with assurance and personality. Violinist Stephanie Skor seemed a bit puzzled by the pacing demands of the quicksilver shifts in Mr. Bailey but gave it a respectable go. Socially awkward these composers may be, but there's nothing gawky about them musically. A fun evening. --David Cleary |