A Symphony in Search Of a New Jersey Sound

Abstract

The New Jersey composers featured are Jeffrey Cotton, Steven Mackey, Frances White, John Harbison and George Walker, hardly a homogenous group. The 43-year-old Ms. White, who lives in Princeton, said it would be hard to identify a New Jersey sound or even a ''typical'' New Jersey composer.

The state's composers do not work in isolation. Like many New Jersey residents, Mr. Cotton was affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which he witnessed from his home in Jersey City. His ''Elegy'' for string orchestra, a musical response to those events will get its local premiere on Sept. 12, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. The piece was composed in the days after the attacks and premiered on Sept. 28, 2001, by the Boston-based Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, where Mr. Cotton is composer-in-residence.

''I don't think John Harbison would ever consider himself a New Jersey composer,'' Mr. [Robert Wagner] said. ''He was born in New Jersey but he is Massachusetts based.''

AMONG the highlights of the New Jersey Symphony's new season is a five-concert focus on the state's contemporary composers.

''The overall idea was to feature music that has some of its genesis in New Jersey,'' said Robert Wagner, the orchestra's principal bassoonist who is a member of the orchestra's artistic planning committee, which coordinated the schedule.

With the search for a successor to Zdenek Macal, the group's former music director, entering its third year, Mr. Wagner said the committee selected repertory that it hoped would engage audiences engaged, but also suit each of this season's 16 guest conductors, all of whom are potential candidates for the the job. Mr. Wagner said an announcement could come as early as next month, although he was tight-lipped about any front-runners.

''We've tried to match the pieces up with the right personality and conductors who are interested in new music,'' Mr. Wagner said.

More than 60 percent of the repertory scheduled this season is new to the orchestra. Concerts will feature lesser-heard 20th-century composers like Sergio Assad, Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Nikolaus von Reznicek, Arnold Schoenberg and Eino Tamberg, along with familiar symphonies and concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Strauss. The winter festival will spotlight Dvorak.

The New Jersey composers featured are Jeffrey Cotton, Steven Mackey, Frances White, John Harbison and George Walker, hardly a homogenous group. The 43-year-old Ms. White, who lives in Princeton, said it would be hard to identify a New Jersey sound or even a ''typical'' New Jersey composer.

''There are a lot of composers in New Jersey, but my impression is that there's not a real strong sense of community,'' said Ms. White, whose ''Centre Bridge (dark river)'' will premiere on Oct. 24, under the direction of Jane Glover. ''In New York you've got the downtown scene and the uptown scene, and you've got people who are all going to the same concerts. Things are a lot more diffuse here.''

But the state's composers do not work in isolation. Like many New Jersey residents, Mr. Cotton was affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which he witnessed from his home in Jersey City. His ''Elegy'' for string orchestra, a musical response to those events will get its local premiere on Sept. 12, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. The piece was composed in the days after the attacks and premiered on Sept. 28, 2001, by the Boston-based Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, where Mr. Cotton is composer-in-residence.

Mr. Cotton, 46, said ''Elegy'' was born of the desire to write a ''public'' work, although not big, overblown statement.

''It would have been inappropriate to be grandiose,'' he said. ''The scale of the horror of the day cannot be represented in an artwork.'' The piece, a simple, poignant string essay, also ends optimistically in a major key. ''I wanted to end it with a sense of resolution a 'this too shall pass' kind of message,'' he said.

Nearly opposite in tone is Mr. Mackey's ''Lost and Found,'' which the composer self-effacingly describes as a ''fluffy toccata for orchestra or mini-concerto for orchestra.'' The 10-minute work, which is to have its New Jersey premiere on Oct. 2 under the baton of Marco Parisotto, abounds in high energy and popular influences.

A music composition and theory professor at Princeton who plays electric guitar, Mr. Mackey, 40, also has roots in the rock world; in the 1970's, he played in a band that opened for the rock band Tower of Power. He said music at Princeton had come a long way since the 1950's and 60's, when it was closely identified with the rigorously mathematical composer Milton Babbitt.

''Among graduate student applications today there are a lot of electric guitar players and a lot of people who want a wider musical experience, wider than just American serialism, which in Milton Babbit's music and others, was part of a general trend to make music hermetically sealed, with very little reference to music outside of the studious concert music tradition,'' he said. ''Certainly we've turned that reputation around.''

Ms. White, who studied at Princeton, has written several pieces that incorporate taped natural sounds recorded around central New Jersey. ''Center Bridge (dark river)'' is one of three works that blend traditional string textures with sounds recorded at a bridge that spans the Delaware River at Stockton. During the course of the work, the strings imitate the rumble of the cars over the bridge.

''I'm not a big car fan but one thing that struck me very powerfully about that bridge is the way it turns the sound of the cars into this really beautiful thing,'' Ms. White said.

Not every composer featured has strong local associations.

''I don't think John Harbison would ever consider himself a New Jersey composer,'' Mr. Wagner said. ''He was born in New Jersey but he is Massachusetts based.''

Still, Mr. Harbison, 64, who won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for music, spent his formative years in the state. He was born in Orange and grew up in Princeton, where he studied as a teenager with the eminent composer Roger Sessions. The symphony has performed and recorded several of his works, and in a program beginning on Nov. 28, Carlos Kalmar will conduct ''The Most Often Used Chords,'' a four-movement piece.

George Walker, 81, is based in Montclair, but has had a well-traveled career, studying in Paris and working in Maryland, Colorado and Delaware. But he also spent more than a decade on the composition faculty at Rutgers, and upon his retirement in 1992 was chairman of the school's music department. In 1996, he became the first black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music.

In a program beginning on Jan. 2, Jeffrey Kahane will conduct ''Lyric For Strings,'' Dr. Walker's most frequently performed work. This is the latest in the composer's association with the orchestra, which included a commission for its 75th anniversary in 1997.

Information on the New Jersey Symphony's season: [phone].

Photograph

Jeffrey Cotton, shown in Jersey City, is one of five composers featured in the New Jersey Symphony's new season. (Photo by Jill C. Becker for The New York Times)