Michael Daugherty, now in his later fifties, is one of the most frequently performed American composers and has held many awards and orchestral residences. Before he obtained his degrees, worked with jazz musicians and had a spell at IRCAM, his background was in rock and funk, and it shows in his rhythmic approach. He’s not always serious – he wrote Elvis Everywhere for three Elvis impersonators and string quartet (the Kronos). Flamingo (1991), for two tambourines and orchestra, is a riot inspired by plastic garden flamingos, real ones in Florida and the flamenco dance.

Ladder to the Moon (2006) was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is a response to Georgia O’Keeffe’s skyscraper paintings from the 1930s. Wonderful pictures; but at times the music wanders and the second piece plays oddly with the opening motif of the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.

Fire and Blood (2003), sometimes here called a violin concerto, is another bold attempt to write the big piece that might compete with the romantic warhorses. Daugherty’s sources are again visual – the murals of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The first movement, ‘Volcanoes’, evokes factory furnaces; the second is a tribute to Rivera’s wife, the painter Frida Kahlo, including a kind of Mexican folksong; and the last takes us to the ‘Assembly Line’, reflecting its relentless pace. Daugherty’s approach is illustrative in ways that a film might clarify and always vivid in these performances.