Concert Crusade

Ojai resident Virginia Kron, a cellist of no small talent, has done her best to keep alive the music of our time. It’s a challenging job, but somebody has to do it. And the better the musician, the greater the crusader’s zeal to create new works.

Two years ago, Kron gave the world premiere of John Biggs’ dynamic Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra, which she later recorded for the Albany label.

Last week, Kron kicked off a series of new-music concerts under the aegis of the group Current Sounds, along with fellow organizers (and composers) Linda Hogan and Linda Holland. Chamber music concerts brought 20th century fare to Santa Barbara and Ojai, the latter concert at the First Baptist Church. This will be, one hopes, the first of many more such programs. And just this past Tuesday at UCSB’s Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, Kron was a featured soloist in William Kraft’s “Encounters V,” part of a fascinating concert by the school’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music.

The piece, which dazzles in sometimes unexpected ways, was written in 1975 for noted cellist Nathaniel Rosen. The percussion part was played by the composer--former principal percussionist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and now director of the contemporary music ensemble and a UCSB professor.

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Kraft has an uncanny ability to make his writing sing, avoiding the threat of emotional aridity. In this piece, Kron was more or less the melodic protagonist alongside acclaimed Mexican percussionist Ricardo Gallardo. Unlikely as the pairing might seem on paper, the cello and percussion elements got along just fine. Kron, in particular, impressed with her mix of subtlety and restrained passion--as befits Kraft’s writing. The ensemble, led by Kraft and his assistant Jeremy Haladyna, presents a few concerts each academic year, which amount to the most reliable source of provocative new music in the area.

Tuesday’s concert, titled “Wake for the Millennium,” was loosely dedicated to the millennial shift as well as the fade-out of the 20th century (an occasion for reflection for 20th century music ensembles), and it was one of the finest of this ensemble’s programs in memory.

It began with Charles Ives’ great little enigma, “The Unanswered Question,” followed by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag’s post-Ives-ian nod, “Ligatura--Message to Frances-Marie (The answered unanswered question).” Haladyna’s ongoing series of works based, in some way, on Mayan culture, continued with the premiere of his intriguing “Copal.”

The piece is named after the incense--burned before the performance--blending aromatic allure with musical acuity. Guest composer Gabriela Ortiz, Gallardo’s wife, presented her compelling electro-acoustic tour de force featuring another dynamic cellist, Jakub Omsky.

The taped electronic music seemed like an organic sonic extension of Omsky’s part, which ended in a fury of exacting, flailing hands.

The program closed with the recently popularized Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s beguiling and witty “Little Requiem for a Polka.” The work is more serious than the title suggests, with its probing Euro-Minimalist designs working up a cool introspection, as the dozen-plus musicians generate emotional friction through divided tonalities.

True to the title’s promise, a polytonal polka rears its giddy head toward the end. But it melts into a soft, reflective finale that reminds us again of Ives’ “Unanswered Question.” In short, the concert began and ended with questions, like the century that bore it.