New music, good and bad, at Icebreaker fest

Four world premieres, two Seattle premieres — there was plenty of novelty at the Seattle Chamber Players' Icebreaker Festival in the second of two weekend programs.

Critic/composer Kyle Gann brought together five very different composers and contributed a world premiere of his own, in a lineup offering a mix of the good, the not-so-good and the exceedingly pretentious.

Fortunately, there was plenty of the good. Gann's "Kierkegaard, Walking" for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and electronics is an attractively syncopated piece that starts with a simple repeated figure in the cello, gradually joined by the rest of the instruments. It's rhythmically tricky (at one point the performers had to restart one section), but it's also an intriguingly jaunty piece.

Janice Giteck's moving "Ishi," accompanied by a short film by Emiko Omori, has been reworked since its 2004 premiere, which has only enhanced its ability to touch the listener with its questing, evocative musical lines.

Less exciting were Elodie Lauten's "Scene from 0.02 (the Two-Cents Opera)," with live musicians drowned out by an electronic mix of distorted speech and what sounded like engine noise; and John Luther Adams' "The Light Within," a solid wall of massed pitches with endless keyboard arpeggios and a bass rumble resembling a Boeing jet.

Eve Beglarian's "Robin Redbreast" (with vocalist Jessika Kenney) had a certain punchy energy. But the finale (William Duckworth and Nora Farrell's electronic/acoustic/virtual "Cathedral: Live in Seattle") was the kind of piece that gives new music a bad name. DJ Tamara tinkered with electronic backgrounds, producing a noxious drum track with an overeager bass, while Seattle maverick trombonist Stuart Dempster rattled noisemakers and toys and flutist Paul Taub played hard-to-hear long tones; later, the music mixed live cowbells with the sound of crashing surf. A "Chronicler," A.J. Sabatini, strolled around the stage while intoning portentous lines about "time and the universe" and "As if there had never been any other way to know." It's the sort of pretentious stuff that sounds like the Emperor's New Soundtrack.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com