Composer Grigsby Receives a Fitting Birthday Tribute

Composer Beverly Grigsby may have taught at Cal State Northridge for 30 years, but there is nothing academic, in the usual critically pejorative sense, about her music. On Sunday the Northridge department of music--where she continues as professor emeritus--celebrated Grigsby’s 70th birthday with a sampling of her craft and inspiration in the campus Recital Hall.

This mini-survey documented a composer of wide-ranging interests and a decidedly lyrical bent. Even so unpromisingly titled a post-Webernian relic as her “Five Studies on Two Untransposed Hexachords” from 1971 shifted pitch-spotting to the background in favor of expressive and kinetic interests. Pianist Deon Nielsen Price stressed wit and vitality in her deft reading.

Grigsby’s “Vision of St. Joan,” a 1987 work for soprano and synthesized accompaniment, proved almost terminally lyrical, soaring to ever higher and sweeter raptures. Deborah Kavasch, for whom it was written, sang with articulate and unflappable radiance, even with her electronic partner disastrously malfunctioning in the final minutes.

Sly counterpoint in a rhythmically acute Neoclassical style was the heart of the three-movement Trio from 1994, played with affection and brio by violinist Nancy Roth, clarinetist Berkeley Price and pianist Paul Hurst. Grigsby’s 1982 “Movements for Guitar” combine a paradoxically austere eloquence with timbral experiments, handled with poise and point by Peter Yates.

Veteran violinist Tibor Zelig, a contemporary and colleague of Grigsby, opened the program with “Happy Birthday” and a carefully considered account of Bach’s Partita No. 2.