For the three-year-old chamber ensemble Citywater, the goal these days is not as much to prove they have serious musical cred as it is to win new audiences and make the musically impressionable excited for new music.

This was the rationale behind the three "Furlough Friday" concerts it scheduled this year, of which Friday night's concert at St. Paul's Church was the debut. The concerts offer discounted tickets to furloughed state workers.

About a quarter of those in attendance Friday were state workers, proving that Citywater's idea is a timely one.

The sextet performed in different configurations and on works offering strong emotional threads. The works spanned 36 years of contemporary music. All but two were written within the last decade.

As far as new-music concerts go, this one was less about musical daring and more about selling the personality of each work programmed.

This proved no obstacle to flutist Cathie Apple, cellist Tim Stanley, pianist Jennifer Reason, violinist Charles Spruill IV, percussionist Ben Prima and clarinetist Milun Doskovic.

Some of the works, like James Niblock's "Terzina for violin, clarinet and piano" and Bill Clark's "Riverpoint," offered interesting musical interplay. Others, like Belinda Reynolds' "Play" toyed with an evolved sense of minimalism.

These works left a tepid impression compared to Nino Rota's Trio for clarinet, cello and piano. From 1973, this was the oldest work on the program. Rota's buoyant and prancing trio is all about clarity and clear musical geometry, of the neoromantic kind. Rota, who died in 1979, was well known known for his film scores, of which the "Godfather I" and "Godfather II, as well as Fellini's "8 1/2" are crowning examples. He was a prolific composer who wrote 10 operas, ballets and many orchestral and chamber works. And so it's no mystery that Rota's music was such an easy musical read. Lack of clarity in a film score is akin to career suicide. It is tempting to call Rota's musical figurations "cinematic." But Rota's work seems to exist outside of time. Its keen sense for the painterly has nothing to do with projected images.

The work showcased the rich timbre of Doskovic, who can play with a light heart one moment and a dusky gravitas another. In the tasty andante, Doskovic's clarinet traded off seamlessly with Stanley's cello, and the carnival-like brilliance of the last movement saw pianist, clarinet and cello come together as one tight organism.

Much of the same buoyant nature, albeit splayed out like a musical collage, was evident in Sacramentan Sunny Knable's "Fantasy," which uses its musical ideas expansively, as if written by Ives, except with more caffeinated brio.

Darker and more ponderous was Nico Muhly's "I Know Where Everything Is." A disciple of Philip Glass, Muhly is a composer of the moment. His short work offers chords arranged in a curious postpile, and the music evolves, allowing chords to be approached from different aural angles.

This moving work was the musical highlight of the evening. On Muhly's piece, Citywater showed off its biggest asset. It was here, most of all, that the intuitive sense needed for performing new music really came shining through.

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Call Bee arts critic Edward Ortiz, (916) 321-1071.