Dominick Argento's "A Water Bird Talk" borrows an idea from a story by Anton Chekhov, in which a man speaking on the harmful effects of tobacco embeds the woes of his personal life within his lecture. But Argento, a living American composer, puts a different spin on the story.

The speaker - actually a solo singer - is telling his audience about the habits of shorebirds, using slide projections from John James Audubon's book Birds of America to illustrate the lecture. Argento uses the medium of chamber opera to capture a tragicomic moment of personal discovery in the lecturer's life.

Utah Symphony Music Director Keith Lockhart describes the result as a sort of psychological meltdown for the speaker. "Gradually, you begin to realize that he's putting more of his own self, his own dissatisfactions with his marriage and children, into his lecture. It slowly devolves into chaos as he falls apart," Lockhart said. "Basically, the audience becomes the no-doubt-confused group that comes to hear a charming lecture about birds and gets something they weren't expecting."

Bass-baritone Timothy Jones, who will sing the challenging role, impressed Lockhart with his performance in Peter Maxwell Davies' "Eight Songs for a Mad King" during the Utah Symphony's 2006-07 season.

"He was so compelling, so great in this contemporary vernacular," Lockhart said. "I've been planning this ever since."

Jones, a Louisiana native now based in Florida, said "A Water Bird Talk" is "challenging musically, dramatically and artistically."

Some of the difficulty for the singer comes from the contemporary idioms of Argento's compositional style. But Jones stressed that listeners should be captivated, not intimidated. "It's not the usual ugly contemporary music," Jones said. "[Argento] composed it in a way that even though it involves some serial compositional techniques, the overall impression of the piece is lyrical and beautiful."

Furthermore, the premise of the drama is innately funny. "This piece is a comedy," the singer said. "Within the comedy, the character exposes a very serious side of himself as well, but the audience will laugh. Laughter is encouraged."

Utah Symphony pianist Jason Hardink will open the concerts with selections from Olivier Messiaen's avian-themed "Catalogue d'oiseaux."