For more than six decades, composer George Crumb has defied orthodoxies and expectations, not in a spirit of rebelliousness, but out of a simple desire to go his own way, sculpting alluring, utterly distinctive soundscapes.
The University of Colorado at Boulder College of Music is in the midst of a remarkable four-day festival, celebrating Crumb’s upcoming 80th birthday and surveying some 40 years of his works.
This ambitious undertaking continued Thursday evening with a concert in Grusin Music Hall that included a piece from 1979 but primarily focused on the now — two of the latest creations of this still vibrant, still productive composer.
Chief among them was the world premiere of “The Ghosts of Alhambra (Spanish Songbook I),” the 10th in his ongoing sets of song settings of poems by Spanish poet Federico Garciá Lorca.
For much of his career, Crumb has challenged traditional notions of the art song, and he continues that process in this complex group of seven pieces, substituting guitar and vibraphone, bowed cymbal, congas and a dazzling variety of other percussion instruments for the usual piano.
Instead of accompanying the singer in any conventional sense, the two superb guest artists — guitarist David Starobin and Colorado Symphony percussionist John Kinzie — were full, equal participants in the musicmaking.
With stunning, unexpected combinations of instruments and as many sound effects as musical phrases, they accented and punctuated the singing of baritone Patrick Mason, joining him to evoke the ever-changing atmosphere and moods of Lorca’s evocative words.
There was nothing conventional either about Crumb’s demands on the singer. In a performance that was at once nuanced, powerful and totally involved, Mason ranged from whispered utterances to chants that blurred into humming to shouts and even shrieks.
It is an amazing, haunting and transfixing work — a total success.
Rounding out the program was “Celestial Mechanics, Makrokosmos IV” (1979), a piano work for four hands admirably realized by six members of the CU faculty, and “Sun and Shadow (Spanish Songbook II).”
The Crumb festival will conclude with another concert at 7:30 tonight.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
