Thornton Ensemble Opens Its Season on a Hot Note

Dramatic and brilliant writing combined with intense performances created a remarkably heated atmosphere at the first concert of the season by the Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble in bright, welcoming Alfred Newman Recital Hall at USC, Tuesday night.

American composer Joan Tower, on campus this week for a five-day residency, wrote three of the five performed works; all benefited from the well-displayed virtuosity and high accomplishments of 20 student players, conducted astutely and energetically by Donald Crockett.

Tower’s trio for clarinet, violin and piano “Rain Waves” (1997), receiving its West Coast premiere, and her “Noon Dance” (1982) dominated the proceedings through the sheer force of the composer’s musical personality--fierce, visceral, jagged yet not inaccessible.

The rest of the program was also strong. Brooke Joyce’s “La Quinta del Sordo” is an exceptionally gripping, four-movement chamber orchestra piece for 15 players, which began the evening at a high intensity that never wavered. And at mid-program, four players of the USC Thornton Percussion Ensemble proved diverting in James Wood’s quarter-hour display-piece “Village Burial With Fire.”

The players’ single-minded focus, in Tower’s cello-piano duo “Tres Lent,” and in “La Quinta del Sordo,” resulted in thrilling intensity and apprehensible projection. Not only were all technical demands met, they were achieved with compelling narrative skills. Each piece told a story the listener could follow.

The trio in “Rain Waves” comprised pianist Cory Smythe, violinist Ben Jacobson and clarinetist Laura Stephenson. The sextet playing “Noon Dance” was percussionist Lynn Vartan, pianist Smythe, clarinetist Stephenson, cellist Peter Jacobson, violinist Ben Jacobson and flutist Ada Lis. Cellist Nikola Ruzevic played “Tres Lent” most affectingly, with the composer at the piano.

* Composer Joan Tower concludes her USC Thornton residency by conducting her own Violin Concerto, played by soloist Michelle Kim and the USC Thornton Symphony, today at 8 p.m. in Bovard Auditorium, USC. $5-$10. (213) 740-7111.