Festival of New American Music: Fresh and colorful

Playing new classical music well is a rare specialty. It demands embracing a collection of virgin notes, making them your own, then rendering those notes greater and more profound than even their composer intended.

This is pianist Sarah Cahill's specialty. She proved that Thursday evening during an electrifying performance of three vastly different contemporary works during the opening performance of the Festival of New American Music at California State University, Sacramento.

This gem of a festival, one of the most underrated in the country and running through Nov. 11, is celebrating its 30th year. Thursday evening was a quasi- celebration of composer Pauline Oliveros' 75th birthday. But in a way, it was also a celebration of the maturing of new music.

The evening's music was proof that the tyranny of atonality in new music is out, and in is the celebration of the individual style and the spirit of the iconoclast.

But to celebrate that spirit fully requires a medium, and that medium is Cahill. She brought the evening's music to life by keeping an eagle eye focused on clarity.

Cahill opened with the world premiere of Stephen Blumberg's "Numina," a potent work whose vivid collection of notes offers a curious dash of musical malevolence. Cahill played it as if it were an established part of the repertoire.

On Oliveros' "Quintuplets Play Pen," Cahill navigated tricky rhythms without effort. This gave the work a prismlike abundance of playful colors. But the notes in this work are not usual-sounding ones; they're off-kilter notes whose colors seem to have shifted in from an adjacent spectrum.

Cahill put a regal shine on Terry Riley's "Fandango on the Heaven Ladder." This 13-year-old work alternates between poignant Samuel Barber-esque passages and raw, driving ones that recall honky-tonk piano one moment, the lilt of tango the next. In contrast to the previous works, "Fandango" sounded like a truly older and mature work. It has aged gracefully.

The evening began with a highly nuanced performance by marimbist Nancy Zeltsman on her four-movement "In This House." Here the notes were deeply felt, and were delivered with delicate intimacy, as if they were words being read from a journal.

Closing the concert was Oliveros with her trademark accordion on the hypnotic and friction-filled "Longing for an Exciting Peace." The piece offered a series of chords over quixotic figurations on the accordion keyboard.

Overall, this night belonged as much to Cahill as it did to the interesting and provocative composers whose work she performed. And that is saying a lot.

Cahill's talents will be showcased again Tuesday at the Music Hall as the festival continues. Anyone who values the raw power and excitement that new music can offer should make an effort to catch this engaging pianist in action.

About the writer:

• Call Bee arts critic Edward Ortiz, (916) 321-1071.