Get your tickets to Missy Mazzoli's Proving Up at the Old Cowtown Museum

The Homestead Act of 1862 — by which settlers, mainly west of the Mississippi River, could acquire public land they’d farmed, or “prove up” — contained an odd provision: To be considered for the land grant, the homesteads, among other requirements, had to include a glass window. Based on a true story, Ms. Mazzoli conjures aural bleakness with an uncanny, confident mixture of instrumental savagery and eerie lightness. The shadowy sound of guitars drifts through the music; chaotic refractions of hoedown fiddling occasionally explode within a landscape of jittery unease. Mazzoli’s colorful, fragmentary, and evocative contemporary score perfectly complements Vavrek’s terse, cogent texts.