Symphony breaks from tradition

The times, they are a-changin’ – even in the tradition-bound world of classical music.

The Spokane Symphony’s Symphony on the Edge concert tonight at the Big Easy Concert House shows the orchestra moving away from the familiar classics into the music of today, and the doorstep of tomorrow.

Morihiko Nakahara, the orchestra’s associate conductor, will lead the symphony in short works that go back as far as 1911 and as far forward as 2006 – including pieces by two local composers.

The Symphony on the Edge series started in 2004 to allow the orchestra to venture into unusual repertoire in a venue not tied to the formalities of the concert hall.

“Symphony on the Edge is really a weird infant child,” Nakahara says. “People come to these concerts who have been going to symphony concerts for years. But people also come who have never been to a symphony performance in their whole lives.

“My challenge was to create a program that was devoid of standard pieces, but music that people could still listen and drink to.”

The Symphony on the Edge performances feature concert lighting, video close-ups of the conductor and players, and an opportunity to buy alcoholic drinks (with appropriate ID, of course) and enjoy the nightclub atmosphere of The Big Easy. They are nonsmoking events, though.

Nakahara says that the world of classical composers today owes a lot to advances in technology.

“Now composers can write down and self-publish their music with computer programs,” he says. “Almost all of them can disseminate their music by having their own Web sites, and can let people hear their music with audio and video clips.”

For tonight’s program, Nakahara has chosen works by a group of young composers including two from Spokane: Jonathan Middleton and Don Goodwin.

Middleton is a faculty member at Eastern Washington University, but is on leave teaching at Stanford University. Goodwin received his master’s degree in composition at EWU last spring.

“Jonathan has became quite well-known for using algorithms in composing and we will play his ‘Reciprocal Refractions,’ ” Nakahara says.

Middleton has developed a computer program that can convert just about any set of data, from the alphabet to baseball batting averages, into a series of musical notes.

As for Goodwin, Nakahara says, “Don may be better known for having played keyboards in several jazz groups in the area. But he is a pianist, and a bassoonist, and a conductor as well as being a composer of both jazz and classical music.

“We will play his ‘Parallels,’ which shows both his classical side with jazz and rock-inspired riffs.”

The program also includes works by three other young American composers: Gabriela Lena Frank (American-born but with Peruvian roots), Dan Visconti and Missy Mazzoli

Nakahara begins tonight’s concert with a movement of the Cello Concerts by Friedrich Gulda, a Viennese pianist who died in 2000.

Gulda was famous for his performances and recordings of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. But he scandalized classical purists by playing in jazz clubs and recording with musicians from the worlds of jazz and rock.

“I learned about this concerto when our solo cellist, John Marshall, sent me a link to a YouTube clip from a performance at a festival honoring Gulda in Japan,” Nakahara says.

“Unfortunately they took the clip off YouTube because of copyright restrictions. But the piece itself seems organized simply enough, but it ends up being like an improvisation gone madder and madder.”

Among more familar composers, Nakahara has included works by Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Silvestre Revueltas and Arvo Part.

Not to forget the irrepressible Michael Daugherty, represented by his “Dead Elvis,” with a reincarnation of the work’s hero playing the bassoon.

“If there is a running theme in this program it’s that all of these pieces have a sense of the popular culture of their time,” Nakahara says, “whether it is the amateur marching band slogging its way through a parade in Ives, or the mariachi-meets-Stravinsky of Reveultas.

“I see this as a very user-friendly program. So I guess I may be afraid that just hearing this concert, people might not think it edgy enough.”