New Music: Alive and Well.

Just last week, several thousand people filled the Harris Theater in Chicago to hear "new music." Dawn Upshaw was in town, and she was about to give a rousing performance of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ayre."

Aided by musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Upshaw's performance received the adulation it deserved. The musicians even repeated a movement from the first half of the work, further breaking from (recently) established tradition.

Upon entering the upper level of the theater, I could already spot the new music "purists" and academics, being obviously uncomfortable with the large turn-out for a composer and piece many of them probably considered "second-rate."

I've heard people slam Phillip Glass for sounding "too much like Yanni." The criticisms of Gorecki are many, including his "total disavowal of the past 100 years of advancement in Western Harmony." I heard a well-known composer slam Golijov for his "undisguised use of folk melody."

Amazing. Milton Babbitt's "Who Cares if You Listen?" mentality, aided by the mathematical snobishness of Boulez-ites, has done nothing but empty the concert hall.

Academic art has its place. And it needs to KNOW its place, which does not include the criticism of legitimate art that falls outside of its borders, or the students that aspire to such careers.

A city like Chicago has 9 million listeners to choose from. To assume that the only "intelligent" or "adventurous" listeners are the dozen-or-so who populate your new music series is an arrogant and agregious insult to many intelligent and open-minded people.

The fact is: people want something to hold on to. They want a dramatic curve. They want MEANING. Music -- or any art for that matter -- that fails to provide this is specialist at best, and useless at worst. An artist who refuses to extend a hand (or at least a fingertip) to his/her audience is nothing more than a creative snob, completely ignorant of the great tradition of artists who did just THAT.

The crowd at the Ayre concert was wonderfully varied, from neo-hippies to yuppies to art students to families with children to the simple-looking South-American couple sitting behind me. It was obvious that Golijov's creation had crossed numerous borders, just as the composer had intended it to, conventions be damned.

I wonder how many of the "real" composers sulking at the Ayre performance had the ability to compose something so simply beautiful and near-perfect as the guitar-voice duo in the second half of the work. Simple harmonies. Simple melodies. Transparent scalar structure. Yet, my heart fluttered when I heard it... and my intellect was not offended at its simplicity, because it simply worked.

The acquiring of Golijov as the CSO "Composer is Residence" is simply the smartest new-music move Chicago has made in a generation. Golijov is himself -- he expresses his cultural identity, his ideological bent, and his melodic heart in a music that can only be considered authentic and honest. If the Ayre concert is any indication, the presence of Golijov -- along with fellow CSO-Composer-in-Residence Marc-Anthony Turnage -- will go a long way in repairing the image of new-music in Chicago.

New music is alive and well, and its face is Osvaldo Golijov. He proves that it is possible to write authentic new music, while still caring "if you listen."