MUSIC REVIEWS : Sonor Ensemble Shines on Contemporary Turf

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the UC San Diego-based contemporary music ensemble Sonor, making it one of the older such groups around. If new-music concerts often seem like a cross between a revival meeting and a day in court, Sonor has become expert at pleading its case.

Monday at the Japan America Theatre, part of the L.A. Philharmonic’s “Green Umbrella” series, Sonor delivered an often compelling program in which the best-known composer was Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis’ “Thallein” was certainly the concert’s high point, an undulant, polyphonous mass of sound that begins with a thunderous monster chord and oozes to a murmuring halt with an ambivalent polychord in the strings. In between lies a fascinating primitive emotionalism.

The remaining works, by UCSD-affiliated composers, painted an impressive picture of that faculty’s resources.

Some of the brightest moments came in small packages, as with the concert opener, Robert Erickson’s witty “Kryl,” for solo trumpet. Here, trumpeter Edwin Harkins worked between the cracks--of the tempered scale and of standard techniques. He engaged in a quirky conversation of opposites such as super low blatting notes and falsetto sung notes.

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Later, percussionist Steven Schick was the sole sonic perpetrator in Brian Ferneyhough’s “Bone Alphabet,” a striking array of shifting timbres, dynamics and rhythmic organization. On a grander scale, Ferneyhough’s fearsome “Carceri d’Invenzione I” (inventive dungeons), is full of clenching and releasing balls of energy passed among 15 players.

Harvey Sollberger’s “The Advancing Moment,” a requiem for modern warfare, slides from gripping bellicose musical activity to an incongruous martial drum pulse that pulls the grim appeal out from under it.

Monday’s greatest revelation was Franco Donatoni’s “Arpege,” a refreshingly non-classifiable little marvel. With its fascinating linear stitchwork that weaves in and out of pulse and tonality, it comes from somewhere between rustic folklore and academia, a place typically well-represented by Sonor.