Saturday evening's concert of the Hays Symphony Orchestra was like a breath of fresh air. Instead of a hodgepodge of seemingly random selections, their program made sense both musically and intellectually.

Moreover, they introduced works by three important American composers. One, Charles Ives, was ahead of his time. Two, John Corigliano and Terry Riley, are leading innovators of contemporary music.

And, as if this weren't enough, they performed in the First Presbyterian Church, whose modern architecture, designed by local artist John Thorns, provided a stylistically and acoustically ideal setting.

Conductor Benjamin Morris-Cline led the orchestra in the opening selection, "Divertimento in D" (K. 136), an early work for strings by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The string section performed its many quickly repeated motifs with apparent ease, giving the playful nature of the piece its due. Corigliano's "Voyage for String Orchestra" (1978) followed, featuring another kind of repetition, a refrain, or repetition that forms boundaries between different sections of text or music. Corigliano is well known for his wit in composing consciously retro works, and "Voyage" is no exception. Its lushly romantic music, reeking with the heady aroma of poppies and pot, is based on a poem by Baudelaire with the refrain, "There is nothing else but grace and measure, richness, quietness and pleasure" (program note, translation from French by Richard Wilbur).

The orchestra closed this part of the concert with Benjamin Britten's "Simple Symphony" for string orchestra, which, like the Mozart, is both a youthful composition and deliciously playful.

After intermission the string choir was joined by guest conductor Jeff Jordan, the flute choir and the percussion section, with soloists Jon Yust, trumpet, and Amanda Pfenninger, piano and harpsichord.

They began with an early experimental work by Charles Ives, "The Unanswered Question" (1906), in which the trumpet and flutes mimic human voices dissonant with anxiety, while the strings just go rolling harmoniously along like, well, "Ol' Man River."

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was "In C" (1964) by Terry Riley. This is not the first minimalist work -- this honor goes to La Monte Young's "For Brass" (1957) -- but it is certainly one of the best. Tonality here is a joke -- it is called "In C" only because the piano continuously plays the two highest "C's" on the keyboard throughout the piece.

Meanwhile, the other instruments, stationed by ones and twos around the hall, play "a collection of 53 phrases independently and repeated an arbitrary number of times" (program note). Since the performers decided "when to move on to the next phrase," there was no need for a conductor. (Concertmaster Matt Means gave the cue to stop.)

Curiously, the music had a hypnotic, somewhat disorienting effect upon me -- I even started humming C-scales just to keep grounded. As a contrast to the random character of "In C," the concert ended with J.S. Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto, one of the most tightly structured works in the repertoire, performed elegantly by a select group of strings, with Pfenninger at the harpsichord.

Everyone in the audience gave appropriate kudos to Morris-Cline, Jordan, soloists, orchestra and First Presbyterian Church for a splendid and refreshing concert.

The next Hays Symphony Concert will be the Holiday Pops Concert at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 at Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center.

Ruth Firestone is a supporter of music and theater in Hays.

rfiresto@fhsu.edu.