Music : Maroney, Walker Share the Bill at Sonic Series

Two markedly contrasting sets made up the latest offering by LACE and the Independent Composers Assn. for their ongoing Sonic Series. Presented in the stuffy, upstairs performance space at LACE on Friday evening, the program mixed a complex electronic magnum opus by composer Denman Maroney with a handful of starkly simple pieces that highlighted the clarinet artistry of Marty Walker.

Maroney’s 45-minute collection of electronically sampled and altered piano sounds entitled “Pianoology” opened the evening. Sitting at a computerized keyboard with a reliable co-keyboardist, Joseph Paul Taylor, Maroney carefully shaped various juxtaposed sonic episodes composed of everything from percussive drummings to loud jet-engine roars.

When the sampled piano sounds actually sound like a piano, it’s a honky-tonk piano or a prepared piano--anything but a Steinway. Though largely an excessive exercise, the overall fascinates with its multifarious landscape.

Following Maroney’s piece, three premieres for clarinet and string quartet were presented. Using only slow tempos and very quiet dynamic levels, the works explore only few of the possible combinations.

But Jim Fox’s “Between the Wheels” works well within its limits, in a deliberately understated style similar to Morton Feldman’s. As Walker held mostly high, sustained pitches, three of the quartet members accompanied with repeated tremolos while the first violinist added an occasional harmonic.

Both Michael Jon Fink’s “Thread of Summer” and Rick Cox’s “When April May” demonstrate melancholy tonal writing that is essentially garden variety. Walker’s own Jimi Hendrix-like improvisation, “For L.K.,” completed the program.