Percussionist Timothy Adams joined the Renaissance City Winds for the ensemble's opening concert of its season at Carlow University's Antonian Theater Sunday afternoon. The Winds will be collaborating with other non-wind-playing musicians throughout the season, and Sunday's performance with Pittsburgh Symphony timpanist Adams was a promising beginning.

Seattle-based composer Karen Thomas' "Sopravvento" (scored for wind quintet and percussion) united Adams and the core Winds ensemble. Written in 1994, the three-movement work explored the ensemble's timbral possibilities with mostly satisfying results. Once the quintet and Adams settled into the rhythms of the opening movement, they revealed the comfortable grooves that Thomas created by incorporating the marimba and wood blocks into the wind quintet texture.

The harmonically static middle movement was less interesting. Set against the backdrop of tuned crystal glasses and bowed vibraphone, the otherwise intriguing duets between the flute and clarinet were hampered by the reliance on flute pitch bends to signal phrase endings. The effects came across as dated and cliched. While crisper articulations by the quintet would have helped them match Adams' percussive accents in the final movement, the entire group convincingly realized the athleticism and excitement of the composition's ending.

Flutist Barbara O'Brien and Adams performed Karl Ahrendt's intimate "Seven Miniatures for Flute and Percussion" with a compelling mixture of virtuosic flourish and introspective calm. Focusing on a different percussive element for each movement, Ahrendt's composition allowed O'Brien to display her flawless tone and breath control against Adams' timbrally interesting and rhythmically precise background. O'Brien captured the gestural intent of Ahrendt's delicately meandering flute lines, and Adams brought out the rhythmic plasticity without losing focus on the prevailing pulse. The dynamic control Adams displayed with the tambourine (especially the thumb rolls) was the highlight of the concert.

For his own composition, "Night Music," Adams performed on two non-Western percussion instruments: log drum (a wooden oblong box with 12 pitch variations) and udo (a Nigerian gourd-like instrument). "Night Music" relied on rhythmic accelerations and the timbral differences between the two instruments for its musical identity. Adams' log drum produced a "muffled resonance" that was juxtaposed with the clicky and hollow resonance of the udo.

The Winds also presented Pittsburgh composer Efrain Amaya's "Kaleidoscope" and Vincent Persichetti's "Pastoral." Amaya's work received its premiere in a solid performance. A set of seven vignettes for wind quintet, "Kaleidoscope" explored various combinations of instruments, giving each musician a chance to come to the fore. The ensemble performed Persichetti's seminal work with the dynamic contrasts and precision of articulation necessary for it to be successful.