The Sound of the Future

The old orchestral model of a fraternal order of players from the same cultural background is not appropriate for a modern society. That the Vienna Philharmonic tries to continue it in an increasingly multicultural musical capital is just the sort of thinking that has led to Austria’s current political problems.

The UCLA Philharmonia, on the other hand, represents the future of classical music. It is an orchestra that tells us who among our young are learning to play instruments. It is more female than male. It has a strong Asian presence, but it boasts a healthy mix of other groups as well. And for its concert Tuesday night in Schoenberg Hall, the program was devoted to music by African American composers who live in Southern California.

And the orchestra, which has an excellent music director in Jon Robertson, is also a typical student group. Ability varies. There are strong first chair players but not a lot of depth throughout the ranks. The sound is fresh and resolute.

Surprisingly little could be generalized about the program. Four composers had four different agendas. At one extreme, Olly Wilson, a noted academic composer who was long associated with the University of California at Berkeley, offered a carefully organized abstract work that was articulate in the Modernist language of Varese, Lutoslawski and Ligeti.

At the other extreme, Billy Childs attempted to integrate African American experience through three orchestral songs for jazz singer, with major solo participation from the composer on piano and two African drummers. Short pieces by Calvin Taylor and Ed Bland fell somewhere in between. All four composers used the percussion section with enthusiasm, but that is hardly noteworthy; percussion has been the growth industry of the modern orchestra.

Wilson’s “Expansions III,” a 14-minute piece written in 1993 for a consortium of youth orchestras around the country, begins with gorgeous thick string clusters burbling with wind interjections, and it has a lively central section of difficult rhythms. Taylor, who expressed in the program note an urge to be programmatic, began his “Inner-city Sunrise” with lush, elegiac chords, glitterized by a celesta and with lyric (lovingly played) wind solos. A 10-minute piece that builds up to a Sibelian climax and returns to its elegiac beauties, it may be a bit modest to evoke, as the composer suggests, the life cycle of great cities--early glory, decline, rebirth--but it is sure music.

Bland’s “Rambunctious Serenade,” just a few minutes long and written for small orchestra, is a paragon of economy. Mostly fun--its highlight is a pianist, alternating between electric keyboards, in energetic duet with timpani--it also finds room for affecting somber string writing in the middle.

Childs’ “The Distant Land” was the evening’s epic. Its ambitions were to represent the African American experience through many lenses. The texts had three sources--the title song was taken from a Langston Hughes poem longing for a distant Africa; “A Mother to Her First-Born” is traditional Ugandan; “Voice of the Karaw” is traditional Mali. The African texts were rendered in English and the language was strong and beautiful, and Childs’ setting of the words had inviting lyric flow and melodic invention.

Yet “The Distant Land,” which was commissioned by the Akron Symphony in 1995, ended up seeming a clash of personalities. Carmen Lundy, the jazz vocalist, was over-amplified and so theatrically emphatic that she managed to dramatize her own vocal insecurities just as intensely as she did the texts she sang. The two drummers, Nana Yaw Aseidu and Munyungo Jackson, strikingly colorful in African dress, came to life in their solos but seemed irrelevant noodlers throughout the rest of the piece.

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Childs was pianist-as-mediator who was most effective when he entered into dialogue with the orchestra, or especially, the drummers, but who didn’t project a strong enough tone to be a convincing soloist. The use of orchestra was disappointing, mostly as backup. This wasn’t the most difficult-sounding music of the evening for the players, but it was here that the orchestra got into the most trouble.

Still, Robertson is a conductor who inspires confidence in a listener--his beat is utterly secure; his feeling for structure, unfailing; his overall manner, no-nonsense elegance. His dignity served all the music well and did Childs a great favor.