Chris Thile joined the Alabama Symphony Orchestra for an ambitious program, to say the least, at the Alys Stephens Center's Jemison Concert Hall in Birmingham, Alabama, last Thursday. The creative program paired Thile's new Mandolin Concerto, Ad astra per alas porci, with works by Bach, Bartók, and Radiohead not typically played heard on the same program, let alone featuring the mandolin. The Birmingham News gives the concert four stars, with critic Michael Huebner citing it as a sign of the orchestra's "taking symphonic music into uncharted territory."

Preceding the local premiere of the Mandolin Concerto came the unexpected pairing of Radiohead's "Morning Bell" with Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and works by Bach, which led Huebner to write that Thile "glided through the Preludio from Bach's E major Partita with sparkling precision and silken grace."

Finally, there was Thile's Mandolin Concerto, which, says Huebner, "spotlighted not only his virtuoso solo playing, but his gift for orchestration and melodic invention in a style that could only be Chris Thile." The reviewer goes on to suggest that the placement of the new piece with the other works on the program was hardly incongruous. "Held together by steady pulses, formidable solos and a prominent piano part," he writes, "it gives subtle nods to Bach, Bartók and bluegrass, its rhythmic drive a propelling force."

You can read the complete concert review at al.com.