Performing Arts

It was called "Meadows Underground Project," and the two-day mix-up of classical music, jazz and something in between closed with quite a concert Sunday evening at Caruth Auditorium. The brainchild of pianist Alessio Bax, it was sponsored by Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts. And it was stimulating enough – and brilliantly performed – that one hopes for more in the future.

REX C. CURRY/Special Contributor

Alessio Bax, foreground, and and Lucille Chung perform Maurice Ravel's piano-four-hands version of the Mother Goose Suite during Sunday's concert at Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium.

The Dan Tepfer Trio (Mr. Tepfer, piano; Jorge Roeder, bass; Richie Barshay, percussion) supplied 35 minutes' worth of up-to-date jazz. It was the high point of the concert, richly varied in rhythm and harmony, and virtuosically dispatched.

Singer, pianist and composer Gabriel Kahane performed his own song cycle Craigslistlieder, a witty send up of postings on the craigslist.com personals/classified Web site. With texts including "Half a Box of Condoms" and "For Trade: Assless Chaps," this pushed the envelope of Southern Methodist propriety, but it drew great guffaws. Too bad the combination of vocal amplification and concert-hall acoustics sometimes made words hard to hear.

Mr. Kahane ranged from warm baritone to a falsetto now reminiscent of the Beach Boys, now of Tiny Tim. His deft piano writing was of Prokofiev-meets-jazz variety. Opening the concert, the piano-four-hands version of Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose Suite got a capable but impersonal reading from Mr. Bax and Lucille Chung. The two-and-a-half-hour program closed with the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet, with violinist Chee-Yun, violist Susan Dubois and cellist Andrés Diaz joining Mr. Bax.

These were brilliant musicians all, and they played with passion. But, as seems increasingly the norm with chamber-music performances, fortissimos were sometimes far too aggressive, especially from Chee-Yun. The finale got downright ugly in places, and just because you can play it this fast and this loudly doesn't mean you should.

This was certainly a stimulating program. But for the future: 1. Don't run on for two and a half hours. 2. Provide program notes on the music, not just nine pages on the performers. And, 3. Supply printed texts for vocal works.

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