Glee, gloom, bafflement by way of Notoriety, Inc.

To paraphrase the late Jerry Garcia: What a long strange trip it was at Cal State Long Beach’s Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Saturday night. And most of it arduous to boot. Presented by Hanh Nguyen, artistic director of the modern dance company Notoriety, Inc., the concert featured a mix of contemporary dance works and live music.

On paper it may have looked promising, but slogging on for three hours, two onstage orchestras made up of 130 student musicians (Arts and Learning Elementary Strings, conducted by Debora Wondercheck, and the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, conducted by Michael Hall), proved themselves not ready for prime time.

On the other hand, there were several gems among this sea of zircons, including Stephanie Gilliland’s fiercely original company, Tongue. Kick-starting the evening with manic glee and gumption, seven dancers tore into Gilliland’s “Big Manuel,” from 2000. Raw and pumped-up, the ensemble leaped, popped, bopped, partnered and one-arm-cartwheeled to a scratch track by PhonosycographDisk.

The energy level immediately nose-dived, however, with “This Is How the Last One ...,” a baffling premiere by Del Leon. Stephen Patrick, wearing goggles and shouting an angry text he wrote that ostensibly dealt with the Holocaust, crawled around in a pool of light, after which Leon emerged in another illuminated circle. Mercifully, she moved lyrically, but to no scrutable end.

Leon’s aptly named second premiere, “Another Trying Endeavor,” featured nine performers flailing about. Punctuated with sloppy unisons and subscribing to the philosophy of “When in doubt, kick,” the work ended with a quasi-meditation on scarves.

Continuing the downward spiral: Nguyen’s “False Color X-Ray of a Human Foot (2004).” In this work to music by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, a quintet of dancers, including the choreographer, executed yoga and martial arts-like maneuvers that felt false and disconnected with the score’s flowing sense of urgency. Nguyen’s sparse movement vocabulary is stuck in “Crouching Tiger” mode, also seen in a work in progress -- an excerpt from “Tales of 9 Running Blue Dragon” -- and in “City of Dreams.” The latter had the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra valiantly attempting Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” -- with Notoriety, during the score’s last six minutes, twirling aimlessly.

Kudos, though, to Kathie Hillman. This 16-year-old phenom belted out a Van Morrison tune accompanied by Bob Barboza and the Long Beach Jazz Messengers, a rocking group that also played a number from its promised jazz opera, “Cabo Verde Dreams.”