MUSIC REVIEWS : Music Now Plays Contemporary Program

Based in Sacramento and energized by a sense of purpose, the gifted ensemble known simply as Music Now has a challenging mandate built into its name. Whether or not the 5-year-old group truly lived up to that promise Monday at the L.A. County Museum of Art, its concert suffered no lack of intrigue, commitment or even a sense of history--relatively speaking.

From the historical department came George Crumb’s mystical “Vox Balaenae” (Voice of the Whale). Dating from 1971, Crumb’s piece takes its inspiration from the then-popular sound of humpback whale song and the prospect of extra-human communication. Extended techniques and a mystical spectrum of sounds are key ingredients, here neatly realized between cellist Robin Bonnell’s harmonics, pianist Brenda Tom’s percussive, inside-the-instrument scrambling and flutist Mathew Krejci’s vocalizing.

Proto-minimalist Terry Riley’s 1981 piece “Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector” is no more sober or rational than the title, with its twisting, phasing parts for string quartet and echoes of jazz and Indian classical traditions.

Music Now’s founder and music director Howard Hersh offered two Los Angeles premieres of his own compositions, disparate in scale and focus but connected by a tendency to merge diverse ideas. “A Crown of Feathers,” written as a solo vehicle for the ensemble’s violinist William Barbini, weaves together mournful meditations, agitated double-stopping and Yiddish tunes, in a not-entirely seamless way.

Hersh’s “Shrapnel in the Heart,” which took up this Monday Evening Concert’s second half, is a wartime reflection that unevenly blends concert and documentary material. The limpid plaints of soprano Anna Carol Dudley and the atmospheric, Morton Feldmanesque instrumental passages prove more effective than the chaotic collage of letters to Vietnam soldiers that spilled out of speakers placed around the hall.