By JOEL SACHS

The New Juilliard Ensemble closes its 14th season on April 20 at Alice Tully Hall, shortly before Tully itself shuts down for renovations. Once again the N.J.E. program draws upon composers from many parts of the world, and features three world premieres and two Western Hemisphere premieres.

My regular articles in this publication about the New Juilliard Ensemble pose a challenge: The editors like a "hook," but novel twists are not easily found. This time I began to think about the names of the composers for the next concert, three of which may seem unusual—especially one that sometimes provokes a snicker from English speakers. That is Snorri Sigfus Birgisson, an Icelander whose first name evokes a sleep disorder—but not to Icelanders. Feeling that Snorri and the others deserve to have their names understood, I decided to introduce them by way of the meanings of their names.

Snorri Sigfus Birgisson (Photo Tolli Birgisson) Farangis Nurulla-Khoja (Self -portrait) Seppo Pohjola (Photo by Maarit Kytoharju/Fimic) Raymond J. Lustig (Photo by Ana Berlin) Gerald Barry (Photo by Anthony Hobbs )

I met Snorri when I first conducted the superb Icelandic contemporary ensemble Caput, of which he is the pianist. A better ensemble pianist would be hard to find. I was impressed by his musicianship, but also by his gentleness and dedication to musical teamwork. When I found the origins of his name, I was surprised. One probable meaning is "someone unmanageable or unruly." Not Snorri! The alternative, however—"wild combat" or a "hot fight"—suits his will to conquer musical problems. Sigfus, Snorri's middle name, is derived from words meaning "with a will to win" or a "will to victory," also appropriate artistically, though he is personally very non-competitive. As to Birgisson: rather than using family names, Icelanders take the name of their father, adding "son" or "dottir" as appropriate. (Every generation therefore has a different final name.) Birgisson—the son of Birgir—is "someone who can be trusted" or "someone who is helper in need." That is a perfect match for him.

At the end of my first rehearsal with Caput, I told Snorri I wanted to see his music. (Admittedly, that question often means, "I should ask you, but I really am not interested.") Like every composer, Snorri has experienced that hidden meaning and sought to determine if I was just being polite. Satisfied, he gave me scores and recordings … and upon inspecting them, I was really impressed by his imagination, integrity, and craftsmanship, and programmed a piece on MoMA's Summergarden series. I then asked him to write something for the New Juilliard Ensemble. The result is The Drift of Melancholy, for soprano and chamber orchestra, setting three texts by the American poet Mary Jo Salter. The soloist will be master's student Charlotte Dobbs. Incidentally, it is the only recent work for voice and chamber orchestra I have received for which the composer provided a piano-vocal score to ease the singer's job—typical of Snorri's professionalism.

Farangis Nurulla-Khoja is from Tajikistan and now lives in Canada. Her name means "light of God." My first connection with her is a good illustration of today's global world. At one of the Roaring Hooves festivals in Mongolia I met the fine Swedish composer and performer Ivo Nilsson. Much later, in my continuing explorations of who is doing what and where, I asked Ivo if he could suggest any interesting young composers, expecting to receive some Swedish names. Instead he recommended Farangis Nurulla-Khoja, who had spent time there and settled in Montreal. I thus found myself contacting a composer from Tajikistan thanks to a Swede I met in Mongolia. Go figure! In the course of e-mailing her I happened to mention that Continuum, the professional ensemble that I co-direct, had been invited to play in a festival in Kazakhstan. Hoping we might visit her country, which has very few foreign performers, she offered to arrange a concert in Dushanbe, the capital, to link up with our performance and classes in Almaty, the New York of Kazakhstan. Our visit to Tajikistan could make another excellent story. Suffice it to say that Farangis, who comes from a very distinguished Tajik cultural family, worked extremely hard to get an audience and helped arrange master classes for us at the local Special Music School (for young people) and the conservatory, as well as a meeting with local composers. (The trip was sponsored by the two U.S. embassies.) It was a pleasure to meet her and her family in Dushanbe, and to hear her accept my invitation to write for N.J.E.

Seppo Pohjola is a Finn who is well known in Europe but has not had many performances in this country. The name Seppo comes from the Finnish national epic Kalevala. One of the central figures is a blacksmith (in Finnish, "seppa") named Seppo Ilmarinen, who forges a "sampo," a mysterious machine which produces gold and grain. "Pohjola" translates as "north" or "nordic area" ("so I am a blacksmith from the north," he says). His 2001 piece Liebelei (Flirtation) crossed my path thanks to the wonderfully aggressive Finnish Music Information Center, a major publisher of Finnish compositions as well as an information library. Well funded, it bombards interested performers with the latest products of Finnish composers. He says of the piece, "In Liebelei I wanted to express a 'life is short, let us rejoice' attitude. I also had in my mind the beauty and shadows of the films directed by Max Ophuls. The name Liebelei derives from one of them."

Raymond J. Lustig probably strikes American readers as having a name needing no comment. Lustig is a Juilliard D.M.A. student, one of two winners of the New Juilliard Ensemble's annual audition process for Juilliard composers. Continuing the etymology hunt, I found that "Raymond" comes from Old German words translating as "advice" and "protector." Raymond protecting with his advice struck me as appropriate. His family name, Lustig, translates as "merry, joyous, jolly"—which describes parts of his persona that, thankfully, did not interfere with his work in doctoral seminars! His
new piece, Trashed—Images From a Sunken City, is a meditation on the terrible fate of New Orleans.

Irish composer Gerald Barry also has a "normal"-seeming name. He is one of my favorite "unconventionals"; his music has a user-friendly, quirky obsessiveness that I find endlessly appealing. Although little known in the U.S., Barry's music has recently attracted the attention of Betty Freeman, Los Angeles's premier patron of new music, who has commissioned a piece for a portrait concert at Miller Theater next year. "Gerald," a name brought to the British Isles by the Normans, means "rule of the spear." He lives it fully, at least in the musical sense. (Gerald told me that he never knew about that meaning.)

New Juilliard Ensemble Alice Tully Hall Fri., April 20, 8 p.m. Free tickets available April 6 in the Juilliard Box Office. Please see the Calendar of Events for more information.

His family name is an Angliziced version of an old Irish name signifying fair hair—which does describe his hair when he was young. His Lisbon (2005), a brief piano concerto, will feature Ben Smith as soloist. Notoriously unwilling to say much about his music, Barry offered that "Lisbon was commissioned by Amsterdam's Nieuw Ensemble for their 25th anniversary. After deciding on the music in late autumn 2005, I visited Lisbon for the first time in early December. The light, whiteness, fish, people, trams, hills, extraordinary Christmas decorations, sea, oranges, shops, shapes of buildings—these caused me to radically reorder the music on my return to Dublin. It doesn't matter what the music was like beforehand; what happened to it afterwards is what counts. Not that it's illustrative. It's just that its mood changed. Perhaps it glowed more."

Whatever the real implications of their names may be, the contrasting personalities, cultures, and musical visions of these five composers will ensure that this program eliminates any doubts about the variety of today's music.

Joel Sachs, director of the New Juilliard Ensemble and the annual Focus! festival, has been a faculty member since 1970.