Tania León.

Looking ahead to September 22, the New Juilliard Ensemble concert will open with the New York premiere of Hechizos, by Tania León. Written in 1994, the work is a Latin American character-piece that focuses on rhythm. The title, Spanish for “charms” or “spells,” suggests the process by which the rhythms unfold. Ms. León employs a kind of symphonic instrumentation (with one player per part), extended through the use of popular instruments such as saxophone and guitar. Like all of her music, Hechizos is strikingly unpredicatable, often seeming improvised in a way that masks her thorough compositional craft.

This engaging quirkiness reflects Ms. León’s extraordinary heritage as a Cuban of French, African, Chinese, and Hispanic ancestry. She was born in 1943, and, after earning a degree from the National Conservatory in Cuba, came to New York, continuing her education at New York University. At age 26, Arthur Mitchell appointed her music director of his newly-formed Dance Theatre of Harlem, a post she occupied until 1980. She began to conduct at the suggestion of Gian Carlo Menotti, and now appears with orchestras around the world. She has been a Revson Composer Fellow at the New York Philharmonic and artistic advisor to the American Composers Orchestra's Sonidas de las Americas festivals. Ms. León's opera Scourge of Hyacinth, which has been staged internationally, was commissioned in 1994 by the Munich Biennale, and won the BMW Prize as best new work of opera theater in that festival. Her most recent orchestral work, Desde, was composed this year with a Koussevitzky Music Foundation grant and premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in March at Carnegie Hall. Her music is published by Peermusic Classical.

Hans Abrahamsen. (Photo courtesy of G. Schimler, Inc./Ed. Wilhelm Abrahamsen)

Presenting a new work by Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) is a special pleasure, for Mr. Abrahamsen, long regarded as one of the most important European composers of his generation, has been silent for a decade. Apparently his marriage to pianist Anne Marie Abildskov, and the subsequent birth of a child, are among the major forces that restored Mr. Abrahamsen’s creative life. The dedication of this new Piano Concerto to her is especially lovely. (She premiered it with Norway’s BIT-20 Ensemble.) The concerto has a strangely fleeting atmosphere, with virtuosity suggested rather than showcased. Instead of hearing a true concerto, we seem to be experiencing a distant recollection of “the concerto” as a cultural phenomenon. Mr. Abrahamsen, however, leaves it to us to make that judgment. Like Jukka Tiensuu, whose music is represented later on this program, Mr. Abrahamsen declines to talk about his music. The soloist for this U.S. premiere will be Francesco Schlimô, a fourth-year undergraduate from Luxembourg.

Hans Abrahamsen graduated with degrees in music history and theory from the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and studied composition privately with Per Norgaard and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. Mr. Abrahamsen has been the artistic director of the Esbjerg Ensemble, and now teaches orchestration at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. His music began in a spirit of neo-simplicity, but later developed great stylistic and emotional complexity, in compositions that tend to be relatively short, but highly concentrated. His music is published by Hansen (in the U.S., Music Sales/G. Schirmer). He will attended rehearsals and the performance, and, on Monday, Sept. 24, will present his music to Juilliard’s Composers Forum.

Jukka Tiensuu.

Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuu’s 1977 composition nemo will provide an opportunity for the ensemble to explore the growing world of music using electronics. It involves amplification of the players, quadrophonic sound projection, with speakers placed around the audience, and two samplers. Everything is then altered through electronic reverberation. As a result, the ensemble of only 15 has an almost symphonic palette. While the extensive electronics provide ample headaches for the production staff, the writing for the players is extremely practical. Mr. Tiensuu, who normally is reluctant to discuss his music, provided a commentary about nemo that basically advises listeners to listen for themselves. “After all,” he writes, “it is not important what the composer thinks of his work, but the thoughts the music incites in the listener.” The significance of the title, Latin for “no one,” has remained the composer’s secret.

Mr. Tiensuu, who was born in 1947, had an international education, having studied with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and then at The Juilliard School, the Freiburg Hochschule (as a student of Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber), and at IRCAM in Paris. An internationally-active harpsichordist, pianist, and conductor, he has appeared in most European countries, the United States, and Asia, in repertoire extending from the late Renaissance to the contemporary. Among his compositions, which have been performed at important international contemporary music festivals on three continents, are works for orchestra, soloists, and unusual chamber ensembles including several works for accordion, an instrument that plays a major role for Scandinavian composers. Often recorded, his music is available through the Finnish Music Information Center. Current projects, chiefly orchestral, include concertos for accordion, MIDI-clarinet, microtonal flute, and piano.

Elliott Sharp. (Photo by Andreas Sterzing)

The program closes with the United States premiere of Racing Hearts, a dynamo of rhythmic energy by one of New York's original "downtown" composers, Elliott Sharp. This composer/multi-instrumentalist/producer was born in Cleveland in 1951, studied anthropology for two years at Cornell, then received a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Bard College and a Master of Arts from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His teachers included Roswell Rudd and Charles Keil for ethnomusicology, Burton Brody for physics and electronics, and Elie Yarden, Benjamin Boretz, Morton Feldman, and Lejaren Hiller for composition. An electric guitarist, in 1980 he formed Carbon, which became one of the leading downtown ensembles. He now leads the groups Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. Mr. Sharp enjoys bringing his scientific training to composing, using mathematical relationships in his compositions, especially what he calls “layers of resonating rhythms that groove hard and cause a certain type of turbulence.” This process led to a description of his music as “urban ragas.” His music, which is published by zOaR, includes improvisatory as well as fully composed pieces. Racing Hearts (1998) began as a score involving controlled improvisation, but the current version is a written-out score developed for the Orchestra of the Hesse Radio in Frankfurt. Although the piece has had a public reading in New York, this performance marks its American premiere.