Where sacred and street music meet
“Street Antiphons,” a recent chamber work by Houston composer Pierre Jalbert, will make its Houston debut on Friday at the Wortham Theater Center.
“In this piece, I wanted to contrast the music of the street with sacred music,” Jalbert explains. “So there’s some fast stuff that’s rhythmically intense and relentless. The slower parts sound lyrical and ethereal, almost like time is suspended.”
Montrose Trio, the group performing Jalbert’s work, will make its Houston debut on Friday, as well. Founded two years ago, this chamber ensemble contains two members of the disbanded Tokyo String Quartet — violinist Martin Beaver and cellist Clive Greensmith — as well as Houston-based pianist Jon Kimura Parker. Trios by Franz Joseph Haydn and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky also are part of Friday’s program, presented by Da Camera of Houston. Local clarinetist Richie Hawley will join the trio to perform “Street Antiphons.”
In the final movement of the chamber work, Jalbert quotes from “O Antiphon,” a Gregorian chant more than 1,000 years old.
Gregorian chants have influenced several of the composer’s works.
“If you’ve ever gone into a cathedral and have heard monks chanting, there’s something universal about the sound,” Jalbert says. “I’m also interested in big outdoor spaces. ‘Big Sky,’ which I wrote for the Houston Symphony, was inspired by trips I’ve taken to Big Bend National Park. And sometimes my influences can come from visual art. All these things are in ‘Street Antiphons.’”
The 49-year-old composer was asked to write “Street Antiphons” by a consortium of four: the Boston Chamber Music Society, San Antonio’s SOLI Chamber Ensemble, Dallas’ Voices of Change and Da Camera of Houston.
It already has been performed in Boston, San Antonio and Dallas. Now it’s Houston’s turn.
Following the Boston performance last April, a Boston Globe critic described the piece as “grounded in the tonal language and structures of the past, yet willing to extend them into a contemporary rhetoric.”
The New Yorker magazine also has taken note of Jalbert, dubbing him “an acknowledged chambermusic master.”
Originally from Vermont, Jalbert came to Houston 20 years ago to teach at Rice University. He has found that the university’s Shepherd School of Music has been a very good place to hone his craft.
“Just being around young people and other musicians at a music school stimulates ideas,” Jalbert observes. “It keeps me on my toes and open to new ideas. I work in a very musical environment.”
Jalbert has written most of his 50-plus compositions — for orchestra, chamber ensembles and soloists — at Rice. His music has struck a chord in the classical-music world, and he’s in demand throughout the country.
In May, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra will perform a new work titled “String Theory,” in Philadelphia. Jalbert is currently composing a new string quartet — his sixth — for the Nebraska-based Chiara String Quartet. Following that, he’ll write a concerto for two violins to be performed by the Los Angeles and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras.
“I’m writing for anyone with open ears,” Jalbert says. “I think my music is very accessible. It’s not very difficult to get into. And my intention is to communicate something. I hope that in some way, my music will touch people.”