It's the music with multiple, and mostly meaningless, monikers: New Music, Avant Garde, Contemporary Music, Post-Classical, Acoustic Experimental, Conservatory Music, and Contemporary Classical all fail to describe what's created by living composers who write for acoustic instruments (violin, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, cello… you get the drift) usually associated with Western European Classical music. Whatever it should be called, after some barren holiday months I'm happy this weekend has two concerts dominated by works composed in the last five years.

On Saturday, January 22, composer Tom Baker presents What Remains, a tintinnabulating concerto/requiem for guitar and electronic (or, in current parlance "computer-realized") sounds. Dedicated to the memory of the late bassist Matthew Sperry, What Remains epitomizes what Baker does best: create lonely, sometimes blank acoustic spaces chilled with loss and ruminating doubt. In addition, ace clarinetist Jesse Canterbury, bassist Brian Cobb, and avant percussionist Greg Campbell join Baker for some freely improvised music.

For their Sunday, January 23 concert, Sorelle coined the word "Girappho," a whimsical portmanteau of giraffe and Sappho. This adventurous quartet--pianist Julie Ives, cellist Traci Hoveskeland, flutist Sarah Bassingthwaighte, and soprano Hope Wechkin--tackles André Previn's The Giraffes Go to Hamburg (based on a tale from Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa) and Six Songs of Sappho by Oregon composer Christopher M. Wicks. I'm also eager to hear the chamber version of O King, a hauntingly gnomic section of Luciano Berio's late 1960s po-mo master-pastiche Sinfonia as well as former bad-boy British composer Harrison Birtwistle's recent Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker. CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI

Catch Tom Baker Sat Jan 22 (Brechemin Auditorium in the Music Building, UW campus, 685-8384), 7:30 pm, $10/$12.

Sorelle performs Sun Jan 23 (Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E Prospect St, Volunteer Park, 985-7003), 5:30 pm, $10/$15.

chris@delaurenti.net