Xtet Creates Lively Collage Using Programmatic Palette

Programmatic music hasn’t disappeared from the contemporary classical stage, but it is scarce. That made Xtet’s Monday Evening Concert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a refreshing anomaly, with three works created in response to specific narrative or dramatic impetus. L.A.’s Xtet, a malleable new music entity, brought the storied music engagingly to life.

Paul Chihara’s “Minidoka” is a poignant musical memoir of the composer’s childhood years, which were spent in an internment camp. A taped snippet of the swing tune “Way Beyond the Hills of Idaho” and a live quote from “I’ll Be Seeing You,” archival music versus real-time allusion, wove into a mesh of fragmentary and almost anecdotal melodic ideas.

Vernacular song quotes also appear in John Steinmetz’s mostly impressive “War Scrap,” but to a fault. Cheeky invocations of “I’m an Old Cowhand” and the theme from “Star Wars” detract from the integrity of a work written to express Steinmetz’s bitterness upon witnessing the aftermath of the secret bombing of Laos, and, by extension, America’s culture of violence. At its best, the work is a poetic articulation of rage and melancholy, closing with spare, elegiac musings from percussionist David Johnson.

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Peter Maxwell Davies’ dizzying song cycle “Eight Songs for a Mad King” was the evening’s most substantial--and zaniest--piece. Tenor John Duyker appeared in a goofy blue nightgown, while a sextet in formal, vintage attire navigated a score that was alternately absurd, tender and antiquarian. Duyker, who at one point smashed a “sinful” violin (ouch), handily seized the spotlight. With wild leaps of register and emotion, he commanded the material while liberating himself from rationality.

Melissa Weaver’s clever stage direction and lighting added an extra musical touch seldom seen at Monday Evening Concerts.