If a local composer asked me which, if any, local arts organization nurtures up-and-coming opera composers, I'd laugh and let loose a long rant about how much I miss Seattle Experimental Opera (SEXO). Typically, new operas emerge from a primordial soup of presenters, hefty foundation funding, commissioning consortiums as convoluted as any Chinese tontine, and at least one "name" composer. SEXO did it differently with guts, the occasional grant, and DIY spirit.

Started by composers Christian Asplund, Tom Baker, and Eyvind Kang and poet Lara Candland, SEXO staged a series of avant cabarets and operas–the one that still sticks in my mind is Christian Asplund's astringently hermetic The Archivist—in the mid-'90s. SEXO not only provided a venue for new work but invigorated opera with a wide-open approach to music. In his own operas, Asplund gleefully mashed up classical, jazz, punk, and the avant with nonstandard scoring (e.g., viola, harmonium, and drums), sighing glissandi, motoric rhythms, and by commingling everyday speech with stylized singing.

After a hiatus of five years, SEXO returns with the premiere of Asplund's seventh opera, Sunset with Pink Pastoral. The ex-Seattle composer writes about the work, "The opera explores the desert of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, the people that live there (especially the Navajo or Diné), and the people who drive across it... More specifically, it is about the distance between people, physically and otherwise that has resulted from two factors: sheep husbandry in sparse vegetation (in the case of the Navajo), and the prevalence of the automobile." CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI

Sunset with Pink Pastoral runs Fri Jul 15 with two performances at 8 and 11 pm and Sat Jul 16 at 8 pm, Gallery 1412, 1412 18th Ave at E Union, 322-1533, $9–$20 sliding scale donation.