Performer: Jessye Norman

Affable host Richard Gere united a starry musical cast to celebrate Carnegie Hall’s 125th Anniversary Gala.

She made cynics swoon and skeptics burst: Jessye Norman, along with pianist Mark Markham, serenaded eager listeners with love songs from the Great American Songbook and 20th-century France.

Bravo to Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for blowing the dust off of some of the boldest innovators America has produced. As part of a mini-festival at Carnegie Hall of 20th- and 21st-century composers who stretched musical and formal boundaries (to put it mildly), the program on Tuesday night was packed with rarely-played wonders.