Symphonic music lovers who relish hearing something new are in for a sweet surprise Tuesday evening when the Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra performs three original works by Mid-Missouri composers.
Conductor Patrick Clark will lead the orchestra in "Fe700°C," a piece written to celebrate the Illinois Symphony's 20th anniversary. (The title is a reference to the metal-forging process. Iron become malleable at 700 degrees Celsius; it's the point when a blacksmith can forge the metal into the shape he desires.)
"The musical material in Fe700°C is presented in the opening bars by percussion as "elemental and in the workshop,'" Clark said. "As the hearth is heated in what can be termed a developmental section, the colors of the material gradually transform from cool blues to rich reds until a flourishing brass fanfare denotes the entry of the blacksmith."
The piece is another example of Clark's keen interest in the interplay between sound, color and temperature.
"I think all of our senses come from a common source," Clark said. "That's what we deal with in music."
On Tuesday evening, the Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra will also play an original piece - "The Tragedy of a Hero" - written by Jefferson City High School senior Edward Crouse.
Crouse, who plays the viola in the symphony, said two Shakespearean figures - Macbeth and Julius Caesar - inspired his desire to compose an original work exploring the characters' tragic arcs.
"They embody the Greek virtues, and I was inspired by that," he said.
In "Tragedy of a Hero," a slow and foreboding beginning sets a harrowing foundation. Later, sustained crescendos and grandiose, dramatic passages are juxtaposed against adventurous episodes. In the middle of the piece, the tensions calm into a quasi-pastoral section, granting the audience - and Shakespeare's two heroes - a momentary respite. Finally a sudden and contrasting rhythmic section catapults the piece to its tragic conclusion, Crouse said.
He started writing with the sound of the string section in mind first, adding in woodwinds, percussion and brass as he went, he said.
"I don't know if that's the right way to do it, but that's how it happened," he said. "I'm biased toward strings. I started writing it as if it were a story."
Crouse said the piece - about eight minutes long - is in the tradition of 19th Century romantic music. He was recognized as the high school winner of the 2012 Missouri Composers Orchestra Project.
The third homegrown selection is a "symphonic synthesis" - a new arrangement for a symphony orchestra - of "Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes," an opera by Richard Wagner.
E.F. Braun, who plays the viola in JCSO and is a former faculty member at Lincoln University, composed the new arrangement based on Wagner's work.
In the piece, Braun has cultivated the opera's most-familiar passages and arias into a new piece of music, Clark said.
He noted it is unusual for a smaller-sized orchestra, such as Jefferson City's, to have such a wealth of new music to perform.
New music - even music composed in the last century - is exciting, but it's also a challenge for musicians, because it demands they leave their comfort zones.
"We hope it's going to be a draw for Tuesday's concert," he said. "These are very accessible pieces and I think the audience with enjoy hearing them."
Tuesday's concert also features the winner of the JCSO's 2014 piano competition, Richard Jeric, who will play "Totentanz" by Franz Liszt.
With the exception of the Liszt, all of the other pieces in Tuesday's concert were written in the 20th and 21st centuries.
"We continually take on substantive works in literature," he said. "We're becoming a stronger, more musical, more expressive orchestra."
The concert is scheduled from 7-9 p.m. at Mitchell Auditorium (formerly Richardson Auditorium), 710 Dunklin St., on the Lincoln University campus.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students, plus a nominal fee, if purchased online at www.thejcca.org. They also will be available for sale at the door.
JSCO events are funded in part by the Missouri Arts Council.