Sidney Harth -- Kept the orchestra's pace meditative during "Funebre." Click photo for larger image.

The adventurous U3 Festival brought forth some fascinating music last week, but the net effect is questionable.

In five events starting Tuesday, any one of the talented composers from Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh could have been Dustin Hoffman yelling futilely into the glass in the wedding scene of "The Graduate."

Most of the events were sparsely attended, outside of a few friends, students and devotees (although I am told that the last night, which I missed due to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert, did better).

To some, the attendance surely is a capstone to the misguided belief that new music isn't vital, that it's different from what the public likes and should go away. To me, the past week showed just how "normal" contemporary music is. Just like the traditional repertory, or any music for that matter, if people don't know about it, they won't know to come.

In fact, for its next installment, the U3 Festival needs to take a U-turn when it comes to marketing.

The composers did their part, putting aside artistic differences and joining collegially like you'll see in few other cities in the world. The concert scenes resembled "The Peaceable Kingdom," throwing the light where it belonged on the wealth of talent here.

But where was the real wealth -- the monetary support from these schools to promote the festival? The marketing budget was essentially nil and the event happened only because of in-kind bartering -- the use of each other's ensembles, halls and staff. That's just not enough.

To a university composer, a performance of a work is akin to a professor reading a paper at a conference. Can you imagine a university not coming up with the money to fly a professor to read at an important conference? That's essentially what happened last week.

U3 wasn't a reading session for students and faculty; it was billed as a public showcase. And it was deserving of wider appreciation. There were crack performances by student ensembles of pieces displaying the range of styles found at these three universities. When the festival returns in two years, it is time to ask for and to receive better funding.

And it should be quickly granted. Deans, provosts and presidents should be as interested in a self-produced music festival as they are in robots and athletes. If nothing else, they should selfishly care because of the prestige classical music brings an institution.

The presentation of the concerts also was lacking. In future festivals, I would like to see the concerts have a host. This person could connect the concerts to each other, introduce the pieces and the composers and generally make the audience feel at home if they aren't insiders.

It wouldn't take much money to make a difference in 2007. The composers, conductors and students will be ready, will the universities?

A multitude of music

The U3 concerts on Wednesday and Thursday nights took the festival to Carnegie Music Hall and Kresge Recital Hall, respectively. The overall quality again was good (and I list the rest online) but two stood out.

Reza Vali's "Funebre," performed by the Duquesne Symphony Wednesday under Sidney Harth, entwined music of sorrow and yearning from two seemingly disparate sources: Western classical music in the form of Wagner's "Tristan" chord and Middle Eastern in the form of a Persian violin rhapsody. In fact, the piece was essentially a short violin concerto, with soloist Cyrus Forough of CMU.

Written after the death of Vali's father, the piece progressed like one long "good cry." The violin wailed and the music underneath slowly articulated the "Tristan" chord, occasionally stopping, exhausted, only to continue, as if again hit by mournful remembrance. Though Forough struggled somewhat with clarity in his line, when the part called for impassioned play, he provided it. Harth kept the pace of the orchestra admirable even and meditative.

Matthew Rosenblum's lighthearted "00Opinions" was the desperately needed catharsis Thursday after the assimilation of so many serious pieces. He asked participants of an interdisciplinary conference to answer "What will music be like in the year 3000?" He then manipulated the recorded responses and mixed them with sci-fi quotes and lounge-band underpinning. The piece was similar in construction to his brilliant and funny "Under the Rainbow."

Other pieces included "Ode in Time of War" by Alan Fletcher, performed by the Duquesne Symphony; "Time, A Maniac Scattering of Dust" by Eric Moe, "Sonata for Ten Winds" by Leonardo Balada and "Concerto for Wind Orchestra, Op. 41," by Nikolai Lopatnikoff, performed by the CMU Wind Ensemble under Denis Colwell; "Island Echoes" by Nancy Galbraith, "Winter Dance" by Roger Zahab, "Morgenstreich" by Alan Shockley, performed by the CMU Contemporary Ensemble under Walter Morales; and, selections from the opera "Out of the Air" by Lynn Emberg Purse, in a world premiere performance by the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble.

Flutist Alberto Almaraza and pianist Morales performed "Paisaje Hispanico" by Stock, "Nocturno" by Galbraith, "Persian Suite" by Vali and "Malagigi the Sorcerer" by Efrain Amaya on Friday.

Three composers and 100 critics

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of U3 was a session Saturday morning in which three student composers -- Nicholas Batko (CMU), Federico Garcia (Pitt) and Jeremy Sment (Duquesne) -- got to work on their pieces with the full PSO. Resident conductor Daniel Meyer was brilliant in his coordination of this public rehearsal, letting the audience in on some of the inside baseball while also showing a keen ear for the music. For instance, he quickly suggested that Sment's promising "Moment 1" begin arco rather than the originally marked pizzicato, to make a phrase clearer. That suggestion, among other aspects of all the works, were discussed in an afternoon follow-up session that included some good advice for the young composers.

In all of the compositions (Batko's "Essay" and Garcia's "Passacaglia on a Theme by Bach" the others), personality was percolating and raw content evident but ultimately obscured by over-composing. The more these composers master orchestration technique and mature in articulating what they want a piece to be (no just do) the better. The three each admitted that Saturday's experience will go far toward reaching the next plateau.

The PSO's commitment to a reading session is highly commendable (it plans on doing it annually). I would hope in the future it would consider also providing the same crucial service to some of the local composers.