Denton, 10.6.2025

It's not often one gets to hear a concert of modern music here in North Texas. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has their Sounds Modern series, but that's only a couple of times a year. Some of the performers occasionally appear in improvising contexts on the Denton experimental music scene, but opportunities to hear them performing works by 20th century and contemporary composers on the concert stage are few and far between. Now less so. 

Richard Shuster.

Minerva Contemporary Ensemble is the brainchild of a couple of members of the music faculty at Texas Women's University. Richard Shuster is professor of music and director of piano studies, while Ermir Bejo is manager and director for TWU's Margo Jones Performance Hall. Together, they've assembled an adventurous group of performing artists who filled the hall last night with a program of challenging and intriguing compositions. 

Jordan Fuchs and Whitney Geldon.

Joseph Klein's Chain of Circumstances is a piano solo that can also be performed with four hands, a solo dancer, and/or interactive computer music. On this occasion, the piece was played by Shuster and danced by choreographer Jordan Fuchs (whom we recently saw make his Improv Lotto debut at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios) and a second dancer, Whitney Geldon, whom  your humble chronicler o' events had the pleasure of accompanying back when she was a member of Big Rig Dance Collective and I was in HIO. The music begins simply, minimally, gradually evolving through episodes of sweeping lyricism and percussive tension, with Shuster spending a fair amount of time picking and strumming the piano's strings. The shifting sonic environment was mirrored in the movements of the dancers, who at times approached and interacted with the piano. A continually surprising and visually arresting curtain-raiser.

Mia Detwiler and Kourtney Newton.

Iannis Xenakis' Dhipli Zyia is a duet in the architect-engineer-composer's mature style, drawing on Greek folk dance forms and techniques like glisses, sharp picking, and abrasive bowing to create a harsh, bracing texture. The instrumentalists involved -- violinist Mia Detwiler and cellist Kourtney Newton -- have performed together often as members of Amorsima Trio and Sounds Modern, and that familiarity was reflected in the tightness of their interplay. I'd heard Newton use may of the techniques heard here in improvised performances, but it was thrilling to hear them in the context of a scored piece. 

Ted Powell.

Bejo's composition Opus 12 was played by pianist Ted Powell, an audible favorite of the mostly-student audience. The piece was ethereal and contemplative, returning periodically to the opening material, and well appreciated by the listeners. A crying baby who added their sounds to the performance evoked inevitable visions of children in Ukraine, Gaza, and now Chicago. Then Detwiler joined Powell for Kaija Saariaho's Tocar, a piece formed by the composer's vision of the tactile experience of playing the instruments and their commonalities of range, resulting in melodic lines that dance around each other, briefly join in unison, then go their separate ways.

Ted Powell and Mia Detwiler.

George Crumb was a forward-looking 20th century composer whose work, influenced by the sounds of nature, pioneered in the use of extended instrumental techniques, graphic scores, and theatrical elements. Thus, the three musicians -- Shuster, Newton, and flutist Britt Balk -- who performed Crumb's Vox Balaenae "The Voice of the Whale" did so wearing half-masks. For the opening cadenza, which requires the flutist to sing and play their instrument simultaneously, Balk employed a more "legit" tone than I've heard in other performances, where the artist chose to emphasize the vocal rather than the instrumental element. The cadenza ends in Crumb's piss-take on Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathusra opening (aka "the 2001: A Space Odyssey music): a recurring element.

Richard Shuster, Britt Balk, and Kourtney Newton.

Newton excelled on the "Sea Theme," played in harmonics, and the evocations of animal sounds in the succeeding variations (named for geological eras) reminded me of an improv I once saw her play in an outdoor duet with Elizabeth McNutt where they interacted with birdsongs in real time. She even lent the performance an air of theatricality with sweeping arm movements as she plucked chords. The stately "Sea Nocturne" included the sound of tiny cymbals (played by Newton, then Balk) and a closing theme that slowly diminishes in volume as it repeats -- the last played in pantomime, as if to foreshadow extinction. Bejo's lighting included a shimmering, "underwater" effect that greatly enhanced the piece's impact. A transcendent evening's music in a week that begged for transcendence. Hoping this ensemble performs again sooner than later.