Fourteen performers assembled on the old coffee barge under the Brooklyn Bridge during Thursday evening’s blizzard for Bargemusic’s Here and Now winter festival of contemporary fare. With 14 pieces by 13 composers, the program felt somewhat like a potluck dinner where the few tantalizingly accomplished dishes are finished all too soon, leaving you to pick at multiple versions of baked macaroni.
The level of execution was high. The pianist Steven Beck started the evening off with a crystalline rendition of Pierre Boulez’s atmospheric “Une Page d’Éphéméride,” which explores the acoustic inner world of a grand piano. Mr. Beck was joined by the expressive cellist Michael Nicolas in John Zorn’s “Occam’s Razor,” a work that also seems to play with cause and effect, in this case the transforming power of violence.
The scintillating colors of those two pieces made the following works for solo piano appear two-dimensional. Kenneth Fuchs’s “Falling Canons” for piano (Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 5) and Victoria Bond’s “Binary (I, II),” performed by the thoughtful pianist Olga Vinokur, and Peri Mauer’s “A Little New Year’s Flair” played by the rhythmically astute Blair McMillen, all investigated structure and rhythm, with few discoveries to report. So did Don Byron’s “3 Etudes,” but Mr. McMillen — who also had to vocalize and sing in these — brought out their dry wit.
One highlight was the gorgeous rendition of Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Jatekok IV” (“Games”) by the pianists Michael Brown and Adam Golka. Technically, it’s scored “for piano four hands,” but the players also make use of elbows and forearms. At times, one player silently pressed multiple keys so that their corresponding strings vibrate along, adding a pastel shimmer to the notes played by the other. Mr. Brown’s own darkly alluring “Chant” takes a similar restrained approach to the four-hand idiom, reaching for added color rather than a warren of voices.
The virtuosic bass trombonist David Taylor figured in three pieces that played with the astounding range of sound effects his instrument is capable of. He was joined by Ms. Vinokur in his own “And If All were Dark,” a deeply satisfying short piece that draws a sonic arc from flylike buzzing to rich, mellow tone and back again. Together with Felix Del Tredici, he brought dark swagger to David Shohl’s “Barcarolle for 2 Bass Trombones,” a piece that hovers on the border of humor and violence.
Nature’s violence and human suffering are the subjects of Sandeep Bhagwati’s disturbing but fascinating “Seventeen Miyagi Haikus for 2 Bass Trombones and Piccolo Trumpet,” inspired by the Japanese earthquake of 2011, in which Mr. Taylor and Mr. Del Tredici were joined by Peter Evans in drawing strange sounds out of their instruments that were by turns alienating and eerily human.
Extended technique and flashy virtuosity are melded together in Paul Desenne’s Sonata for solo violin, which the violinist Miranda Cuckson performed with great focus and stamina. The same qualities informed the percussionist Gregory Zuber’s pellucid rendition of Charles Wuorinen’s intricate “Marimba Variations.”
Mr. Fuchs’s charismatic “String Quartet No. 4” received its New York premiere at the hands of a fine quartet made up of the violinists Jennifer Choi and Pala Garcia, the violist Kyle Armbrust and Mr. Nicolas on cello. Driven by a kind of pastoral minimalism in which repetitive chugging sets the scene for lyrical melodies, it has an earthy beauty that might come into its own more fully in a less cluttered program.