Concert Stays on Humorous Note : Anecdotes and insight into its program of American songs and composers kept Philharmonic Society’s Festival Series performance in an upbeat mood.

One hundred years separate composer Charles K. Harris’ idea to push his sheet music via advertising and publicity--something unheard of at the time--and this week’s announcement of Madonna’s $60-million contract with Time Warner. But singer Joan Morris and her husband, composer-pianist William Bolcom, closed that gap just minutes into their program of popular American songs Tuesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre as part of the Orange County Philharmonic Society’s Festival Series.

Harris’ revolutionary insight into music marketing was divulged as part of Bolcom’s introduction to the 1892 hit “After the Ball,” a tune that sold 10 million copies by 1900, according to Bolcom. When he made the connection by mentioning the Madonna deal, Bolcom brought the house down with laughter.

The story was just part of an informative presentation that was as rewarding for its insight into the songs and their composers as it was for the music itself. Bolcom, and less frequently Morris, provided background on each number, often with humorous anecdotes and comment. Without this extrapolation, the concert would have been considerably less remarkable.

While Bolcom provided most of the spoken background, Morris took front seat in presenting the songs that came from Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Eubie Blake and Rodgers & Hart, among others. The mezzo-soprano’s pleasant tones were tempered with just enough dramatics to emphasize the emotions in each piece, whether madcap or melancholy, while her phrasing was precise and without pretense. Though her vibrato was so automatic that it often took on strobe-like qualities, her delivery, except in the higher range, was firm and sweet.

Bolcom, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his “Twelve New Etudes for Piano,” tended to apply uneven accompaniment, sometimes pushing the singer, sometimes trailing behind. Though the two might have created a more consistent mesh, these rhythmic variances kept the short pieces interesting, even if it did make for some difficult moments.

On his own for two numbers after intermission, Bolcom contrasted phrases with varying dynamics on a rag from an anonymous composer in Trinidad that sounded as if it might have been written by Scott Joplin had he lived in the Caribbean. Bolcom’s melancholy stride on “My Old Graceful Ghost” was the evening’s most moving moment.

But the major thread that held the program together was humor, generated by such tunes as Berlin’s “Lazy” and “You’d Be Surprised” (sample lyric: “He doesn’t look like much of a lover / but when you get him alone / you’d be surprised”) and a number written for Sophie Tucker by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen entitled “I Don’t Want to Get Thin.” The surprising juxtaposition of Burton Lane’s “Everything I Have Is Yours” and Rodgers & Hart’s “Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You” made for an especially comic moment. Bolcom’s own “Lime Jello” showed him to be an adept writer of tight, witty phrases full of internal rhyme and comedy.

The evening’s most thoughtful and melodious lyric was “Tell Me the Truth About Love,” a poem written by W. H. Auden set to music by British composer Benjamin Britten. There are few songs for which the old saw, “They don’t write ‘em like they used to,” is more applicable, and the duo was at its best in its presentation.