Review: A Portrait Reveals a Composer With a Dramatic Edge

The last time I sat down with the music of the Australian composer Liza Lim, it was to take in the broad swath of her operatic catalog — collected last year by the Elision Ensemble in its “Singing in Tongues.” That release, which included Lim’s avant-garde take on “The Oresteia,” left me hungry to hear more of her theatrical music.

Alas, a Lim program at the Miller Theater at Columbia University on Thursday didn’t feature any of it. Still, the concert — the Miller’s first Composer Portrait of the season — confirmed the ways in which Lim can create drama through experimental conceits.

The program offered the U.S. premiere of her “String Creatures,” written for the JACK Quartet. It also featured the cellist Jay Campbell, a member of that pathbreaking group, in the 2016 solo work “an ocean beyond earth.”

Or was it a solo? In “ocean,” each string of the cello is outfitted with a cotton thread attached to the strings of a nearby violin. Campbell occasionally tugged on those threads, vibrating the violin strings independently of his instrument; at other points, he alternately bowed the connective threads and the cello’s strings. The result was an invitation to consider a range of discrete ways to produce sound across the two instruments.

That work was also a good example of what distinguishes Lim. Her approach is flush with aspects of contemporary experimental music that, in other hands, threaten to become clichés (like harsh, grating string sounds and breathy extended technique). But Lim uses those now-familiar timbres as suspense-fomenting moments in music that has a sure sense of proportion — and an unmistakable direction.

In “ocean,” that dramatic trajectory resulted in ever-firmer evocations of the cello’s more booming stature — with Campbell gradually moving beyond initial, wispy, cotton-string disturbances. After that came gentle yet direct bowing; then, finally, forceful pizzicato.

Lim’s expressive writing takes on more power with the addition of more instruments. At the outset of the three-movement “String Creatures,” country-western “chop” accents — a percussive bowing of the strings that is repeated for rhythmic effect — lent the music propulsive momentum.

There were other highlights in the piece for the JACK players: The violinist Christopher Otto had multiple, sinewy solo features; a brief lullaby teased at the end of the first movement appeared later on as a spotlight for Campbell, progressing with what sounded like microtonal intervals.

Yet ghostly ensemble textures for the entire quartet were the highlight. At times, the group seemed to fall in lock step, cohering around a mechanical Minimalism. But while keeping the hushed dynamics steady, Lim bent individual string lines away from the expected polyphonic patterns.

It was all gripping material. So now, after an evening like this, who will bring her richly designed dramas to New York?

Composer Portraits: Liza Lim

Performed on Thursday at the Miller Theater at Columbia University, Manhattan.