“I like music that is alive and jumps off the page and out of the instrument as if something big is at stake,” composer Augusta Read Thomas says.

        “My favorite moment in any piece of music is the moment of maximum risk and striving — whether the venture is tiny or large, loud or soft, fragile or strong, passionate, erratic, ordinary or eccentric!”

IF YOU GO

What: Music 2001, A Festival of New Music. Distinguished composers such as Michael Torke, Frederic Rzewski and Augusta Read Thomas will be in town to hear their music played through Friday in daily concerts. Artists include eighth blackbird, the Amernet String Quartet, cellist Lee Fiser, pianist Emanuele Arciuli and violist Dorotea Vismara Hoffman, plus CCM students.     When: 8 p.m. daily. (Hear Augusta Read Thomas' Passion Prayers on Thursday and Two Etudes plus a work in progress on Friday.)     Where: Werner Recital Hall, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music     Master classes: 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. daily in Studio Theater or Room 3250 at CCM. Ms. Thomas speaks about her music Thursday and Friday.     Admission: Free. 556-9504; For more info about Music 2001, go to ccm.uc.edu.

        Ms. Thomas' music will be performed at Music 2001, a festival of new music, at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday in Werner Recital Hall at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She is one of several internationally known composers who will be in town for the festival, which has activities daily, today through next week.

        She describes her style as “bold, colorful, nuanced, passionate, concise, articulate, intense and honest.”

        It's a summary not only her music, but her life. Ms. Thomas is a young American composer on the fast track. Just 37 and already a star in the composition world, she sleeps little, is prolific (she has some 400 works to her name) and is never far from her laptop computer. Last week, she conducted this interview via e-mail from a pay phone at the Paris airport, where she was sprinting to catch a plane.
       

Whirlwind schedule

        “Tired ... ” she e-mailed, a bit understatedly, after being up until 2 a.m. the night before.

        Ms. Thomas' whirlwind schedule regularly takes her from Chicago, where she is the composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to Europe, where last week her “Daylight Divine” for soprano, children's choir and orchestra was performed at the Festival Saint Denis in Paris.

        Her recent projects include a piano concerto premiered by Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic, and “Song in Sorrow,” premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra for the 30th anniversary of the Kent State shootings. Her music is regularly commissioned by orchestras such as the Boston and Pittsburgh symphonies.

        National Symphony Orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin describes her music as highly visual.

        “There's a lot of vivid imagery in Augusta's music,” he told The Washington Post recently. “She tells a story the way a painter tells a story.”
       

An insomniac

        Ms. Thomas' contract in Chicago has been extended through 2006, making her nine-year stint the longest for any composer-in-residence in its history.

        She is passionate about preparing audiences to hear new music.

        “One must educate our audience. And composers must write great music,” she says, frustrated that she doesn't have more time for an in-depth answer. “I spend my life educating.”

        She juggles her Chicago Symphony residency with a professorship at Northwestern University — and still finds time to compose. How does she do it all?

        “I am an insomniac,” she explains. “I am happiest when I am listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed.”

        And somehow, she manages to fit a commuter marriage into the mix. She is married to the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands, who is on the faculty at Harvard University in Boston. How do they get together?

        “Bernard is the best thing in my life. ... He is the best composer I know,” she says. “I live between four homes and often in airplanes and hotels.”

        Ms. Thomas will light in Cincinnati long enough to hear her Two Etudes (1996) and two other works played. The second etude, “Fire Waltz,” is an homage to Bartok, marked “Perpetual Motion.” “It's a Bartok boogie-woogie and should be played as quickly as possible!” she says.

        She describes her work as a constant discovery.

        “Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey,” she says.
       

A less elaborate 'Butterfly'
What inspires opera directors, designers
Underground Railroad drama gets on track
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
Playwright poises pen for movie scripts
Catching up
What's the attraction?
Baklava brouhaha
Barbecue, goetta get own fests this weekend
Taking the meat out of Cincinnati chili
KENDRICK: Alive and well
Composer brings passion to music
Concert review
DEMALINE: The arts
MCGURK: Esquire mishandled film cut
GELFAND: Classical music
Theater review
Get to it