Golijov's Goulash

When my friend who is an opera obsessive (where "opera" is bracketed between Donizetti and Puccini) called me from California and said, "I heard this new Latin-influenced choral/orchestral piece on the radio and it was amazing," I knew immediately what he was talking about. It had to be Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos. Since its premiere in Stuttgart as part of the European Music Festival’s "Passion 2000" project, the buzz surrounding the work elevated it to the status of a number-one hit in the classical music world. But unlike many "hits" of contemporary classical music, Golijov’s music spills over the boundaries that have traditionally kept concert music and widespread popularity mutually exclusive.

His ability to create works of stunning ingenuity, often through weaving together numerous cultural colors and contexts, is underscored by an intuitive sense of what is "pretty" or "powerful" to a wide audience. Some critics have gone so far as to call some of his work "crossover," but there is no way that this man should be pigeonholed into a category with the likes of Yanni, Bond or, god forbid, Hooked on Classics. Golijov is part of a growing contingent of American composers, along with the likes of Tan Dun, Brent Michael Davids, Gabriela Frank, Fred Ho, Tania León and Chen Yi, who are trying to make sense of both their Western training and the roots that defined their earliest musical experiences. These composers aim to shape the two (or more) parts of their musical upbringing into their own compositional identity, yielding incredibly fresh and exciting works.

Born in La Plata, Argentina, Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household. His mother was a piano teacher, and he started his classical training early. But with the classical training came extensive exposure to Jewish liturgical music, klezmer, Astor Piazzolla’s "new tango" and, of course, the myriad popular dance styles that characterize Argentine popular music. His knowledge of Jewish music and klezmer was refined during a three-year stint at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, and his more academic compositional voice developed further as a PhD student of George Crumb, one of the most original American composers of the past half-century. Being able to sew these very different threads of music together is what Golijov does best, yielding music that is not only fascinating to study, but a joy to listen to.

Next Monday, Carnegie Hall wraps up their "Making Music" series with a discussion and concert dedicated to Golijov’s distinctive sound featuring several renowned new music interpreters, including the Kronos Quartet, soprano Dawn Upshaw and clarinetist David Krakauer. The program opens with a set of five Mexican art songs arranged by Golijov, followed by two songs of his own. All of these were recorded by Kronos for the Nonesuch release Nuevo last year.

But the real meat of the program is his work for string quartet and klezmer clarinet, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, referring to the 13th-century Kabbalist rabbi and mystic. According to Golijov, he conceived of the work to represent three languages important to Judaism: Aramaic, Yiddish and Hebrew. The piece moves through a bipolar setting of two Jewish prayers that hover between melancholy and frantic, and then swoops into a swirling klezmer dance tune, eventually winding down to resolve the prayer. The solid reputation of Kronos is, of course, a draw, but it is clarinetist David Krakauer–a sought-after classical and klezmer soloist who leads his own klezmer-jazz fusion band called Klezmer Madness!–who will put the sparks in this performance.

Making Music: Osvaldo Golijov Mon., April 7, at Weill Recital Hall, 154 7th Ave. (57th St.), 212-247-7800.