Gerald Barry at Columbia

Friday's concert at the Miller Theatre featuring works of Gerald Barry was my introduction to the Irishman's music. His relative anonymity in the States evidently kept the audience away, as the hall was only half full, even with a last-ditch effort to offer 2-for-1 tickets. Unfortunately those who weren't in attendance missed some spectacular performances.

By the end of the evening, I had become a fan of the composer's intriguing and unique style. I found his onstage conversation with George Steel particularly interesting. Refreshingly awkward about discussing his own works, Barry nonetheless managed to provide entertaining insights into the pieces on the program and his compositional style in general. When asked about his penchant for incorporating "found materials" into his works, i.e., music previously composed by others and himself, Barry was candid about his belief that everything can be considered raw material, no matter how seemingly banal. He even compared his use of these scraps to a highly evolved version of dumpster diving - one person's trash is another's treasure.

Pianist Molly Morkoski, the artistic director of the event, did a superb job throughout. The highlight was her world premiere of a new work, Los Angeles, commissioned by Betty Freeman. Paul Griffiths, in the accompanying program notes, asserted that the piece has little or nothing to do with its namesake. However, the composer disputed this claim during the interview portion of the evening, calling the work a "hymn to Hollywood" and describing images of crackling celluloid as his inspiration. The pianist becomes a singer for an extended portion of the piece, a setting of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," including the seldom heard second and third verses. The work's beautiful closing section seemed a distant cousin to the Minuet from Bach's G Major Partita.

The piece that opened the concert's second half, "_______ (straight line)" was also made infinitely more accessible by Barry's discussion of two muses seemingly at odds with each other: the starkness of Rothko's paintings on one hand, and the elaborate scalar passages of Tchaikovsky on the other. Both inspirations were evident in the piece, which included an extended pppp duet showcasing the considerable talents of clarinetist Carol McGonnell.

The evening concluded with Barry's Piano Quartet No. 2. Like many of his works, it featured quick shifts in mood and texture (which to me seemed an extreme version of Stravinsky's rapid cross-cutting style) with frequent doubling of parts. To safely negotiate the extensive forearm clusters required in the opening piano solo, Morkoski donned protective black striped arm warmers, the perfect intersection of fashion and function.