After the final Tender Land curtain call (previous post), I hot-footed it next door to the College of Charleston’s Simmons Center recital hall, where the Spring edition of the annual Young Composers’ Forum was already well under way. C of C professors Edward Hart and Trevor Weston run the school’s well-respected composition program – and they show off their new students every year in a fall program, with their advanced students heard in the spring. Performance quality can be variable – as the newly composed pieces are performed by a mixed bag of student musicians, faculty members and other local players – usually after very little rehearsal time.

I got there in time to hear part of Michael Hanf’s thorny Piano Duo I, followed by selected movements from his Piano Sonata I. Mike is a terrific jazz musician (vibes) as well as a promising composer. His music was absorbing, though a bit disturbing: its mostly calm surface was often roiled by angry, vaguely neurotic undercurrents. And, as he told me afterwards, that’s exactly what he wanted us to feel. I was disappointed to have missed his earlier piece for string quartet.

Then we heard Andrew Walker’s Wind Chimes, for piano – an evocative number exploring the random and unpredictable beauty of the title instrument. K.C. M. Walker’s contribution was Piece for Piano and Sound Sources – an interesting (but slightly confusing) study in contrasting sounds drawn from every part of the piano, with (if I got it right) others recorded and played back on-the-spot … all on top of a live radio broadcast. The performer spent part of the piece UNDER the piano!

The concert wound down with gifted jazz pianist Sam Sfirri’s Une Expérience, a well-made number for string quartet that offered distinct moods and nicely layered sonic textures. The final piece was Evan Rosenzweig’s Harboring Dawn, a haunting piece for oboe and string quartet that captured a radiant bit of the Jewish soul.

Apologies to the budding composers whose pieces I was too late for … I’m told I missed some very good ones. But I enjoyed what I heard – it’s always a joy to sample the creations of fertile and well-trained young musical minds.