Hebrew liturgy provides blessings for every major event in the Jewish life cycle. Blessings for children, weddings, the Kaddish, the Kol Nidre and the Song of Solomon have inspired composers to write works that deserve a place on the concert stage. The Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival ended its three-concert season on Tuesday evening in Levy Hall at Rodef Shalom Congregation with "Songs for the Seasons," a program of richly impassioned compositions depicting major aspects of Judaica.

The 10 eclectic and mostly contemporary works called for various combos of voices and instruments. Sopranos Amy Goldstein and Katherine Soroka, pianist Luz Manriquez and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra members harpist Gretchen van Hoesen, clarinetist Ron Samuels, violinists Dennis O'Boyle and Jennifer Orchard, violist Marylene Gingras-Roy and cellist Aron Zelkowicz played musical chairs. Guest speaker Cantor Richard Berlin introduced many of the selections with prayers, chants and, in one instance, a comical quasi-rap about "spendin' Hanukkah in Santa Monica."

Lucas Richman's "Sheva B'rachot (Seven Blessings)" for a wedding is a through-composed song cycle for soprano and instrumental sextet that could easily wear out an average singer, but Goldstein soared through it. Soroka's interpretation of Srul Irving Glick's excerpts from the "Song of Solomon" were carried by excellent diction and controlled dynamics.

It may be over-simplifying, if not demeaning, to say that a goal of instrumentalists is to sing through their instruments, but that's exactly what the players did. Samuels created the pastoral atmosphere of Gerald Cohen's shimmering setting of Psalm 23. Gingras-Roy was superbly evocative in Max Janowski's "Avinu Malkeinu," a fantasy on a High Holidays chant. Manriquez gave a clinic, mastering a wide range of expression and styles throughout the concert.

The instrumental pinnacle was Judith Shatlin's "Elijah's Chariot," a symphonic poem for string quartet, with the four instruments representing the wheels of the prophet's fiery conveyance to Heaven. O'Boyle, Orchard, Gingras-Roy and Zelkowicz also grippingly conveyed the tortured dialogue between Elijah and Elisha.

Another mega-moment came from Cohen's mini-cantata, "V'higad'ta L'vincha ("And You Shall Tell Your Child) and Dayeinu, "It would have been enough." In his program notes, Cohen explains that he based the work on selections from the Haggadah, the central text of the Passover celebrations, stating, "we all must experience the story of the deliverance from slavery as if we ourselves had lived through it; we must then tell our children that story."

The work begins with a chant-like motif, then moves through the oppression of slavery to the joy of deliverance, which is expressed in the lively dance setting of the Dayeinu. Goldstein, Soroka, Samuels, Zelkowicz and Manriquez rocked.

Zelkowicz's dignified, reverent rendering of Joachim Stutschew-sky's "Kaddish," the mourner's prayer that's also a multilevel prayer for peace, was the perfect "amen" to the evening.