A more virtuosic, traditional concert-like format ("Lumen Aria") brought the performer downstage right to a double microphone setup, whereupon the center stage was altered to become a throne-like array bedecked with protruding bell stands. "Lumen Finale" found the soloist seated amongst the bells, flanked by two female and two male performers on Javanese gamelan instruments. Rhythmic poundings from the gamelanists were met with repeated pitches in a hands-free trumpet setup, such that Bithell could simultaneously reach up and strike any bell in his contraption. No worries about changing pitch here — one of the point-fingers reappears to depress a valve at a key moment.

Meanwhile the two beautiful movement specialists (Pauline Jennings and Angelina Nicole) engaged in various seriocomic shadowplay, assisted in illusion by the trumpet valets, ultimately evolving into a brass-instrument-as-weapon and mute-as-bullet-image. It all ended with bells and mime and, despite its 50-minute running time, had very little downtime.

The rest of the concert engaged, too, if in more traditional non-traditional ways, opening with two classics in updated guises: Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) and Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra (1913). The updating of the first was by the use of a notebook computer instead of records for the test-tones in this work for piano, percussion (mostly suspended cymbal), and electronic sounds — simple elements elegantly performed by Christopher Jones, Russell Greenberg, and Burns.

The Webern (made into a chamber piece, a quartet transcription for oboist Kyle Bruckmann, clarinetist Ingalls, Greenberg, and Christopher Jones) was a nice practical reduction that could find its way on many programs. However, one couldn't help but miss the colors of the chamber orchestra original. Still, Jones and the ensemble were able to preserve the fractured, halting beauty in this intriguing setting that often honored the original (preserving certain lines on oboe, clarinet, and percussion; transmuting a mandolin into a pizzicato piano) and sometimes contradicted it (sending a clarinet motive elsewhere when the clarinetist was busy covering a trumpet passage).

Anthony Braxton's nicely-named Composition No. 341 (2004) was a veteran of the "Earle Brown 'Available Forms' meets the Ornette Coleman 'Free Jazz'” school of thought, a blow-your-heads-off thoughtful assault-and-buttery (it wasn't all battery, after all) for a yes-yes nonet of apparently three trios: a mixed one of violinist Erik Ulman, trombonist Toyoji Tomita, and oboist / English hornist Bruckman; a duet-and-accompaniment of bass clarinetist Ingalls, alto saxophonist John Ingle, and pianist Jones; and a rhythm section of vibraphonist Greenberg, electric guitarist John Shiurba, and bassist David Arend. Like rebel Terry Rileys, they did their own thing — sometimes together, sometimes not. The players would shift allegiances, signaling to new partners-in-crime on a semi-regular basis. If they didn't exactly steal the show, it was tour-de-force virtuosity nonetheless.