At the Getty, the setting’s the showstopper

The environment is everything at the Getty Center’s Summer Sessions concerts. On Saturday evening, the music reached from the airy, open spaces of the courtyard and the south pavilion to the garden terrace, with its stunning backdrop of city and sky. It would be hard to find a more amiable location to hear music on a warm summer evening.

The program, titled “Balkan Beats,” included a trio of ensembles, with DJ Ron Miller adding atmospheric sounds between musical sets.

The Toids emphasized a gypsy-tinged style with their accordion-heavy rhythms.

The married couple Estas and Ru’ssia Tonne -- a guitarist and a singer-dancer -- moved easily from some flamenco stylings to the melismas of Eastern European music, with the colorfully costumed Ru’ssia adding appropriate dance movements.

DeVotchka, performing in the climactic courtyard slot, is a quartet that describes its music as “Eastern Bloc indie rock.”

It’s not clear what that has to do with their name, which is a Russian word for “young girl,” but pop groups have never been big on definitive labeling.

The most intriguing aspect of their music was its incongruous combination of elements. Guitarist-singer Nick Urata also played theremin; Tom Hagerman doubled on accordion and violin; Jeanie Shroeder played acoustic bass and tuba; and drummer Shawn King also had a trumpet at the ready.

This mix-and-match instrumentation occasionally resulted in some unlikely but intriguing textures: the eerie, ‘50s sci-fi movies sound of the theremin slipping through the ponderous rhythms of Balkan folk music; the huffing and puffing tuba countering the cabaret sound of the accordion.

But the less-than-captivating content of DeVotchka’s music rarely matched the colorfulness of its packaging.

And in the long run, it was the Getty Center’s engaging, people-friendly milieu that stole the show.