If all music professors were like Robert Kyr, the world would sing
in perfect harmony (minus the Disney image).  He brings dedication,
Enthusiasm, just plain unconditional love to one of the most difficult
of human endeavors:  to produce the next generation of classical-music
composers.

It was amazing to watch the chair of the University of Oregon's
composition program ("50 students, the largest in the West!") in Beall
Hall on Saturday, acting as director of the Composers Symposium, run in
conjunction with the Oregon Bach Festival.  In an unfortunately typical
situation, pushing "new music" at a poorly attended concert of mixed
values, Kyr was having the time of his life, supporting, encouraging,
applauding young composers.

Cheerleaders are badly needed in a situation where there are few people
in the audience -- including 40 symposium participants and the rest almost
all students and faculty -- and Kyr was twirling that symbolic baton in a
dazzling way, making us all believe that we are witnessing a most marvelous
event.  The evening concert -- the second half of a doubleheader -- was
better attended, and with works such as Rafael Hernandez's "Invocation and
Dance" and Micah Hayes' "Adam's March," of higher quality.

How do you get people into the concert hall to hear new works? With great
difficulty.  I can be done, but it needs time, lasting value in the works
("I want to hear that again!"), and loving, outstanding performances.
How much time from breaking ground to filling a hall? Would you believe
a century? That's how long it took before Ives, Cowell, and company, with
Michael Tilson Thomas' missionary zeal, were able to pack Davies Hall in
San Francisco for the "American Mavericks" concerts.  Perhaps not that
long, but the Oregon Mavericks still have a bit of time before producing
that kind of music, and then gaining audiences en masse.

All day long, Kyr had the advantage of co-chairing the
grandiosely designated "New Millennium" concerts with the remarkable,
one-of-a-kind/they-broke-the-mold Lou Harrison, the most charming of grand
old composers.  Harrison's "Songs in the Forest" and, especially, his 1990
Piano Trio were the highlights of the two concerts, the latter given a
heroic performance by Third Angle musicians Paloma Griffin (violin), Nancy
Ives (cello) and Mika Sunago (piano).  Those three also shined -- along
with GeorgeAnne Ries (flute and piccolo) and Chris Inguanti (clarinets) --
in the performance of music by their contemporaries.  Substituting on a
short notice for the Third Angle music director, Joan Landry did a
commandable job conducting at both concerts.

At a well-attended noon "On the House" event in the Silva lobby, Kyr
and Harrison played tag-team with a dazzling topic-of-second duet about
and from Harrison, including his mastery of Esperanto and sign language;
being a fire-fighter and florist; how glad he is to be sponsored by Wells
Fargo, "my bank"; Harrison's music about his mother, a "frisky, frolicsome
woman, who lived in in Alaska and taught us kids four-letter words"; being
a melodist is "emotional math"; the difference between Turkish usul and
Indian tal; "I don't write in any style"; he is struggling with a book
about Korean music; the size of the Chinese emperor's foot determined the
pitch pipe, hence tuning differences between various dynasties; his fourth
symphony owes as much to Gregorian chants as to Indonesian gamelan; Dennis
Russell Davies is recording all seven of his symphonies...  and then, after
five minutes, my notebook ran out of space.

Among works by the young symposium participants, there was a uniform level
of competence and willingness to reach out to the audience:  a relatively
new phenomenon.  There was, of course, the always-present temptation to be
carried away by the tricks of the trade ("although the piece opens with
a near 12-tone row, only b-flat is repeated, the work as a whole is not
a serial composition..."), and an occasional throwback to computer
programming by way of trying to squeeze music out of bits and bytes.

Karim Al-Zand, from Harvard, introduced an instantly likable, entertaining
work, "Parizade and the Singing Tree," narrated excellently by another
composer, Jeff Defty.  Scott Unrein's Matisse-inspired "Cut-Outs for violin
and piano" (Griffin and Sunago again) represented the "locals" with a
brief, pleasant work, which ended up going nowhere.  Perhaps the rarest
thing in new music is a work that has something to say, says it, and stops.
Besides the obvious great ones -- Harrison, John Adams, some of Philip
Glass, etc.  -- I found that quality only among a handful of composers at
the hundreds of concerts I attended with eager anticipation of the next
"great one" -- most notably in the works of one young Canadian composer,
Kelly-Marie Murphy:  look for her work!

But no matter what happened in Beall Hall, Kyr was cheering his young
charges on.  Good for him.  Good for them.

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