A few forward-thinking performances are en route to New York and Philly: On January 29 and 30, the American Composer Orchestra will present "Orchestra Underground: Conversations" (Friday at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Saturday at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia). Premieres in the lineup include Sebastian Currier’s New Orleans-inspired "Next Atlantis," conceived as a work for string quartet; the piece expanded into a multimedia collaboration that includes four-channel sound and video.

As a New Orleans-native, I can't help but be intrigued by Currier's concept, though the title has a disturbing resonance. Currier commented, "...for New Orleans water is both the life-blood of the city and its potential destroyer."

Next up, Roger Zare’s "Time Lapse," a piece for orchestra influenced by photographic techniques - such as stop-action and, yes, time lapse - commissioned by ACO as part of its Underwood Composers Readings for Emerging Composers. The use of music to explore temporal perception is certainly a compelling endeavor, and I would be curious to see how the abstractions translate.

And as if those performances aren't enough, the ACO will also present, among others, Latin jazz performer Paquito D’Rivera’s "Conversations with Cachao," a tribute to Israel.

(For more info on the performances, as well as some audio samples, head over to the ACO's Web site.)

pictured above: Paquito D'Rivera