They banged the drum loudly for an old master

Percussion guru Alan Abel was the subject of what had to be the loudest 85th birthday concert in Philadelphia history on Sunday. But had it not been a bang-up occasion, something would have been seriously wrong.

Indeed, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society was out of its usual league at the Perelman Theater with this 21/2-hour lovefest of Abel's percussion disciples, ending with a battery of 12 in a Rolando Morales-Matos drumming showdown incongruously titled The Little Rhumba.

All had their individual moments, and, as we know, once percussionists hit a groove, you never know when they'll stop - even Abel, whose contribution was on cowbell. But the audience (which had an unusual hipster contingent) went semi-crazy, even though such raucousness is not, to my ears, Abel's hallmark.

Though he left the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1997 after 38 years, Abel's extensive educational activities (Temple University among others) have been punctuated by emergences from retirement in which he demonstrates to general audiences how much care can be put into percussive sound.

My own encounter with him was when he served as a substitute percussionist on the orchestra's 2010 Asian tour: There in the rear of the stage was this small but magnetic man, hovering over the instruments with maternal care to deliver precisely the right sound at the right time. Only later did I learn it was the legendary Abel, 67 of whose students play in major orchestras, including Angela Zator Nelson, Christopher Deviney, Anthony Orlando, and Don Liuzzi in the Philadelphia Orchestra alone. With so much instrumental hardware onstage Sunday, changeovers from piece to piece were comically near-disastrous. Ever seen marimba gridlock?

Though Abel appeared in only parts of the program, its echt-Abel moment had him leaning over a bass drum he designed himself, which appeared to have been sliced in half and turned on its side, one hand playing the drum with a stick, the other, in a fuzzy white mitten, placed on the drumhead to dampen the sound.

The program featured two works each by Temple's ever-interesting Maurice Wright, by Nexus percussion ensemble member Bob Becker, and by Morales-Matos, plus one by Russell Hartenberger, all offering opportunities to hear atypical sonic possibilities without orchestral clutter. Morales-Matos' Day and Night, for one, explored fine blended gradations of sound in percussion duos.

Hartenberger's Cadence was full of pregnant symbolism, quoting from the funeral drums of John F. Kennedy's cortege, with resonance into our own time. Wright's Octet had loads of novelty, including percussion effects from blown-up balloons that resembled soccer balls.

Most entrancing was Becker's 1990 Mudra, a work full of scales from India, layered over each other with a level of atmosphere seldom heard elsewhere on Sunday - a gap that could be remedied for Abel's 86th birthday.