Composer Greg Youtz. Photo courtesy Greg Youtz.

Life ain’t easy being a composer. You can struggle for years, waiting for commissions and performances, and then suddenly everything happens at once.

For local composer Greg Youtz, that’s exactly what’s happening this spring. Youtz, 52, who’s on the music faculty at Pacific Lutheran University, is an established composer: he’s been writing music since he was 14, and has received numerous awards including the Charles Ives Award in 1984 from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Each year Youtz composes around three pieces and sees between three to ten of them performed.

This spring alone, however, Youtz has five performances lined up, four of which are world premieres, and two of which will happen on the same day at the same time. This Sunday at 3 p.m., the Tacoma Youth Symphony will premiere Youtz’ tone poem “Harmonices Mundi: The Meditations of Johannes Kepler,” while over at Trinity Lutheran Church (near PLU) the Seattle Bach Choir will premiere “A Roethke Cycle,” based on three poems by Northwest poet Theodore Roethke. The choir will repeat their concert in Seattle next weekend, and in May the PLU Wind Ensemble will premiere Youtz’ “The Monkey King,” a tone poem based on the Chinese mythological character. Recently, Youtz’ final version of “The Courtesan,” another Chinese-inspired piece, was premiered in Olympia.

“It’s quite amusing,” says Youtz of the sudden cluster of performances in what can for some composers be a career full of long silences. It’s a little inconvenient: The composer can’t attend both premieres this Sunday, so he’ll attend the TYS show and see the “Roethke Cycle” at the Seattle performance next weekend. But it’s also impressive, since all of the pieces were commissions—representing both composing income and recognition.

Each piece is tailored to the group that’s presenting it. “Harmonices Mundi” is what Youtz calls a polystylistic piece, mixing wide-spanning tonal clusters with Renaissance melodies and tunes based on the 17th-century astronomer’s calculations of planetary periods (which he tried determinedly to fit into some sort of pitch pattern—the legendary “music of the spheres.”) It’s fresh, says Youtz, but not too aurally difficult for the teenaged orchestra. It also reflects the “awe-inspiring beauty” of the stellar images Youtz showed them back when he was composing the piece.

“A Roethke Cycle” was inspired by Theodore Roethke, favorite poet of Bach Choir director Gregory Vancil. Two poems have the same title and bookend the piece; all three move from placid nature images through layers of “sexual tension and existential darkness,” says Youtz.

Finally, “The Monkey King” reinvents the famous Chinese hero for wind instruments. Youtz is a fan of traditional Chinese music, making annual study trips there with PLU students, and incorporates many Chinese instruments and sounds into his works.

Here’s where you can hear Greg Youtz’ work this spring:
3 p.m. Mar. 8: Tacoma Youth Symphony plays “Harmonices Mundi: The Meditations of Johannes Kepler” (plus Shostakovich Symphony no. 5) at the Rialto Theater, 310 S. 9th St., Tacoma. $4 advance/$5 at door. 253-591-5894, www.broadwaycenter.org
3 p.m. Mar. 8: Seattle Bach Choir sings “A Roethke Cycle” (plus other choral composers) at Trinity Lutheran Church, 12115 Park Ave. S., Tacoma. $15/$12. 206-324-4828, www.seattlebachchoir.org, www.brownpapertickets.com
3 p.m. Mar. 15: Seattle Bach Choir sings “A Roethke Cycle” at Bethany Lutheran Church, 7400 Woodlawn Ave. N.E., Seattle. $15/$12. 206-324-4828, www.seattlebachchoir.org, www.brownpapertickets.com
3 p.m. May 10: PLU Wind Ensemble plays "The Monkey King” in Lagerquist Hall, 12180 Park Ave. S., Tacoma. $8/$5/$3. 253-535-7787, www.plu.edu/~music