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The NOVA Chamber Music Series regularly features of Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert and other giants. That's important, but insufficient to satisfy the series' director, Jason Hardink, nor adventuresome listeners who make up the series' core audience.
At least once per season, Hardink celebrates the vanguard. Sunday is the day to hear a program that surveys 100 years of modernity, from Charles Ives' atmospheric Sonata for Violin and Piano, written early in the 20th century, to new scores whose ink has barely had time to dry.
The concert features the world premiere of a string trio in seven short movements, "Simple Precepts," by University of Utah music composition professor Steve Roens. The piece was commissioned by NOVA's board of directors.
Also new to Utah audiences will be Pierre Boulez's "Anthemes II," an astonishing piece for violin and electronics, performed by violinist Hasse Borup with Miguel Chuaqui as computer performer; and "A Way [Tracing]" by a young New Yorker making waves on both sides of the Atlantic, Jason Eckardt. Eckardt will create a major piece for NOVA's 2013-14 series, and Hardink wants listeners to become acquainted with his work.
Hardink expects Sunday's concert to be startling and memorable. "These are the events people remember and want to talk about," he said. "People don't talk about an all-Beethoven concert a year later."
Hardink, who is the Utah Symphony's principal keyboardist, sees Salt Lake City as an important music center in the American West and means to do his part keep the city's arts scene abreast of developments at the musical forefront.
"I make a point of doing my research and having a sense of what is happening in the music world that is important and worth bringing to Utah," he said. "It's a way to stay connected to what is happening in Paris and New York. We want to take part in the international process of developing new music."
"Anthemes II," a recent work by powerhouse composer Boulez, exemplifies the latest developments in electronic music, which is changing quickly with technological advances.
Hardink said that the piece's electronic elements contribute in beautiful and meaningful ways. "It is actually hard to find a piece that involves electronics, yet is great and profound," he said. "This one is an incredible technological feat and very special in the way the electronics respond to the violin.??
The virtuosic showpiece doesn't employ a tape, as some earlier electronic/live compositions did. Instead, an electronic patch to a mainframe computer at Boulez's musical research organization creates instant electronic musical responses triggered by the sound of the violin.
Several minutes of give-and-take between man and machine open the piece. During its remainder, preset electronic music riffs — 207 of them — are triggered by Chuaqui from a computer keyboard as Borup plays the violin.
It doesn't sound easy, and it isn't. "I have to really follow him," Chuaqui said. "And I have to do that manually, listening to him and triggering the right thing."
Speakers around the perimeter of Libby Gardner Concert Hall create a surround-sound effect for the amplified violin and the electronic blips and bloops that seem to grow organically from what it plays.
Hardink believes each piece on this adventuresome NOVA program was designed by its composer to "speak to the human heart and communicate." The concert also includes two familiar works once considered daring: Utah Symphony concertmaster Ralph Matson solos on sonatas by Ravel and Ives with Hardink at the piano.
Listeners who come expecting the unexpected will be rewarded. "If an Ives piece is the easiest thing to listen to on the first half, you know you are in for something special and crazy," Hardink said.
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Modern music
The NOVA Chamber Music Series presents the world premiere of a string trio, "Simple Precepts," by University of Utah music professor Steve Roens. Regional premieres of works by Jason Eckardt and Pierre Boulez are on the program along with sonatas by Ives and Ravel performed by Utah Symphony concertmaster Ralph Matson.
When • Sunday, Jan. 22, at 3 p.m. in Libby Gardner Hall, 1365 E. Presidents Circle, University of Utah campus, Salt Lake City.
Tickets • $18; $15 for seniors; $5 for students; free to U. students; at the door.