PRISM's five pieces for saxophones

There are some superficial and obvious similarities between a string quartet and a saxophone quartet. The four voices are spaced at about the same pitch ranges, and the texture of the music can be woven together in comparable patterns. But while well-played strings can certainly achieve a vocal quality, brass instruments are a natural extension of singing. The effect is more operatic, both in terms of sound production and dynamic variety.

At least that has always seemed to be the case with the PRISM Quartet, an important Philadelphia new-music resource, now in its 25th season.

It also seems natural that jazz will strongly influence saxophone quartet writing, the sax being the emblematic instrument of that genre. You'll almost always hear some jazzy, syncopated rhythms in a PRISM concert, which was the case in a number of the pieces for this season closer, featuring five world premieres and one local one, all by composers named Dave.

Sort of: The very talented young composer Ilana Rainero-de Haan wasn't named Dave at birth, but promised the audience that henceforth she would happily answer to "Davey." Her finely crafted contribution, As of this Moment, opened with a squawky ensemble that recalled the energy and joy of free jazz, and then beautifully morphed into a liquidy chorus.

Who can sleep?

Jazz also coursed through the music of David Biedenbender, in his whimsical You've Been Talking in your Sleep, a work inspired by a domestic incident involving the composer's wife. The music sounded, well, groovy; taut and propulsive in the manner of a film noir score. The big question was: How in the world could someone sleep though this?

David Little describes his Raw Power as a tribute to punk, the music of Iggy Pop in particular, but his writing is far too sophisticated to make that connection. It also lacked the huge emotions of punk, leaving the listener little to hang onto.

The rest of the program hewed away from pop idioms, beginning with David Ludwig's Density 15.1, a solo work for tenor sax played by Matt Levy. The title describes the combined density of copper and zinc, the alloy of the brass that's used to make saxophones. The music had a mystical aura, somewhat in the manner of the late, great French composer Olivier Messiaen.

Frigid in South Jersey

David Laganella's Leafless Trees was written during this past February's awful weather by a city kid transplanted to South Jersey. It sounded appropriately bleak, utilizing odd but compelling massing of sounds. His references could be ironic; the shrieking Little Black Birds sounded more like music for Hitchcock than a solitary walk in the winter woods.

The star Dave of the evening was David Lang, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner and a co-founder of New York's "Bang on a Can" festival. Lang's Revolutionary Etudes are written in his customary highly intricate manner, with waves of overlapping patterns creating great rhythmic complexity. In this work, in three sections, the composer often sounded hypnotized by his own virtuosity, as if he forgot to turn off the music-making machine.

One movement sounded like an accordion, wheezing in and out, on and on. Another sounded like an old recording of Gregorian chants, with the needle stuck in a groove.

So yes, the piece could benefit from some careful editing. Yet it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer beauty of Lang's technique, which borders on a Stravinsky-like mastery of timbral blending.

None of which would matter a hoot, by the way, were it not for the superb playing of PRISM.