Golijov's world

Jan. 20, 2006 | You can hear the world in Osvaldo Golijov's music. Here's the best place to begin -- a nightclub in Buenos Aires, where a lone accordion bellows a Spanish melody with a menacing tone. A last low chord is sustained and the accordion is silenced by a percussive Mediterranean dance, knives being used for drumsticks, unraveling down a Beirut street. The cacophonous beat stops and a female soprano enters a church in Rome, intoning a prayer for Jesus on Good Friday. The Mediterranean dance cuts her off but she returns, more haunted than before, trailing the spare notes of a harp and trumpet, singing in Arabic, "These wounds have no cure." A dictator rallies his troops in Madrid; a siren is heard and fades away. The Spanish accordion returns and exhales its final breath.

These cinematic sounds make up the six-minute song "Wa Habibi" ("My Love"), from Golijov's recent album, "Ayre," which was nominated earlier this month for a Grammy for best classical contemporary composition. "Ayre" means "air" or "melody" in medieval Spanish, but its 11 songs -- more like 11 short movements -- constitute a musical bazaar that couldn't sound more modern.

"Osvaldo is writing music that is vital and important to us today," says vocalist Dawn Upshaw. The magnificent soprano, who has graced the world's stages performing Mozart and Debussy, George Gershwin and John Adams, illuminates the treasures of "Ayre" by singing in five languages, mining caverns in her voice she's never tapped before. "Osvaldo's music forces us to look and listen in a way that we're not asked to do inside other music," she says. "It speaks to the divisiveness and coming together of cultures. There's so much going on in the world right now. Osvaldo's music is asking us to pay attention."

The war and harmony in Golijov's music reflect the countries and cultures that have shaped the 45-year-old composer's own life. He grew up in Argentina, to which his grandparents had emigrated from Russia and Romania, lived in Israel, and moved to America two decades ago. But please understand, says Golijov, who speaks thoughtfully and gently, a generous spirit alight in the timbre of his voice, "I don't believe in preaching. Art shouldn't be a pamphlet saying, 'Oh, let's all be brothers.'" He pauses, and admits with a laugh, "Well, I do believe in that political message."

Up to, oh, nine people, those who follow contemporary classical music, have got the message about Golijov. It's a few more when you include music critics and artists. In 2000, he was enlisted by film director Sally Potter to score her melancholic gypsy affair, "The Man Who Cried." Three years later he was awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant to the pleasing tune of $500,000. Currently he is scoring Francis Ford Coppola's World War II drama about a Romanian fugitive, "Youth Without Youth," and completing an orchestral work for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony.

But the composer is about to get the biggest boost in his career. From Jan. 22 to Feb. 22, the Lincoln Center in New York is presenting "The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov."

The series opens with performances of his one-act opera "Ainadamar" ("Fountain of Tears"), based on the revolutionary art and life of the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, featuring a libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang, and directed by Peter Sellars. The closing week features performances of "Le Pasion Seguin San Marcos" ("The Passion According to St. Mark"), an extravagant work for orchestra, choir and dancers, which imagines Jesus' last days in a Latin American plaza, and whisks the audience around the musical globe on more than 30 short pieces fueled by bossa nova, Gregorian chant, Jewish folk melodies, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, rumba and Stravinsky-like wedding music.

Between the two staged works, the festival showcases Golijov's scintillating chamber pieces, played by his longtime friends and collaborators the Kronos Quartet and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Upshaw, who sings the lead role in "Ainadamar," will perform "Ayre" with an ensemble of strings, accordion, clarinet and percussion called the Andalucian Dogs.

Upshaw says she cherishes any chance she can get to expose Golijov's music to a wider audience. His work may be found in classical music aisles, but in its vibrancy and range, she says, it stands to be far more popular, as it tells an entirely unique story in contemporary music. "We relate best to artists when they tell their own stories," she says. "In the classical music world, composers too often reach outside their own box and lose that truth. What Osvaldo does so beautifully is tell his story in a way that is so familiar to all of us, even if we haven't lived anything close to his life."

Next page: The revelatory moment in Golijov's life: Hearing Astor Piazzolla