After heading the University of Chicago-based Contemporary Chamber Players for more than three decades, founder Ralph Shapey has finally passed the baton to the next generation. His successor, Yale-trained California Institute of the Arts professor Stephen Mosko, is part of a funky west coast contingent that’s enamored of multimedia, cyberspace, and music from the Pacific Rim, and while still advocating pluralism–a CCP hallmark–Mosko’s debut program as music director tilts slightly westward. Milton Babbitt’s schematic Consortini (1989), a clever interplay of instrumental layers, represents the American old guard, while the European establishment is covered by Olivier Messiaen’s Piece pour piano et quatuor a cordes (1991), one of his final works, in which the piano engages in a pas de deux with a string quartet and, as usual with the French innovator, a bright birdcall serves as a refrain. For a touch of midwest iconoclasm Mosko includes the world premiere of John Eaton’s Lettere. Composed during a sojourn in Italy last year and based on poems by Michele Ranchetti, this song cycle mourns the death of a parent. Both Chen Yi’s The Points (1991) and Wadada Leo Smith’s Tao-Njia (1994) pay homage to Asian traditions: the melodic material in The Points, to be performed on a pipa (a pear-shaped, four-stringed lute), is taken from the opera of central China, and Tao-Njia, whose title combines Chinese and Swahili terms to mean “the right path,” is a largely improvisational ensemble piece based on a complicated notational system Smith invented. Soloists include mezzo-soprano Nelda Nelson and pipa wiz Min Xiao-fen. Friday, 8:30 PM, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th; 702-8068.
