Anchorage Daily News

Juneau's aggressively exploratory CrossSound group presented a rare Anchorage program of daring, difficult, ink-still-wet music on Friday. The "Riff Raft" program at the University of Alaska Anchorage featured four world premieres, including works by three Alaskans.

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Composer Matthew Burtner

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Mat-Su composer Philip Munger debuted "Two Rivers," which might be considered two pieces. The first, "The Knik River at Jim Creek," a lament over our notorious wilderness junkyard, is only a few minutes long and similar to dirges for the environment in some of Munger's previous work.

The second, "Variations on a Theme on the Katrina Hexachord," used the same instruments -- two violins, cello, flute/piccolo, clarinet and trombone -- but was different in several ways. Each of six variations mocks certain publicity photos of President Bush in a set of audio caricatures -- for instance, "Hail to the Chief" was played in a funereal minor key. The variations' brevity, combined with parodies of familiar music, kept the interest level simmering, and Munger's scoring made acute use of the separate instruments.

The odd, nonmelodic theme, introduced as a waltz, didn't stick in the ear enough for me to re-find it in the variations, however. Given the hide-and-seek nature of the form, that came as a disappointment. The concluding "Little Dirge" for New Orleans, on the other hand -- the one noncaricature movement -- is among the loveliest music the composer has yet written.

South Korean composer Geon-Yong Lee traveled to Alaska for the premiere of his "Song in the Dusk VII." The elegant, evocative work for violin, bass, flute, clarinet, kayagum -- a Korean stringed instrument similar to a zither, played by Jocelyn Clark -- and percussion concluded with a Buddhist Vespers chant.

For Matthew Burtner, in contrast, it was a homecoming. The Service High School alumnus, now assistant professor of music at the University of Virginia, took advantage of the often-problematic UAA Arts Building Recital Hall, in which the stage occupies almost half the small room. For his piece "Pulling in the Light," he spread two violins, a mandolin and a clarinet across the space and set a cello next to the audience. A trombone was somewhere outside the hall, played by Anchorage's Christopher Sweeney. Think of the trombone as the sun in Plato's cave analogy, Burtner advised.

Long, quiet, almost motionless drones, periodically answered by the trombone, marked the beginning, with the mandolin bowed and the violins squeaking high harmonics. Burtner came onstage with a Yup'ik "cauyaq" drum, alternately striking the head or making it hum by rubbing it with his hand in a circular motion while deliberately, ceremoniously pacing around the players in a kind of ritual.

Played merely as an item in a percussion section, the cauyaq is just a big tam-tam. But Burtner -- raised in Naknek and Nuiqsut, familiar with Native music from his early years -- knows that the drum's sound is only part of the deal, that it also requires motion. The visual action supplied an anchor point -- or distraction -- while the drones stretched without horizons or trajectory. After some minutes, however, the visual element lost its grip as the monotonous sound drilled itself though my skull, making me feel like I was chained or drowning.

Then, over the course of a few bars, the pulse quickened. The rhythm became almost frantic, a mad dance punctuated by wild mandolin plucking from Dimitris Marinos of Greece. The trombone "sun" strode onto the stage and stood next to the cauyaq, which was no longer traveling but throbbing in one place. The excitement had me twitching in my seat in the kind of "my head's going to explode" astonishment that Plato's cave dweller might experience at the revelations of the outside-the-cave world.

Three "Anchorage Dances" by Stefan Hakenberg of Juneau finished the program -- not counting an impromptu solo encore from Clark and her kayagum. The last dance, "Head First," was the most ingratiating, with a swing beat driven by bass player Tetsu Saitoh of Tokyo and the jazzy flute of Anchorage's Laura Koenig.

Rounding out the performance were violinist Kathryn Hoffer and clarinetist Mark Wolbers, both of Anchorage, cellist Jared Carlson of Juneau and a sensational violinist, Ken Wright of Washington. Stewart Emerson of London and Berlin conducted.

Assistant features editor Mike Dunham can be reached at mdunham@adn.com.