Composer Augusta Read Thomas is apparently saving the best for last when Terpsichore’s Dream is given its world premiere by the Utah Symphony later this month.

The composer has carefully laid out in detail the sonic map of this 17-minute orchestral work which starts with light-footed dance rhythms that morph into glowing harmonic phrases and then into sparkling, glistening ethereal passages before launching into animated, virtuosic rhythmic passages in expansive blocks of sound. However, she is mum about the “final 80 seconds” of the work, “which shall remain a surprise.”

Terpsichore’s Dream will close the first concert of the New Music at the Rose series on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Theatre on 300 South. Works by Luis Tinoco, Leon Kirchner, and Arvo Part – all written within the last 30 years – also will be featured.

The premiere, indeed, is a felicitous event for the orchestra, composer, and Cliff Colnot, conductor. Rather than being the result of a long drawn out commission project, Terpsichore’s Dream represents the happiest of collaborations in the musical worlds. “We fell into it by luck,” Jeff Bram, director of artistic planning for the symphony, said. “Colnot, who is a good friend of the composer, wanted to work with her on bringing this work to our city.”

Colnot is principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW series, resident conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and principal conductor of the Contemporary Chamber Players. Pictured below are Augusta Read Thomas (left) and Cliff Colnot.

For the Utah Symphony, which would like to build its audience for new music just as it does for its loyal subscribers who enjoy the great classics, the presence of Thomas is significant. Having just finished her tenure as the composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Thomas is one of the nation’s busiest composers, working, among other projects, on commissions from the London Symphony, Boston Symphony, Juilliard School, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. She also will soon be completing her term as board chair of the American Music Center based in New York City.

Thomas wisely resists the demand to categorize her music according to a particular style or common practice. In the NewMusicBox, the web zine of the American Music Center, she wrote about the personal and passionate dimensions of creating music that touches on raw emotions and desires: “Such music (of any style) that is alive and jumps off the page and out of the instrument as if something big is at stake is usually not ‘adhering’ to a ‘common practice’ and, in some fashion, cannot melt into the comfort of a common practice by its very uniqueness.”

For adventurous concertgoers who are looking for new music to supplement their diet of whatever musical pleasures they have (especially if they are not classical), Thomas’s philosophy is certainly a healthy one. More recently, many contemporary composers have eschewed labels marking a particular school of compositional style – serialism, minimalism, indeterminacy, electronics, new romanticism, modernism, etc.

And, audiences, that are open to novelty in the concert hall, are responding much in the same way. What connects them is a sense of intellectual passion to try something new because they, too, cannot be placed in neat demographic categories and they have independent tastes in art, fashion, and appearance as well.

The Thomas premiere presents a good moment for the orchestra to renew its commitment to be “the living voice of music today,” Bram said, adding that legendary conductor and music director Maurice Abravanel was regularly programming contemporary works of his day. While “ample homage” always will be paid to the great masters, Bram said that new music – such as the premiere of Terpsichore’s Dream – would help the Utah Symphony “discover that new ‘demographic’ – the adventurous audience.”

Thomas, too, has simple advice for listeners who want to get as much joy out of the concert. Once again, from her comments in the New Music Box: “The best possible way for someone to be introduced to any music is to follow a work from start to finish. Reflect, keep an open heart, be generous, open your ears to all surprises, sing along when possible, dance along if possible, feel the impulses, be creative, be honest, be PASSIONATE, and have fun!”