By JOEL SACHS

José Maceda

This month's concert by the New Juilliard Ensemble concludes its 13th season, which has celebrated Juilliard's centennial with four concerts of music composed for the group since its founding. Although largely comprising works up to 10 years old, the season also included five world premieres, bringing the ensemble's portfolio of "its own" compositions to more than 70. The final 2005-06 concert showcases composers from the United States, the Philippines, Australia, Germany, and Serbia via New York. I was particularly eager to notify José Maceda, the beloved senior composer of the Philippines, that his Music for a Chamber Orchestra, which he wrote for the N.J.E. in 1997, was going to be revived. Such news always cheers composers living far from the centers of new music. Unfortunately, I learned that he had died in 2004. The news saddened me; while it is wonderful when music outlives its composer, it is also nice for a composer to enjoy his music's life.

Bernd Franke (Photo by Uwe Frauendorf)

Maceda was an active ethnomusicologist, whose studies of Filipino traditional music played a decisive role in his country's awareness of its own culture. Music for a Chamber Orchestra reflects his ability to see the broad implications of cultural fusion. He described the piece as "a departure from the classic theories of harmonic logic, temperament, and the concept of the orchestra." Its sonorities rest on drones, rather than harmonic progressions; the instruments are divided into four spatially-separated mixtures of winds, brass, strings, and seven sets of percussion. Multiple layers of reiterated rhythms evoke the Philippine gamelan. Yet Maceda felt that the potential for variety was still limited by traditional Western tuning. In other works, therefore, he included non-Western instruments, "leading away from the confines of temperament towards another concept of the orchestra."

The sounds of the composer's environment also play a major role in Australian composer Andrew Ford's Scenes From Bruegel, which was composed for this concert. Ford wanted to "translate" into music three of his favorite paintings by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel, who vividly recorded everyday life in the 16th century. Ford began to think of the piece in terms of Robertson, a town with a population of about 1,000 in the southern highlands of New South Wales, where he lives. As he would walk to the post office, he would pass the local primary school and "witness the noisy, hectic acting out of Bruegel's Children's Games in the playground. Accordingly, in preparing the recorded tracks of his piece, he incorporated into the first movement the voices of Robertson schoolchildren; into the second, several local birds; and in the third movement, "the Robertson Public School Band plays a little march that is eventually taken up by the 18-piece ensemble."

Andrew Ford (Photo by Jim Rolon)

The other brand-new piece on the program is by Ryan Francis, one of two winners of the New Juilliard Ensemble's annual audition for composition students. His Qui Lux also has roots outside today's composed music—a motet by Guillaume de Machaut. "The introit section of the motet," he writes, "is an unaccompanied solo line that transfixed me when I first heard it. To distract myself from other projects, I would reharmonize this melody various ways and sometimes was unexpectedly pleased with the results." Eventually he decided to use his commission from the New Juilliard Ensemble to explore the potentialities of his discoveries in "a large-scale work that freely incorporated elements of the motet within a larger musical world." As he worked, he began to use electronics to transform the Machaut and "create a dialogue with the live ensemble." He also was drawn "towards greater and greater abstractions of the original motet, to the point where it became essentially unidentifiable to the listener, but still served as a tool for me to generate material for both the players and the electronics ... At the end of the piece, the curtain is raised and the motet finally makes a brief appearance."

Milica Paranosic (Photo by DJ Lightbolt)

When planning this concert, I was especially interested to revive Milica Paranosic's 2002 Parabaraba, because it highlights her extensive experience in electronics. It did not occur to me that Ryan Francis and Andrew Ford would also elect to use electronics and not tell me about it until very late in the game! Happily, the three use electronics very differently. Belgrade-born Paranosic, who teaches music technology and manages Juilliard's Music Technology Center, describes herself as a true believer in "multi" and "mixed," who is "very pleased that others find her music hard to categorize." She strongly believes in the power of "mistakes," for she also believes that there aren't any, and will many times let them influence her choices. While not necessarily aiming to "please" the audience, she always strives to offer an experience. To do that, she frequently reaches for unusual solutions with uncertain outcomes, hoping to surprise and be surprised herself. Her interest in "extended music" (her own term describing her tendency towards including extraneous elements in music performances) has made her music a natural for concert halls, galleries, theaters, clubs, and even parks—venues where her music has been heard throughout her homeland and in the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, Italy, Croatia, and Israel.

New Juilliard Ensemble Alice Tully Hall Monday, April 24, 8 p.m. Free tickets available April 10 in the Juilliard Box Office.

Finally, a note about Bernd Franke's Petrel Seascapes, composed for the N.J.E. and premiered in 2002. Last May, when selecting it for this season, I presumed that the Vocal Arts Department would have an excellent singer to be the soloist. To give the soprano time to learn it, I scheduled it for the season's last concert. I was correct: Vocal Arts had appropriate singers—and all of them are busy with the premiere of Lowell Liebermann's commissioned opera Miss Lonelyhearts! Fortunately, Juilliard alumna Camille Zamora, who premiered Petrel Seascapes during her days at Juilliard, was able to fit it into her busy schedule and is delighted to be able to sing it a second time—a rare treat in the new-music world.

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