Disparate Sounds From Pianist Vicki Ray

For her recital in the Piano Spheres series Tuesday in Pasadena’s Neighborhood Church, Vicki Ray chose to focus on works by female composers, a still too rare occurrence. The sounds were often beguiling, and Ray played with her customary care, passion and that crusader’s zeal that new music specialists thrive on.

For the evening’s only electronic piece, Ray opened up the techno-paint box of synth sounds and samples for Annie Gossfield’s ear-tickling “The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory.” From the Minimalist corner came Annea Lockwood’s “Red Mesa” and Mary Ellen Childs’ beautiful “The Capacity of Calm Endurance.” Each deals with a poised detachment that alludes to Morton Feldman’s influence, and each turned less interesting in more bombastic moments.

A Brazilian connection also emerged. Brazilian composer Jocy DeOliveira’s “Encontrodes Encontro” is a duet with a prerecorded piano, full of roiling chords and patterns, in which pure sensation rules over structure. Brazilian Ana Fridman’s “Speed Bumps Ahead,” a world premiere, is a juicy bundle of energy, replete with hands-on body-percussion gymnastics.

Among the more captivating works was Julia Wolfe’s brief “Earring” (also a world premiere), which requires a duality between right and left hands--one in a samba mode, the other projecting loose, dreamy airs. It’s not a cheap trick, as Wolfe exacts emotionality through a friction of means.

Also impressive (and short) was Ruth Crawford Seeger’s up-to-date-sounding 1932 piece “Piano Study in Mixed Accents,” essentially a single hurtling, tumbling line. Brevity becomes it.

Ray ended on a latter-day ragtime theme, playing the relatively straight “Russian Rag II” of Elena Kats-Chernin and the wonderfully off-kilter “Raw Silk (a Rag)” of Nurit Tilles. Tilles’ rag is a sweet and sour little number, threatened by outbursts of giddiness, that refuses to settle into anything so mundane as a fixed key.

For an encore, Ray took on the finger-knotting 1921 piece “Kitten on the Keys,” by the lone male of the program, Zez Confrey, half on a dare, she said, from Piano Spheres director Leonard Stein.