About 25 pieces from Bach to Holst to Michael Tilson Thomas (yes, the San Francisco-based conductor) were brought together from many little-known corners of the vocal repertoire, which was impressive because good pieces are kept out of concert halls not because they're unknown or unloved, but because they're hard to locate. Titled "Moving Heaven and Earth," the program's performing forces at Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill were a wide-reaching collective of six excellent vocal soloists, the Pennsylvania Girlchoir's fine Motet Choir, and pianist Laura Ward.

So much new music is potentially exhausting. But the spiritually oriented music had special directness and not a lot of poetic refraction to wrestle with. That was most obvious in Betty Jackson King's spiritual "Ride up in a Chariot," and even in the celebratory "Alleluia" by the famously atheistic Ned Rorem, whose song consists only of the word alleluia set to music from many musical angles. The neglected gem, Andre Caplet's "Symbole Des Apôtres," loosely adapts the liturgical Credo initially with an air of French symbolist mystery, but becoming less worldly, more personal and quite entrancing as the composer dropped artifice.

Two Laudate Psalms by Philadelphia composer Kile Smith were heard for the first time, both relatively modest in scope compared with his recent works, but unfolding with natural, un-ostentatious simplicity. Close inspection revealed subtle deviations in its agreeable melodiousness that never allowed the ear to slip into a mental autopilot that comes with having heard like-minded pieces. Similarly, Leonard Bernstein's "Simple Song," a pop song taken from his Mass, is never quite the way you remember it, especially while taking the scenic route to harmonic resolutions. The God-is-in-the-details adage holds true in these hugely different pieces: The music's spiritual conviction was amplified by these near-invisible touches.

Other discoveries included Karol Szymanowski's use of exotic scales in "Allah, Akbar, Allah!" and 17th-century Thomas Campion's reflective, profound "Author of Light" (sung with equally profound artistry by Timothy Bentch).

It was Tilson Thomas, though, who set you questioning the purpose of concert music. His "Grace," articulately sung by Suzanne DuPlantis, was a 70th birthday present to Bernstein - a song about the deliciousness of herring, unfiltered by wit and seemingly inconsequential. But Bernstein loved it; reportedly, it was a comfort to him in his final illness. Joy is joy, whether big or small - and it definitely spread to Friday's audience.