Thursday's concert brought compositions from the early 19th century to this very year with a world premiere. ASU's large ensemble presented an aggressively modern piece by Carlos Zarate, who described it to be like a sparse sculpture through which light penetrates (my interpretation of his words). It began robustly with waves of atonal-arhythmic imagery, then settled down to calmer, sometimes whispered, soundscapes which reminded me of the light-show part of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Next was a Samuel Barber piece for orchestra and soprano solo, sung by Michelle Perez, a doctoral student at the school, with a beautiful, auditorium-filling voice. "Knoxville: Summer of 1915"takes its text from a James Agee novel, a young boy's recollection of an evening with his family lying on quilts in the back yard of their home, their voices quiet and "meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds". The text and music mix to invoke horse-carts and streetcars clopping by, the stars arching overhead, and ultimately, an observation that these experiences are mystical but cannot "tell me who I am". Next on the program was a bassoon concerto by Berhard Crusell, a composer working in the period overlapping both Mozart and Beethoven. The soloist was Bradley Johnson, a faculty member (I think the program said) from NAU, who navigated the trippingly fast notes breathtakingly on the velvety voice of the bassoon. His cheering section, seated just to my left, was loudly appreciative. After intermission, the full orchestra returned for a magnificent performance of Pictures at an Exhibition, the classic Ravel-Mussorgsky version, with Joann Falletta of the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra guest-conducting. The piece has many tricky featured instrument parts and each soloist delivered glowingly. If there was a theme to the entire concert, it highlighted the way music evokes visual imagery, from cinema to memoir to museum, and this orchestra presented it well.