And there was Mr. Mackey, whose music almost always gives a leading role to the electric guitar -- played by him -- and comes steeped in nostalgia for the drug-heavy sonorities of 1960's rock.
The full ensemble of string quintet, harp, piano, percussion and eight winds came together for Noel Zahler's "Agarttha," an impression of a magic place in Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum". Potential problems of balance were eliminated by having the wind group focused on the bottom register, so the strings could shine and dance above heavy black sonorities and big gestures.
But the acute poetry, balanced sonorities, heavy order, and direct intimacy of Cranmer's prose have achieved permanence, and many of his phrases and sentences are as famous as lines from Shakespeare or the King James Bible.
What you notice first is a dense, organlike sonority, which Adams has named the Day Choir.
A passage in double and triple stops, with heavy bow pressure and grating sonority, provides the first of several hair-raising moments in the work.
It seemed to work: neither top nor bottom heavy, the orchestra produced a smooth blend of sonority that spoke with immediacy and im pact.
Every sonority is attractively striking.
That shifting sonority, though transfixing, seems static.
Color, texture and sheer sonority were in.
"The piano gives me another sonority".
Here, traditional symphonic sonority is barely tolerated.
