The concert illustrated Anderson's curatorial approach - disparate musical styles arranged side-by-side, in co-equal juxtaposition. In two piano solos - 1982's "Call and Response" (performed by Peter D'Elia), and 2007's "In Memoriam Gerald Gill" (played by Edith Auner) - fragmentary, avant-garde clusters, glissandi, and sparks slowly assemble into tonal endings: a snatch of hymn, a quiet cadence. Pianist and Tufts professor John McDonald and alumni Tom Swafford (violin) and James Coleman (cello) dug incisively into "Ivesiana": unsynchronized nostalgic simultaneities scaffolded and subverted by violent, disconnected outbursts. McDonald was also sharp and scintillating in "Watermelon," a 1971 solo that transcribes a street vendor's call, then occasionally glimpses it through aggressive modernist traffic.
Three premieres showed more overt vernacular references. "In Memoriam Jennifer Fitzgerald" (repeated from Friday's concert, which remembered the composer and Tufts alumna) featured trumpeter John McCann bringing flair to a jazzy, brief series of muted riffs before opening the bell for a final, haunting peal. "Jazz Overtones" was written for Ann Hobson Pilot; the BSO harpist, her husband, saxophonist R. Prentice Pilot, and percussionist Will Hudgins combined in minimalistic loops of bright African rhythms that unraveled into individual soliloquies, reassembling into a jump-cut series of modal jams: the ancestry, gestation, and birth of the cool.
The final premiere was the most unusual: "Birdsongs," commissioned for the art-rock ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic by band founder and one-time Anderson student Erik Lindgren. The five movements, four setting intricate texts by Anderson's son, poet T.J. Anderson III, referenced Charlie Parker, Igor Stravinsky, and Frederick Delius, but even within the rock milieu, Anderson's penchants emerged - mosaic sequences of isolated instruments, driving rhythmic grooves undermined and reasserted. Soprano D'Anna Fortunato's flamboyantly operatic, angular melismata were sometimes a curious fit, but testified to an all-encompassing musical appetite. Anderson's kingdom of culture is a diverse place indeed.
