Clerestory gave its second set of concerts last weekend, after an inaugural outing in October (see review). Friday's concert at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley took listeners on a journey through music of the winter season. It started with three noels and two Marian pieces for Christmas, moved on to three motets for Epiphany, and then, for the rest of the program, turned to the theme of love, with music from France, Italy, and England — in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day.

Although at first glance the program as a whole seemed disparate, it actually turned out to be quite effective, and included a nice selection of pieces that are not often performed. The two highlights for me, until the closing set, were Jean Mouton's Noe, noe, psallite and Pierre Regnault dit Sandrin's Doulce memoire. Both pieces had a gentleness that highlighted the blend between Clerestory's singers, as well as their sensitivity to intonation and their clear sense of communication with each other. Noe, noe also showed off an impressive and nuanced range of dynamics.

The pieces that fared well but that didn't leave me with that same sense of awe were, in fact, much more revealing about this group's capabilities. Clerestory's eight singers are, individually, musicians of impressive skills and backgrounds. With four countertenors, two tenors, and two basses, the ensemble had a fair amount of flexibility in terms of vocal pairings. Throughout, the blend of the group as a whole was excellent, though the blend within each section was less consistent. The group sings without an obvious conductor, with founder Jesse Antin starting and stopping pieces, and indicating tempi. For the most part, this was subtle and successful, even though in some of the more rhythmically complicated pieces the endings became slightly out of sync. For both these reasons, Clerestory fared best with the largely homophonic pieces.

The vocal qualities of the singers are quite varied, from the clearer sounds of the four countertenors to the richer, fuller voices of the tenors and basses. This, too, offered certain challenges in duet and trio passages, where the robustness in the tones didn't always match.

Yet these are fairly minor points. In my view, they attest more to the fact that Clerestory is a new group, still getting a sense of its own sound and "feel," its own unique way of surmounting the challenges that any group of singers — professional or not — faces on first working together. The more significant problem in Clerestory's performance was that I was not consistently convinced by the countertenors' sound. Interestingly, their degree of success seemed dependent on the repertoire. The soprano sound in the English folk music set — which included some extremely high notes — was strong, full, and well-matched with the rest of the ensemble. The opening sets (early 16th century English music) sounded good, as well. In the William Byrd motets and the Claudio Monteverdi madrigals, however, the tones seemed thinner and inharmonious.

Nonetheless, Clerestory has much to build on, which also showed on Friday night: the mellifluous unfolding of polyphony at "Sicut locutus est" after several solo or chanted verses in John Taverner's Magnificat; the exquisitely gentle return by the basses to the refrain of Richard Pygott's Quid petis, o fili, at the close of the first verse; the piercing suspensions between the altos and tenors in Monteverdi's Che se tu se’il cor mio; and the power the singers delivered in Byrd's Ecce advenit dominatur Dominus. Beautiful solo turns were delivered, too, including a duet by Chris Fritzsche and Tom Hart during the unattributed Nowell Syng We, and Kevin Baum's opening lines in Nowell: Out of Your Slepe Aryse.

To my ears, the group truly came into its own in its final set of pieces, four songs based on folk songs of the British Isles. From the first moments of Vaughan Williams' arrangement of Bushes and Briars, it was apparent that something new was present. The harmonies were lush, the intonation was spot-on, the sections blended well, and the diction was clear — all of which remained true throughout the set, and into the encore piece, as well, Antin's own composition The Country of Marriage, to a text by Wendell Berry. The new element, though, was an ease with which the singers approached the music, and a more relaxed and indeed embodied stance. Clerestory looked as if standing in a semicircle and singing this music was the most natural thing in the world.