Tonal, muscular weaver

For 18 years, Pacific Serenades has been presenting chamber music concerts locally and commissioning new works. Usually the approach is determinedly friendly, in keeping with both words in the group’s name.

One attends this series in expectation not of the cutting edge but of music with a soft, comforting center, and that is mostly the order of the day in the latest program, presented for the second of three times Sunday at Pasadena’s Neighborhood Church.

Ironically, musical history may have caught up with the series’ philosophy that “contemporary” doesn’t have to be synonymous with “difficult.” Old-fashioned musical beauty, melodic craft and tonality are more acceptable now than when the series started.

Its latest commission is Benjamin Lees’ “Tapestry,” the centerpiece of Sunday’s program. The 80-year-old Lees, who has lived in Southern California intermittently for decades but whose music is rarely played here, has circulated through many an “ism” in his time but was trumpeting the tonal cause long before it was fashionable again.

That said, “Tapestry” isn’t exactly an easygoing piece, despite the decidedly tonal nature of its writing. Scored for flute, clarinet, cello and piano -- Mark Carlson, Gary Gray, David Speltz and Ayke Agus, respectively, on Sunday -- it flows with cause-and-effect events that are fairly democratic in their distribution within the ensemble.

In its more lyrical moments, the piece is reminiscent of the muscular Postimpressionism of Darius Milhaud and his “Les Six” compositional compatriots. Lacking much dynamic variation, it involves twisting tensions and a disinclination to reach either harmonic resolution or emotional resting places. Its spirit is taut and propulsive, almost to a fault. In one passage, players move up in nervous chromatic increments while the cello harrumphs.

With “Tapestry,” Lees conveys a fear of staying in one harmonic place too long, creating a collection of fragments in a temporal patchwork quilt that ends as abruptly as it starts. Further listening may be required to unravel its thorny beauty.

After intermission, less arduous semi-Impressionistic sounds came via the 1918 “Poem” by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, a composer deserving of greater recognition. Pacific Serenades founder Carlson played flute.

Balancing the program was a standard-repertoire framework of Brahms -- the Sonata in F, Opus 99, neatly played by Speltz and Agus -- and some bright-spirited early Beethoven, the Trio in B flat, Opus 11. Played with vigor and cohesion by Gray, Speltz and Agus, this emerged as the highlight of the program, a model of solidity with its generous -- and yes, pacific -- wit intact.

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Pacific Serenades

Where: UCLA Faculty Center, 405 N. Hilgard Ave., Westwood

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $28

Contact: (213) 534-3434