The group, made up of music faculty members from Cornell University and Ithaca College in New York, will open its 7:30 p.m. performance with “Catch,” by European composer Thomas Ades.

“It’s very fast, very quirky,” said Xak Bjerken, an assistant professor at Cornell and co-director of Ensemble X with its founder, composer Steven Stucky. “It’s kind of fun because the idea is that we—this trio with piano, violin, and cello on stage—keep catching the clarinetist as he keeps coming from offstage, sits down and plays a little bit, and then wanders off. This happens three times, and then in the end he sits down and joins us. It’s a very theatrical piece.”

Playing “Catch” with Bjerken will be Ellen Jewett, violin, who recently joined the faculty of McGill University in Montreal; Richard Faria, clarinet, an assistant professor of clarinet at Ithaca College; and Elizabeth Simkin, cello, an associate professor of cello at Ithaca College.

The second piece on the program will be a Stravinsky-inspired composition, “Horse with the Lavender Eye,” by Steven Hartke, who recently won the Charles Ives Award, one of the most important composition awards in the United States, and composed a symphony for the New York Philharmonic.

“That’s a really fun piece based on everything from medieval chants to R. Crumb comic strips,” Bjerken said. “It’s very rhythmic, very energetic.”

After a break, the group will perform one of the last works by Takemitsu, a Japanese composer and a student of the French composer Messiaen. “It’s called ‘Between Tides,’ a piano trio piece, and is all about the ebb and flow of water,” Bjerken said. “It’s very gentle, very colorful.”

Next, Bjerken will perform four shorts pieces written for him last year by Stucky, a colleague at Cornell, who is the new music advisor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The ensemble will end the concert with a piece called “Buzz,” written for Ensemble X by composer James Matheson. “It’s like the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee,’” Bjerken said. “It has that kind of energy. The program as a whole is very varied, and it’s all new music.”

Also, the Ambassador Duo from South Carolina will perform Matheson’s piece, “Pull,” for alto saxophone and piano.

A visiting composer, Matheson will attend the concert and give a public talk about his work and career from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Jan. 16 in the School of Music, Room 210. The lecture is free. Matheson has been called "one of the brightest lights in the emerging new generation of American composers." For more information about the composer, go to http://www.bofamusic.com/.

Formed in 1997 by a group of virtuoso performers who share a passionate commitment to contemporary classical music, Ensemble X has gained national notoriety through concerts at New York's Merkin Hall and Weill Recital Hall, as well as regional premieres of works by major composers such as John Adams and Christopher Rouse. The ensemble, based at Cornell, included 11 founding members, but its membership has since grown to about 20 musicians with a core group of four to eight players and a singer.

The ensemble's mission is to perform both very new music of the "classical" tradition—typically music written within the past five to 10 years—and established works from earlier in the 20th century. The group performs a series of concerts each season in Ithaca as well as touring and recording.

“The group started because we had a bunch of youngish faculty members who all moved in at the same time who were really into doing the music,” Bjerken said.

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