Guest jazz saxophone and composer Roscoe Mitchell’s concert in Finney Chapel was not for the faint of heart. The two and a half hour concert Wednessday night consisted mainly of free-form improvisation, exploring the range of possibilities of sounds pleasant and not-so-pleasant. Those that stuck it out through the end, however, were treated to some of Mitchell’s more traditional tunes; these were a perfect blend of catchy, danceable heads with interesting rhythmic and harmonic touches. All of Mitchell’s work demonstrated a fascination with gesture and sound. His imrpovisations, especially, drew one into a strangely intimate world where the division between “music” and “noise” was completely eradicated.

The concert began with an improvisation by Mitchell alone. A dignified, silver-haired older black man, he took the stage with a completely unassuming presence. His playing, however, commanded the audience’s attention with a gripping intensity. Letting loose a stream of insanely fast notes, he resembled some kind of crazed pied piper. He seemed almost struggling to contain the rush of sound emitting from his saxophone. He left no stone unturned in uncovering the amazing variety of sounds hiding in the soprano saxophone, an instrument not often played and certainly not often stretched to this extent.

The program then moved on to a large work, Mitchell’s Cards for Chamber Orchestra performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. The ensemble did a terrific job in conceptualizing this difficult work. Technically challenging, Cards demanded enormous concentration from its performers. Improvisation dominated the work; short licks were written out on cards and the players were instructed to play them at random during specific sections of the piece. Although many ensemble members were improvising for the first time in their lives, the performance came off beautifully.

After another improvisation by Mitchell with guest trombonist Peter Zummo, the first half of the concert ended with “Song for Charles/Song for My Sister.” This was the first work on the program that made use of traditional melodies. Even without the melodies, though, this was an extremely effective piece. Moving quickly from a subdued opening to screaming waves of sound driven by the drums, it fully explored the potential of the small ensemble. “Song for Charles/Song for My Sister” deftly navigated the space in and between free improvisation and tightly orchestrated melodies.

The opening to the second half of the program was one of the highlights of the event, an improvisation by the Oberlin-based group Information Night. Consisting of seniors Mike Gallope on piano, Sam Kulik on trombone, Clara Latham on guitar and Jon Leland on drums, Information Night performed with a spellbinding intensity that freely crossed into the realm of performance art. Gallope in particular reveled in playing with the audience’s expectations and perceptions with his use of exagerated gestures that were not always related to the sounds he was producing.

The program continued with three relatively short, relatively traditional works for small jazz ensembles, “The Alternate Line”, “Slow Tenor and Bass”, and “Stomp”. All three dealt creatively with traditional jazz form and featured too many fantastic solos to mention individually.

Suffice it to say that Oberlin’s jazz program was given ample time to show off in this program, although Mitchell remained the undisputed master of the event.

The student musicians captured the spirit of his melodies with flair, and although their improvisations were much tamer than his they worked well with the underlying themes of his compositions.

The Oberlin Jazz Ensemble closed the event with “Line Fine Lyon Seven”, a work that brought back a little more of the avant garde quality that permeated the first half. Starting from a simple alto saxophone melody performed by Todd Gaynor, the piece gradually built to a cacophony of sound weaving around the main tune.

The use of two drum sets created a neat effect, especially during a fantastic double drum solo executed by Charles Folesh and John Wagner. The jazz ensemble provided a climactic end to this surprisingly fascinating, diverse and lengthy concert. Although much of the audience had left by the final notes, the stragglers who remained received the performance with a zealous fervor. Mitchell introduced his newfound Oberlin groupies to a new way of thinking about sound through mediums both traditional and radical.