Charleston native and Pulitzer-winning composer George Crumb’s three-day concert celebration of his 75th birthday played its finale and an encore to prolonged standing ovations Sunday afternoon in the Clay Center’s Walker Theater.

Pianist Robert Shannon, soprano Tony Arnold, guitarist David Starobin and the composer-as-percussionist presented the four-part program of contemporary art music. It was an event of stark contrasts, tonal explorations, sonic kaleidoscopes and cerebral juxtapositions.

Crumb’s signature use of grand pianos’ under-the-hood mechanicals was in play in both halves of the sound games. Guitar-drumming, “bottleneck slide” tricks and “water gong” glissando effects extended the technical limits of standard instrumental output.

To adapt a Broadway phrase: our hall was alive with the sounds of music - many never before heard. It may often have looked like child’s play, but in fact all of it is devilishly hard to read off paper, and even harder to translate into instrumental/vocal music.

A 2001 work, “Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik,” tested Shannon’s mettle and his piano’s metal through nine variations on themes of Thelonius Monk’s jazz masterpiece, “‘Round Midnight.” Monk’s chord progressions and regressions offer fertile soil for improvisation, and Crumb’s fertile imagination took off on flights of dark “Nocturnal Theme” coloration, bright shades of “Charade,” monk-like chants of “Incantation” and sly parodies of Debussy, Strauss and Wagner.

Shannon evoked visceral outcries by strumming and plucking the Steinway strings, tapping them, the metal frames and wooden hammers with a mallet, and, finally, shouting out Italian numerals to signal the approach of “Midnight Transformtion.” He also played the keyboard - sometimes simultaneously strumming the strings behind it.

Then came “Three Early Songs,” written in 1947, when the composer was 18. They are art songs in the true lieder sense, based on poems of intense feeling and deep thought.

Tony Arnold’s pure, clear soprano delivered “Night,” “Let it be forgotten” and “Wind Elegy” with unerring pitch through difficult intervals, and appropriate emotional expressiveness. She sings with complete self-assurance, obvious insight and excellent diction. Shannon’s busy, thickly-notated accompaniment was masterful, but never overpowering, and the music, itself, was sensitive to the words.

After intermission, Crumb’s 1979 “Apparition,” a set of six elegiac songs and three vocaleses for soprano and piano, focused upon the experience of existence and death. He chose texts Walt Whitman wrote after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, emphasizing one subtitled “Death Carol.”

He depicts death as a circular journey — always a beginning or return to a universal life-force — never an ending of life. Arnold revealed the intensely personal musings, sad memories and spiritual redemption with artistry and grace. Her vocalise techniques revealed great voice range and mastery, as required for glissandi, sudden fortissimo shouting, and conversely, for bird sounds and forest murmurs. Shannon matched her skills and interpretations, as before.

Once “Apparition” literally faded away, up jumped “Mundus Canis” — A Dog’s World — written in 1998 to paint sonic portraits of the Crumb family’s five dogs — all dachshunds except the last, a pound puppy named Yoda, which the composer’s wife calls, “The Little White Dog from Hell.”

Scored as humoresques for guitar and percussion, Sunday’s performance featured David Starobin on the amplified acoustic and the composer, himself, in charge of the tam-tams, frame drum, claves, castenets, cymbal and guiro.

So, it was a howl, of course. And an insight into serious, brainy George Crumb’s lighter side. Starobin uncorked his bag of tricks with complete authority, dexterity and enjoyment. Doctor Crumb presided over his table of traps like a chef ordering his pots and pans. In the end, when he shouted a final, “Yoda! BAD DOG!!!!” the audience rose with a roar, clapping their approbation.

The ensemble accompanied Arnold in an encore, the latest of Crumb’s arrangements, the gospel song “Sit Down, Sister.” Both musicians and Crumb’s family members remained with the audience in total accessibility. It was an extraordinary afternoon at the Walker Theater.