cantata

“Bach Duet,” made in 1974 and not performed since the mid-70s, is set to Bach’s 78th cantata, “Jesu, der du meine Seele.”

The call of a shofar, the ancient instrument usually made from a ram’s horn and best known for its use in Jewish worship, opens “The Gates of Justice,” a grand 1969 choral cantata by the eminent jazz musician Dave Brubeck, Chris’s father.

Brubeck wasn’t an expert in Jewish music, but he had open ears and curiosity; the shofars Chris Brubeck brought to U.C.L.A. as alternatives were ones he had found in his father’s house and presumed were research materials for the cantata.

I expected him to lean into that quality during the Bach cantata’s first aria, in which the melody is relatively high, but Williams’s Simeon, consumed by the music’s dusky beauty, was already preparing himself for death.

When the players had a clear, distinctive musical character to embody — a blithe movement from the Telemann quartet or the slumber aria from Bach’s cantata — they tackled it with focused collaboration.