BEAVERTON – 45th Parallel Universe’s New Year, New Akiho framed Portland percussionist/composer extraordinaire Andy Akiho as the headliner at its much anticipated Jan. 28 concert at Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. Akiho’s short world premiere, Copper Variations, was performed before intermission of the two-hour concert, the third of four contemporary pieces on the gutsy program of ear-bending contemporary music. Akiho’s was the piece for which the 300-strong audience was waiting. The concert wasn’t a sellout (The Reser holds 550) but the interest was intense.

Akiho, a seven-times Grammy nominee for his contemporary “classical” compositions that showcase percussion–from whiskey bottles to bass drums–is one of Portland’s transplanted musical treasures. This time, his eight-minute piece, much shorter than such recent large-scale compositions as his Seven Pillars a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2022, was scored for chamber orchestra, including strings, winds and percussion. (Read ArtsWatch’s feature and review.) Unlike in Seven Pillars, he didn’t write for a ton of percussion other than vibes and glockenspiel, a 5-octave marimba, a glass bottle and snare, kick and break drums. But there was enough to feel the constant change-ups of rhythms and tones and timbres. The many moving parts were directed without fuss by Raul Gomez-Rojas, conductor of Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony.

Wired as tight as a violin string, Akiho said in a short on-stage interview with 45th Parallel Universe Executive Director Lisa Lipton before the piece premiered that Copper Variations, took him “way too long to compose” – he composed for 16 parts (13, according to violinist Ron Blessinger’s blog) and usually writes for far fewer – but in the end, he believed that “more colors, more timbres, more palette,” made the music come alive. Though he said he was excited to have written the piece “for his friends,” pointing to the onstage musicians, he didn’t exactly explain the title or the inspiration. More left to the imagination.

Before Akiho, three percussionists played “Metamorphosis 2,” the second piece in Philip Glass’ 1988 Metamorphosis five-part series. Glass, 88, originally composed the five-minute piece for piano, but 45th Parallel Universe percussionists Stephen Kehner and Sergio Carreno rearranged it and put the piece to work with marimba and the bright bell-sounding glockenspiel with third percussionist Ian Kerr. Their version proved even more hypnotic and meditative than the original piano version. It was absolutely gorgeous: repetitive, immersive, canon-like, optimistic.

Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet followed. Of course you can’t talk about or listen to Reich, 88 years old like Glass, without mentioning his revolutionary minimalism built on repetitive, shifting, pulsating phrases. This 20-minute piece premiered in 2000 with the Kronos Quartet, and it was meant to be performed by three quartets, or it could be performed that way. At this concert, it was performed with two pre-recorded tapes and one live quartet consisting of two violinists (Greg Ewer and Ron Blessinger), cellist Marilyn de Olivera, and violist Amanda Grimm. Blessinger, de Olivera, violinist Emily Cole and violist Charles Noble played on the tapes.

Influenced by jazz, Béla Bartók’s string quartets and Reich’s searing 1988 Different Trains about his childhood cross-country train journeys (his parents lived on opposite coasts) imagined at the same time as children being transported to the Nazi camps, this repetitive music isn’t for everyone, as the audience indicated. Still, the string quartet performed the three-part piece (and three-speed piece) like the orchestra pros they are. (Most of these musicians play with the Oregon Symphony.) Musicians making minimalist music come alive are impressive. No way they can lose their place and find it again among the mesmerizing similar phrases. Not that anyone did. These string players had little trouble playing interlocking melodies that fit together like brilliant audible puzzles, layered harmonies, and rhythms that repeat themselves over and over.

The final piece, Holographic (2016), by composer Daniel Wohl with visual projections by Daniel Schwartz, was the evening’s showstopper. It comprised the entire second half of the show. The New York Times called Wohl, a 44-year-old prolific multi-media composer, one of his generation’s “imaginative creators.” For 32-minutes the Daniels managed their onstage computers to produce kaleidoscopic sounds and ever-morphing visuals.

You didn’t need to swallow hallucinogens to engage in this piece. It was all there, right in front of you, with the chamber orchestra mixing strings, percussion and winds and Wohl cutting in electronic soundscape to accompany the often dizzying shape-shifting visuals on the giant screen stretched across the back of the stage. Or were the visuals accompanying the music? No matter. It was a thoroughly interactive highly synched immersive experience captivating most of the senses, minus smell. The program notes described the piece as “shimmering layers that feel both futuristic and deeply human,” but there were no humans in the visuals, only humans on the instruments and computers. Just amazing how human-made music can sweep you up and push the art form forward.