Today is the 86th birthday of George Crumb. Crumb is another one of our great American originals, perhaps the reigning Grand Old Man of American Music. He produces works with an economy and elegance that seem to contradict and yet, somehow, paradoxically, to reinforce an Ivesian tendency to suggest greater vistas beyond their seemingly modest means.

On a more visceral level, sometimes he can be downright scary. Which is especially amusing, since by all accounts – as well as on the perhaps five or six occasions I have met him – he has been unfailingly approachable, modest and even cheerful.

It’s fortuitous indeed that his birthday falls so close to Hallowe’en. It’s not for nothing that his work for electric string quartet, “Black Angels,” was used in “The Exorcist.”

In the last 15 years or so, Crumb has been enjoying a productive Indian summer, mining the hymns and folk songs of his West Virginia boyhood, lending them a unique resonance through his imaginative and colorful use of percussion.

Happy birthday, George Crumb!

“Black Angels”:

From his “American Songbook,” “All the Pretty Horses”:

And “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”:

PHOTOS: George Crumb (left) with The Exorcist’s Pazuzu