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Switzerland native Martin Schlumpf was one of the featured international composers. His piece Streams received its world premiere at the event and featured a savage duo: Matthias Müller on clarinet and David Taylor on bass trombone. The piece is rich and eclectic and provides room for the soloists to improvise their own cadenzas, in this case a successful Third Stream-like extension of the old concerto tradition. The concert was perhaps too long, but was quite well conceptualized by the way in which Will Dailey and Ovidiu Marinescu provided both stylistic variety and interludes during the set changes; a clear differentiation of genre was obtained by an effective change of lighting on stage. The lighting was neutral for the classical music and colorful for the jazz and rock music. It’s a shame, actually. Why couldn’t Arthur Gottcshalk’s Ceremonial Fanfare get a little touch of green from the lighting team? Finally, one of the crowd pleasers on the program was Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2. I enjoyed it as well, even though I thought that Márquez could have taken greater liberty and added more personal touches to the traditional Mexican danzón.

-Osnat Netzer