The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble will celebrate its 30th anniversary with help from special grants and a special gift to itself: It will perform one major commission at each of its five concerts this summer and will cut its first recording.

"We are talking major works," says artistic director and conductor Kevin Noe. "It's a real celebration of what we do, presetting new music. You can have a cocktail party, make a plaque or you can find a way that reflection comes out on the stage."

Last year, the Argosy Foundation gave PNME a $25,000 grant to commission the works, conduct a tour and complete two recordings over the next three years. The five commissions are: Kieren MacMillan's "Drunken Moon," David Stock's "Hostage," Thomas Albert's "Night Music," Brett Dietz's "Headcase" and David T. Little's "Soldier Songs."

The group will record the five commissions at Carnegie Mellon University's Kresge Theater, sometimes in the middle of the night. "First we thought that was a crazy idea, but it is hard to get quiet at Kresge," says Nytch.

PNME feeds off crazy ideas. Under artistic director Kevin Noe, it has become bolder in its incorporation of theatrics. The opening concert does so in spades. It melds Schoenberg's classic song cycle "Pierrot Lunaire" from 1912 with "Drunken Moon," and in the processes will create a new theatrical piece.

"I have hung the entire evening on a story, a free narrative," says Noe. "In a pre-war cabaret, a woman has this relationship with a handsome stranger. Her fantasy runs away from her and she wonders how she was tricked by the moon." The resulting work is "essentially an experimental opera."

In his most radical move, Noe has split the vocal duties of "Pierrot" for the two characters. Schoenberg called for soprano, violin (doubling on viola), flute, clarinet, cello, and piano -- a combination of instruments that, with percussion, became the preferred corps for new music groups and PNME's current lineup: conductors Noe and Brett Mitchell, violinist Minghuan Xu, cellist Victoria Bass, flutist Lindsey Goodman, bass-baritone Timothy Jones, percussionist Lisa Pegher, clarinetist Kevin Schempf and pianist Daniel Spiegel. Soprano Charla Nafziger joins the group for this drama.

Other commissions include the first by founder Stock since he retired from the group in 1999. His "Hostage" takes the listener into the mind of one of the guards taken in the Iran hostage crisis of the late '70s. Dietz's "Headcase" is an insiders view of what it is like to go through a stroke. The season closes with Little's "Soldier Songs," which traces a person's changing perspective on violence and death and has strong political elements.

2006 PNME schedule

Concerts are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, June 30 to July 29, at City Theatre, South Side.

June 30-July 1: MacMillan, "Drunken Moon"; Schoenberg, "Pierrot Lunaire."

July 7-8: Moravec "Tempest Fantasy"; Nytch/Noe, "Caliban"; Wood, "Rogosanti"; Stock, "Hostage."

July 14-15: Puts, "Alternating Current"; Noe "Two Times Only"; Shatin, "Grito del Corazon"; Sheng "Trio"; Traxler, "An Homage to Sleep"; Albert, "Night Music."

July 21-22: Bermel, "Tied Shifts"; Van der Aa, "Passage"; Davidovsky, "Synchronism 9"; Dietz, "Headcase."

July 28-29: Little, "Soldier Songs."

Tickets: $20 (Seniors $10; students, pay-what-you-can, first-time visitors free); 412-431-CITY.