Percussia, a contemporary chamber music ensemble with percussion as its driving force, performed the world premiere of a new work and three additional pieces in a concert at Queens Library at Langston Hughes, 100-01 Northern Blvd., Corona on Saturday, November 10 at 3 p.m.

Percussia is a New York City-based chamber music ensemble that makes percussion the foundation for a new sound. Playing both world and Western percussion instruments, the group melds the music of different lands into its own contemporary soundscape. The resulting international music crosses genres, styles, and cultural boundaries, connecting people through music's common thread of percussion. Percussia's varied repertoire is a mixture of contemporary chamber music, world and folk music styles, and original arrangements. While percussion takes center stage, the group blends its rhythm with melodic instruments for added dimension.

In this concert, Percussia premiered "Starfish at Pescadero" by Dennis Tobenski, an emerging composer based in New York City. The sixmovement piece is inspired by, and features the poetry of, San Francisco poet Idris Anderson. "The poem, on the surface, is a trip to the beach- little vignettes of a couple," Tobenski said. "Underneath, it's about the inexplicable sadness that can accompany even the happiest times, and an inability to communicate our feelings to one another, particularly to those we love most."

"I am thrilled to present the world premiere of this brand new work by one of New York's most promising young composers," Percussia Artistic Director Ingrid Gordon said.

In addition to percussion, harp, viola and flute, the piece featured versatile soprano Melissa Fogarty of Jackson Heights, who has a longstanding working relationship with Tobenski. Hailed as "outstanding" by the New York Times and given "high marks" by the Wall Street Journal, Fogarty's wide range of experience has taken her from leading child performer at the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera to the stage, where she has been a featured soloist with orchestras and ensembles, including the New York Collegium, Concert Royal, ARTEK and Seattle Baroque Orchestra. The performance also included Gordon, who besides serving as Percussia's artistic director is also a percussionist with the group; percussionist Andrea Pryor of Jackson Heights; harpist Susan Jolles of Forest Hills; flutist Margaret Lancaster of Manhattan, and violist Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin, also of Manhattan.

The composer David Del Tredici has written of three times during his career when he felt compelled to reject all he had been taught and rely on instincts — three times he had to, in a sense, come out.

The first was during his mid-20s when, feeling creatively blocked, he dared to compose for pleasure. The second came when he re-embraced tonality, becoming a trailblazer for the Neo-Romantic movement. The third involved integrating his complete personality into his work and celebrating his identity as a gay man.

The signature piece of this latest phase is “Gay Life,” a 45-minute cycle of six songs for baritone and orchestra, commissioned and given its premiere in 2001 by the San Francisco Symphony. On Tuesday night at The Graduate Center at CUNY in Midtown, the work received its New York premiere in a new arrangement for two tenors and piano, here the dynamic vocalists Rob Frankenberry and Dennis Tobenski, with Mr. Del Tredici, an accomplished pianist, at the keyboard. The free event, which included engaging and distinctive song cycles by Chester Biscardi, Darien Shulman, Roger Zahab and Mr. Tobenski, part of the Tobenski-Algera Concert Series, also acknowledged Mr. Del Tredici’s 70th birthday.

In 1996 Mr. Del Tredici received poems from Michael D. Calhoun and W. H. Kidde about an experience the three had shared in an empowering body-focused workshop in Wildwood, Calif. Mr. Del Tredici began setting them immediately, the first texts he had set in 20 years that were not drawn from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

These songs, “Ode to Wildwood” and “In the Temple,” open the “Gay Life” cycle. In each the music pulsates with plush tonal harmonies and Straussian lyrical extravagance. Still, an obsessive element makes the music seem disorienting and modern. The piano writing is thick with clashing dissonances and unhinged harmonic outbursts.

The third song, a setting of Allen Ginsberg’s “Personals Ad,” which gently riffs the entries in gay newspapers, is a compact and punchy work that eventually bursts into cascades of chords. “After the Big Parade,” a setting of another Ginsberg poem, describes the specter of disease and hostility that impeded the joy of the 1991 Gay Pride Day parade. The music has a crazed Ives-like energy, teetering between exuberance and terror.

Mr. Del Tredici dedicates the fifth song, his moody setting of Paul Monette’s “Here,” a graveside eulogy, to Paul Arcomano, his partner, who died of AIDS in 1993.

The final song turns the shortest poem, Thom Gunn’s “Memory Unsettled,” into a 15-minute rumination. In the final episode, Mr. Frankenberry and Mr. Tobenski traded the phrase “We remember you” over and over. Though the music is emotionally indulgent, the unflinching excess captivates you.

Though the piano part, adapted from the orchestral score, is awkwardly difficult, Mr. Del Tredici handled it ably to create swirling sonorities. Surely one of New York’s orchestras should present this major work by a significant New York composer as it was originally conceived.

Comparing the book of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to the new movie was a project fourth- and fifth-graders at Bonfield Grade School really enjoyed.

They read the book, studied more about its historical backdrop, learned how a book is adapted into a movie and finally viewed the new film.

The highlight of the project, though, was a December visit by Dennis Tobenski, a 2000 graduate of Herscher High School, who is now a composer in New York City.

The son of Janice Tobenski, who teaches at the grade school, he helped students compose music to the lyrics they had written about the movie.

Tobenski teaches lyric writing workshops in NYC high schools through a program sponsored by the Theatre Development Fund, a non-profit group that promotes the performing arts.

The final months of the Spring semester at Illinois State University’s School of Music are always filled with concerts and recitals by student performers, but two events this weekend (April 23 and 24) stand out because they are by Dennis M. Tobenski.

A senior vocal performance major and music theory/composition major, Tobenski will present a vocal recital at 6 p.m. April 23 in Kemp Recital Hall and a composition recital at 6:30 p.m. April 24 in the University Galleries in the Center for the Visual Arts. Both are free and open to the public.

Tobenski, who is from Kankakee, has been a particularly prominent figure in the School of Music, having performed as a tenor vocalist in such groups as the Madrigal Singers, Acafellaz a cappella jazz choir, Civic Chorale and Concert Choir, but also for setting text to music for School of Theatre productions of ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle,’ Sophocles’ ‘Electra’ and ‘The Tempest.’

A Friends of the Arts scholarship recipient, Tobenski was commissioned in 2002 to write a piece for the Madrigal Singers which was performed at the 2003 9/11 memorial concert. He also conducted the piece. Tobenski’s compositions have been sung at the Madrigal Dinners the past three years, he wrote for the Concert Choir and the Women’s Choir commissioned a piece to be performed next year.

Tobenski studies voice with Associate Professor John Koch. His vocal program Friday will include ‘Earth and Air and Rain’ by Gerald Finzi, selections from ‘Canti della Lontananza’ by Gian Carlo Menotti, ‘Cocardes’ by Francis Poulenc and ‘Kanarienvogel Kantate’ by Georg Philip Telemann.

He studies composition with Assistant Professor David Feurzeig. Tobenski’s composition recital Saturday will include his works sung by the Madrigal Singers, baritone Kevin Prina, soprano Rachel Moeller and baritone John Koch. The program will include music from ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle’ and ‘Electra.’