A few years ago, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble adopted the enigmatic slogan, "We have the Future behind us," to highlight its cutting-edge repertory. But this past weekend that catchphrase acquired new meaning. The group opened its 30th anniversary year and its summer season at City Theatre Friday with a re-envisioning of Schoenberg's masterful song cycle of 1912, "Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot)."

	Alyssa Cwanger,Post-Gazette Sharla Nafziger, guest soprano, and Timothy Jones, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble bass-baritone, perform during a PNME rehearsal at City Theatre on the South Side. Click photo for larger image.

At first, the choice might seem curious for a group specializing in contemporary music. After all, although Schoenberg's reputation as a bete noire continues to this day, "Pierrot" is hardly avant-garde music. And even the argument that its instrumentation -- voice, piano, violin (doubling on viola), flute (piccolo), clarinet (bass clarinet), cello and piano -- became the standard makeup for contemporary groups such as PNME (adding percussion), "Pierrot" has accumulated substantial distance.

But the key word is "re-envisioned." Led by artistic director Kevin Noe, the group transformed "Pierrot" by fully staging it, splitting its parts between two singers and combining it with a new work. That composition, a PNME commission, was another song cycle called "Drunken Moon." Written by Kieren MacMillan, it preceded the Schoenberg song cycle, together comprising one continuous piece, really a mini-opera.

The future was indeed behind PNME in this endeavor, for it was by reaching to the past that it has finally found its niche -- one in which theatrics transform music rather than just enhance it. This is must-see music. The ensemble has been slowly building to this approach for years now, but this was the most complete and compelling effort yet.

The setting was a New York nightclub, circa 1910, in which a timorous woman (guest soprano Sharla Nafziger) is repeatedly rebuffed in her efforts to flirt with other cabaret patrons (played by the musicians who weren't performing at any given time). When a dashing gent (bass-baritone Timothy Jones of PNME) enters, she turns instead to fantasy. Eventually, even her thoughts taunt her.

Since this loose plot was played out over poems rather than a libretto, the action never became tawdry or simplistic. MacMillan's work tapped verse by Yeats, Dickinson, Neruda and others to mirror Schoenberg's setting of poems by Giraud on the theme of the moon. The casual relationship of the poems allowed for the fuzzy edges of art's varied perspectives to remain.

It's a daunting task to match such a landmark as "Pierrot," but MacMillan's work was convincing. Using a multiplicity of styles -- one could hear Bach and Broadway, tangos and jazz -- he set the scene with lush music. While Nafziger's character was hesitant, her fantasies belied a vibrant and caring soul aching to connect. Jones and Nafziger were well-matched as characters, but the soprano struggled to enunciate and project. Jones, however, was at his charismatic best, his voice's opulent timbre radiating even when it scurried or shouted.

As "Drunken Moon" progressed, it became more sonically similar to "Pierrot," which returned the favor by being sung in English. The German Sprechstimme -- Schoenberg's eerie half-singing, half-speaking vocal style -- was lost, but the English parlando styling that replaced it was less jarring. This, combined with an urbane performance by the instrumentalists and the intriguing staging, made the drama speak in a fascinatingly contemporary way. It's not that "Pierrot" needs visuals for today's audiences to "get it." It's that works of art can flourish with nonmusical interpretation, too.

This week the group will move to its next program, highlighted by a work by founder David Stock. But it will be hard to beat the theatrics of opening night. While most groups grow conservative or conventional as time passes, PNME has grown bolder.