Copious Notes

Note: I’ll be Twittering the Grammy Awards tonight, using the hashtag #grammys, if you want to join in the chat.

Discovering new music is often a matter of trust, particularly if you are interested in exploring something like contemporary classical music.

Osvaldo Golijov. Photo by John Sann | Deutsche Grammophon.

Yes, you can just dive in and start listening to any piece composed in the past 50 years - classical music is a field in which that would be considered “new.” But exploration is often more interesting if you find artists whose tastes you appreciate and you keep up with what they’re doing.

That’s how I discovered Osvaldo Golijov.

The Lexington Philharmonic audience will get its first chance to hear Golijov on Friday, when guest conductor Alastair Willis conducts the orchestra in a performance of Golijov’s Last Round, a piece that helped introduce the composer to many listeners in 1996.

“He looks to be a voice to be reckoned with,” London’s Independent wrote of the world premiere of Last Round, commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

The group was created by conductor Simon Rattle, an artist whose contemporary tastes I started following many years ago when he was making ear-grabbing recordings with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

But that is not where I found Golijov.

It was Kronos Quartet’s and Dawn Upshaw’s work with the composer that initially intrigued me, and when I heard it, I had to hear more.

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