Pianist Vicki Ray Knows How to Get Inside a Diversity of Pieces

In the program notes for her Piano Spheres recital Tuesday at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena, Vicki Ray suggested her concert gathered together “music for a summer evening.” Maybe so, but imagine a high-energy party with exotic guests from all over the stylistic map, and none of them loafing around the pool.

At the center of the program were two attractive, demanding and utterly different world premieres. Plangent, tolling chords form the foundation of the arch of Stephen Hartke’s urbane Sonata.

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Dancing up the sides with a Gershwinesque spring is a skittish jazz scherzo, with a curt, ironic trio section for the capstone.

Amy Knoles’ “Belgo,” titled after a London restaurant, pits the piano against a welter of taped effects in a mini-concerto. From roots in European minimalism it develops a fine frenzy, using the insides of the piano like a drum kit.

Dean Drummond’s “Cloud Garden II” also had Ray working inside the instrument, as well as rapping suspended cow bells and playing a celesta, but to much more rarefied, prismatic effect. Substantial miniatures may seem an oxymoron, but that is what Gyorgy Kurtag writes, and Ray articulated both the weight and the evanescence of 11 selections from his “Jatekok” collection.

Ray began with the insistent Indian raga evocation of Alan Hovhaness’ “Jhala,” and closed with the freewheeling Brazilian eloquence of Egberto Gismonti’s “Frevo.”

From abstract to earthy, from solemn to giddy, she proved articulate and engaging, unflappable in technique or endurance, and completely focused on the sound of the music at hand.