The Bay Area’s longest-running organisation devoted to the music of its time is like no other. For most of its 37 years, SFCMP has resisted trends, shunned the new romanticism, avoided the old consonance and often made it a point to seek out composers before they acquire the status of cultural icons. Although the likes of John Cage and Morton Feldman have adorned its schedule in the past, David Milnes, the current music director, inclines to juxtaposing the familiar with the neglected, the mellifluous with the challenging. In an age when music groups desperately cater to short attention spans, these artists almost seem anachronistic.

The season’s final concert, performed by an array of sympathetic local musicians, demanded nothing more than an alert ear to reap rewards. In San Francisco Night, here receiving its world premiere, Reynold Tharp responded to this meteorologically unique town in a way similar to that of the composer György Ligeti. He evokes with a prismatic palette the fogs that quietly infiltrate the town like a moist blanket. The descending figures at the opening represent tone painting at its most adroit and the textures conjured by the eight players partake ever so elegantly of the spectral writing favoured by the French. What, one wonders, might Tharp do with a full orchestra at his disposal?