“He followed his own path, and it took decades to be recognized,” says pianist Sarah Cahill. “I think a lot of young composers today—not just in the Bay Area but across the country—are picking up on what he started.”

A rare performance of Grisey’s Le Noir de l’Étoile: a work that is big, challenging, logistically elaborate, and best suited to a context where it can reign as the event that it is.

The brainchild of composer Bright Sheng, “The Intimacy of Creativity” aims to bring a workshopping culture to chamber music, organized around a course of rehearsals, discussions, and performances of music by invited composers.

Curated by Matthew Teodori, the recent festival Perspective: Xenakis featured local, national, and international performers and scholars plying their wares around Austin.

Chicago conductor Edwin Outwater steps in for an injured Joana Carneiro to lead the world premiere of Holy Sisters, a Berkeley Symphony commission from Gabriela Lena Frank, for orchestra, soprano Jessica Rivera, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

Harvard University is inextricably associated with the Boston Area, yet is also just a bit oblique to it, like a secular Vatican City maintaining its sovereignty within a Hub version of Rome. The musical orthodoxies it hands down at a roughly generational pace, too, manage to track compositional trends while still standing apart from them.

By including everything from electronic works and acoustic ensemble performances, to a sound art installation for amplified table, and even an eight-foot long embroidered score, this festival was a testament to the area’s artistic diversity.

It’s our turn to grab the bullhorn by the “on” switch and give a shout out for the adventurous music we wouldn’t want to live without.

Videos preceded each piece on the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s second annual Texas Young Composers Concert program. They provided not only information about the background of the composer and the generation of the work, but also insight into the maturity and character of each artist.

This year’s smorgasbord of artists included a guitar ensemble from the conservatory, a one-man piano/percussion “duo,” a two-man guitar/percussion actual duo, an electro-acoustic ensemble with strings and electronics, and a band that was described as “hobbit rock.”