Listening Afresh to Crockett’s Expressive Compositional Voice

Monday at USC’s Newman Recital Hall, composer Donald Crockett’s 50th birthday offered an excellent excuse for a concert of recent work by the longtime Thornton School faculty member. What emerged was a portrait of a composer moving in various directions while bolstering a personal sound, and one with a smart, shamelessly expressive voice.

For starters, Crockett has enriched the repertory of the classical guitar, which he also plays. Six of the many preludes in his suite “The Falcon’s Eye” were presented, persuasively, by USC faculty guitarists James Smith and Brian Head.

Smith’s set of three presented the evening’s world premieres: “Scatter the Ashes,” with scampering, muted bass lines punctuated by stabbing chordal accents, and the pensive purr of “Under the Violets.” Head’s set of three was equally impressive. The title piece’s rhythmic drive is alternately implied and stated outright; “That Clear Autumnal Weather of Eternity” is a moody study in double stops; and “Guiding the Minotaur” leans in the direction of Villa-Lobos and a Brazilian pulse.

Crockett has also excelled at setting poetic texts, as he does with Walt Whitman’s lines in “Ecstatic Songs,” sung with clarifying boldness by tenor Jonathan Mack, accompanied by Crockett’s wife, pianist Vicki Ray. “Smile, O voluptuous earth” artfully contrasts waves of dissonance and minor mode ruminations. “I hear bravuras of birds” is all rhythmic verve with a melancholy detour, and a telling thematic link between music and nature, an ongoing interest of Crockett’s.

We also heard the horn quintet “La Barca,” with wave-like rhythm and tonality that sound almost Minimalist--”almost” being a critical buffer zone. Closing the concert, Ensemble GREEN--pianist Bridget Convey, cellist Lynn Angebranndt and percussionist Lynn Vartan--gave heft and energy to the roguish “Scree.” Full of shifting emotional terrain, it also features wily cello/marimba unison melodies, at one point suggesting a jig conjured by Frank Zappa.