MUSIC REVIEW : I Cantori in Pasadena

If we can have autumn in August, why not an Easter pageant as well?

Turns out the 13th-Century Gregorian chant drama performed Wednesday night at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church by I Cantori, with extraordinary purity of intention and execution, would be welcome in any season.

“The Visit to the Sepulcher,” collective work of a group of French nuns, is a liturgical play sung in Latin and medieval French enlisting chorus and nine soloists to depict events transpiring between Christ’s entombment and the discovery of his resurrection.

Authentically costumed and staged (with pro- and recessionals), the wholly artistic presentation boasted appropriately unremarkable voices but uniformly proficient execution. The emphatically modern surroundings of this particular sanctuary served to accentuate the timelessness of the work all the more.

Three other compositions demonstrated the stylistic ecumenism and musical bravado of these singers and music director Edward Cansino’s watchmaker-exact leadership. The intricate, jazzy rhythms and occasional near-Stravinskyan harmonies of “Sederunt principes,” a four-part counterpoint motet by Perotin probably first heard in 1199, were so much duck soup for the men.

Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” (1972) created a hypnotic atmosphere with repeated--but not minimalistically mindless--patterns of choral chord cluster humming, abstract motifs and hauntingly melodic viola-vibraphone duet.

Bach’s motet “Lobet den Herrn” received an infectiously joyous reading from the ensemble, proving that fastidious musical manners and vocal precision don’t have to equal lifelessness in the Baroque.