A larger chorus softens the textures as the orchestra assembles elements of Brazilian and local Indian music.
But what you may find missing is the very thing you would expect from a symphony orchestra: an element of grandeur.
Mr. O'Leary said the score calls for a full orchestra with jazz elements.
Performed in October for the Bologna's Robot Festival, Salvo and Vercelli's The Enlightenment is a "hidden concert of pure light" performed by an "uninhabited" orchestra of lighting elements, including stagelights and high-powered bulbs.
These historical elements -- orchestra, place, occasion, audience -- were linked at birth.
That seems the right instinct for the subject, and though the scoring is richly varied, including harpsichord and electronic elements, the orchestra is small.
And it was, in fact, the earthier elements that Orchestra Baobab introduced to their sound that made the group stand out on the local scene, with a line-up that featured at different times Wolof, Malinke, Toucouleur, Nigerian and Moroccan musicians.
Some of the musicians are called upon to march about the stage, pre sumably to highlight the more prominent textural elements; the orchestra is also required to declaim the state motto of West Virginia (Montani Semper Liberi), quote from Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet, and mumble an arcane bit of gibberish with ominous mean ings for the composer.
The basic structure is that of the Roman Catholic Mass, as sung and played by a choir and pit orchestra, but Bernstein inserted elements that elaborate and comment on the liturgy, using a blues band, a rock band, a street chorus (with kazoos) and the Celebrant, whose painful journey into chaos is the focus of the drama.
This could be an instance of a conductor and an orchestra achieving that elusive element, chemistry.
