To open its 30th anniversary season, New Music Works is "Stepping Out" this Friday at the UCSC Music Center Recital Hall in a program that revives a brace of its greatest hits. Jon Scoville's Hats was an NMW commission premiered in 1998 at Watsonville's Mello Center as part of a Tandy Beal-choreographed and Pickle Family Circus-danced program. This gave the composer the opportunity to "shamelessly indulge" what he calls his "childhood love of polkas, marches, tangos and other circus and dance forms." Quartet by Timothy Bell, one of the NMW founding composers, hasn't been heard since its premiere in 1984; it calls for clarinet, viola, cello, piano.

What else can one expect from this evening of six works? According to an NMW advance piece, Hats and Cabrillo Festival favorite Christopher Rouse's Compline, of 1996, promise "dazzling ensemble repartee and the most infectious riffs this side of Tin Pan Alley." Music director Phil Collins calls the program a "synoptic of the season." He says the Scoville and Rouse pieces are not likely to be found together on the same program "anywhere." Hats, he reminds those who heard it before, combines popular music elements and classical procedures "with integrity." It is scored for clarinet, saxophone, violin, cello, double bass, percussion and piano.

Collins portrays most of the Rouse as "everybody fireballing all over the place." By way of description, Collins explains, "Most of the piece is rushing counterpoint and dramatic configurations with a melodic-rhythmic ostinato running through it." Yet, in its closing pages, it slows down and, with the harp joining the flute, clarinet and string quartet, floats into "extended chorales."

Favorite local mezzo-soprano Michelle Rivard will be on board for two works: Morton Feldman's Only, of 1947, and Bernard Rands' Ballad 2, of 1974. The Feldman, for unaccompanied voice, is an early work that Collins characterizes as a "very sensuous, tonal setting of a Rilke poem, almost a jazz ballad," and references popular music, which is not what one usually expects from the composer. The Rands is a "mini-theater" piece, calling for lighting, choreography and plenty of absurdism, "like Brahms lieder in a lounge act." At one point, Rivard will be seen to "recline," he says vaguely.

Violinist Rebecca Jackson (founder of Music in May) joins the program's only composer in residence, Susan Alexander, who will play her own "otherworldly" Eikos on synthesizer. The violin part urges its player to improvise.

Although the 11-piece NMW Ensemble was formalized in 1997 as the organization's resident performance group, their concert series has regularly featured guest artists and ensembles of acclaim from throughout the United States and abroad. Before and after Collins became official music director (in 1982) he followed a lonely road during many of those early years. Today, NMW enjoys respect and strong community support that vindicates all those near-death experiences. The list of NMW commissions, U.S. and world premieres is staggering. The fact is, Phil Collins is a local treasure. Actually, better to call him a treasurer whose New Music Works has opened more boxes of new "nuggets" locally than any other music-producing institution by far. Composing, which is what inspired him three decades ago, must sometimes feel like an afterthought. And then there's the regular schedule of teaching--currently Performing Arts Attendance Appreciation at Cabrillo College, and Ethnic Music in the U.S. and guitar at Hartnell College--including a stable of private composition students.

Not surprisingly, there remains a certain chaos in the man who, to our great benefit, continues to fireball all over the place. Despite all the loose ends to chase and unexpected disasters that occasionally blow up, Collins admits he feels pretty good about where NMW is today.

STEPPING OUT, the opening program of New Music Works' 30th season, is Friday, Oct. 10, at 7:30pm at the UCSC Music Recital Hall, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. Tickets are $20 general/$15 seniors/$10 students at santacruztickets.com or 831.459.2159.

Send a letter to the editor about this story.