Robert Erickson’s music bristles with the quintessential virtues of modernist American composers: intelligence, good humor, lyricism, rich sonorities, inventive sound-colors. It is firmly rooted in a thorough understanding of all musics now available, from ancient Greece to John Cage, yet it speaks with a characteristically American voice, direct and good-natured, attuned to the vernacular, never condescending to its audiences.