By Alan Rich

Notes on an uncommonly splendid week at Zipper Concert Hall — and what a valuable asset to musical life that handsome, small room has become!

The second in the reborn Monday Evening Concerts drew an almost-capacity crowd, despite there being not a familiar name on the program. Steven Stucky, who curated, had chosen well; what was most compelling was the spread in styles, from the academic/contrapuntal (James Matheson, Sean Shepherd) to the youthful/kicky (Andrew Norman) to three short works (Philippe Bodin, Ana Lara, Brian Current most of all) in which the voice of an original composer with something important to say could be clearly heard. The performances, by members of XTET led by Donald Crockett, all of them locals, offered further assurance that if it should happen that serious composition manages to survive, it will be properly performed. I particularly liked Current’s Faster Still, the final work, an exhilarating study in changing tempos, with a killer part for solo violin (Movses Pogossian). In our previous chat, Stucky had described the piece as “Elliott Carter writing arpeggios,” which stops short of dealing with the energy of the piece, the startling jolts in its changes of pace. (Alternating Current, perhaps?) The composer lives in Toronto; he is worth watching, even from afar.

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