Going where classical music lovers fear to tread

By Kristen Peterson

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Classical music audiences tend to favor the familiar and the traditional.

We love Bach’s rigorous counterpoint, Mozart’s melodious complexities and Mendelssohn’s sentimentality.

Beethoven gives everyone a toe-tapping, finger bouncing, “we know this one” good time.

But monumentally outstanding serious music didn’t end with these guys. Nor were 20th-century masters Copland and Schoenberg the last to write a few good pieces. Still, we tiptoe nervously around new works (John Williams and Philip Glass aside).

Some argue that it’s an acquired taste. Orchestras, needing to fill seats and sell subscriptions, rely on the big names to carry the weight of the season.

So how do we hear new works that aren’t all, despite common misconceptions, atonal orgies?

Las Vegas listeners have Nevada Encounters of New Music, known by its catchy acronym, N.E.O.N., which brings in influential contemporary composers to lead master classes, showcase recent works, premiere music and lead seminars and lectures.

The program was brought back last year by Virko Baley, UNLV’s resident composer and recipient of international awards, commissions and critical nods. That conference featured Pulitzer Prize recipient Steven Stucky of Cornell, Grawemeyer Award-winning George Tsontakis of Bard College and Paul Chihara of UCLA.

This year’s four-day event kicked off Thursday night with Princeton University’s Dmitri Tymoczko’s “Beat Therapy” for a jazz/funk ensemble and Chen Yi’s “Qi” for flute, cello, piano and percussion. Composer Bruce Boughton led an afternoon seminar on film music.

The fun continues today with afternoon seminars by Baley and Bernard Rands and an evening concert featuring other new works, including Boughton’s “A Primer for Malachi” for flute, clarinet, cello and piano.

This weekend it’s all about diversity:

Tymoczko’s music taps into impressionism, minimalism, jazz and rock. Chen incorporates Chinese traditional music with European classical construction. Boughton is an Emmy Award-winning film and TV composer.

Another of the composers, Eun Young Lee, is a student who infuses Korean folk elements into her work.

“New music consists of many different styles, including music outside of classical, so students get different opinions on what it means to be a composer,” says Jorge Grossmann, UNLV assistant professor and co-director of N.E.O.N.

The festival also highlights unknown works.

“There is always a problem that when people think of classical music they think, ‘OK, I have to listen to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms,” Grossmann says. “In Bach’s time music was not recorded and people were not listening to the music of the Renaissance. When the classical period came along, people were not listening to baroque.

“Times have changed a lot and in a way contemporary music gets put aside because of all this rich music from the past.”

Performances are presented by Nextet, UNLV’s new music ensemble, and the New York-based Talea Ensemble and take place in Doc Rando Recital Hall in the Beam Music Center. While master classes are solely for students, the concerts, lectures and seminars are free to the public.