Some Lively New Sounds Emerge From USC

Out USC way, the muse of contemporary music is alive and well. This much we know from evidence of such occasional off-campus field trips as Monday’s Green Umbrella concert at Japan America Theater, where the USC-based Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble concertized in a way that engaged the senses and assured one’s faith in the potential of new music to remain fresh.

The faculty boasts composers, including Donald Crockett, the ensemble’s director of many years, who create lively non-”academic” work. It’s a testament to the strength of the student ensemble that they gave a bold reading of his 1999 “Whistling in the Dark,” written for the California EAR Unit. A steady pulse is cleverly subdivided and rerouted, in a deft, lovely piece of writing.

Another exciting voice from the USC faculty ranks is Stephen Hartke, whose recent work “Gradus,” originally written for the New York-based group Parnassus, dazzles the ears and the part of the brain that discerns structure. In its propulsive string of melodic fragments, around which twisting ensemble lines dance, a sense of brainy delight emerges, reminding us that Hartke is one of those L.A. composers not heard often enough in L.A.

A general theme on this program had to do with new strategies for pushing around tonal materials, without undue sentiment or satire. Arthur Levering’s “Twenty Ways Upon the Bells” builds an elaborate fabric out of simple motivic threads, and Melissa Hui’s “Solstice,” all pared-down tones floated in the air, hovers with meditative poise.

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David Dzubay’s “Labyrinth,” true to the title, follows a dizzying course, alternately complex, unsettled and playful, even Zappa-esque at times, in its insouciant intricacies.

The program ended on a low note, actually, with Randall Woolf’s glibly rock-ish “Shakedown,” which takes its title from a J. Geils tune, and attempts the tricky business of matchmaking rock vernacular--a driving eighth-note pulse, bluesy harmonies--with concert manners. Curiously, it sounds old-fashioned, though dating only back to 1990. It probably sounded more hip, more now, back then.