On Saturday afternoon, a group of undergraduate musicians called the Irving Fine Society, under the direction of Nicholas Alexander Brown '10, came together to present a concert of works written by their namesake, the composer and Brandeis Music Department founder Irving Fine, as well as to premier works by Brandeis undergraduates, in the spirit of musical creativity that Fine championed. Fine's music is sadly underperformed by professional music ensembles, but Saturday's concert proved that his strange and beautiful works deserve a much wider audience.The concert's first half was dedicated mostly to pieces for solo piano, the first by honoree Fine and three others by undergraduate composers. Leonard Bernstein called Fine's Diversions charming, and I absolutely agree. There is an irresistible optimism in this suite, which was played gracefully and with great tenderness by Jae Kyo Han '10.

Daniel Neal's '10 Boosh was a brooding and repetitive piece played, again by Han, with strong dynamic sensitivity. It had the great virtue of ending at just the right time-that is, just as it was starting to annoy me.

Aufruhr, which was performed by its composer, Brown, was an interesting case-it was clearly designed to be a technically easy piece for an unpracticed player, consisting almost entirely of stepwise motion and repetition. I felt as if I had heard it before, which is not a compliment, but for a piece of largely atonal music, it was pleasantly inoffensive.

Derek Strykowski '10 says in the program that Nuages de Bespin, his piano piece, "draws the listener into the swirling clouds which envelope Bespin, a fictional planet" from the Star Wars universe. A piece based on a Star Wars planet sounds like a delightful idea to me, and the piece almost lived up to its concept. The dreamy right hand and the darker left hand operated semi-independently, evoking the contrast between skimming clouds on the planet's surface and its unbearably hot, poisonous core.

It is hard for me to evaluate Fine's Partita for Wind Quintet, which concluded the first half, because I do not believe I heard a credible performance of it. While all five instrumentalists seemed individually strong, together they seemed poorly rehearsed and had no ensemble feeling. Their entrances and cutoffs were not together, and when the melody was handed off from one part to the other, there was no sense of continuity or complete phrasing.

The second half of the concert was devoted to choral music performed by the Irving Fine Singers. Throughout the program, the choir had a consistently pleasant sound, but they were often out of tune. I hate to blame the altos, because everybody always does, but it's justified this time, I'm afraid. Of course, that blame deserves to be shared around-bad tuning is everybody's responsibility, including the conductor.

Brown's conducting was very similar to the performance that it produced: pleasant, serviceable, but nothing spectacular. I consistently wanted better phrasing and more expressive dynamics from him but only got them in the encore, Fine's hilariously terrible Brandeis fight song. When performers don't look at the conductor, that's a pretty sure sign that he's not giving them much useful information, and that was the case here in several pieces, especially the Old American Songs.

The vocal soloists were all fine, but I'd like to single out David Frederick '11, whose lovely, clear baritone deserved special praise. Jae Kyo Han on piano also stood out once again, mastering a tricky solo in Father William and often supplying the power and enthusiasm that the choir couldn't quite produce. While the singers were clearly giving it their all, they seemed unable to go above a mezzo-forte, and in the higher registers, their sound was thinner than it should have been.

There's no doubt that this concert had the worthiest of aims-it's wonderful to have a venue for the works of undergraduate composers, and Fine's music certainly deserves a wider audience. A larger roster and more rehearsal time could have made this concert an unequivocal success, and if Brown can supply those things in the society's next venture, then I will very much look forward to it.