5 CANDLES FOR VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

“Everybody--but everybody-- tried to talk us out of our name,” recalls Armen Guzelimian, leader of the Los Angeles Vocal Arts Ensemble, the group celebrating its fifth anniversary with a concert at UCLA on Sunday afternoon.

“All our advisers thought the name should be short, fancy and preferably in Latin. We believed a fancy Latin or Italian name would misrepresent what we wanted to do, which is to present chamber music for solo voices--not chorus or chorale, but single, solo voices--in its original forms, and in many languages.”

As Guzelimian tells it, the eight singers and two pianists of the ensemble “held our ground. We wanted to tell people who we are, where we are from and what we do. We also knew that other groups with similar titles--like the New York Vocal Arts Ensemble (Raymond Beegle’s group)--have been successful with a long name.”

Now, five Januaries later, arguments about the ensemble’s title are academic. In concert engagements around the United States and in three record albums--two on Nonesuch, the most recent one on Angel (devoted to music of Stephen Sondheim)--the group has proved its viability.

And, according to artistic director Guzelimian, the original goals of the group have not changed much.

“If there has been one change, it is that, after our avowed original intention of performing only music written for our combination of voices and piano, or pianos, we have, with the Sondheim material, commissioned our first arrangement for two pianos.”

This first half-decade in its history has not been easy for the 10 members--seven of them original members--of the ensemble, Guzelimian acknowledges.

“It’s been a struggle to keep the group together. After all, some of our local, as opposed to out-of-town, performances have been, frankly, unpaid. We gave them for the sake of exposure, of building our repertory. For much of this time, our budget has been virtually non-existent.

“And the prophet-in-his-own-land syndrome operates on us as well as others. We have no trouble attracting a crowd when we perform out of town. Here, it is more difficult.”

Now, Guzelimian believes, “after this survival against many odds, we are entering a new era.

“Our albums--some of which are being sold in every corner of the globe--are successful. Our first Midwest tour is scheduled, for three weeks in November, 1985.

“And, I am very proud to announce, we will inaugurate a new vocal chamber ensemble series at Ambassador Auditorium in January, 1986.”

At its anniversary concert, in Schoenberg Hall Auditorium at UCLA, Sunday at 2:30 p.m., the L.A. Vocal Arts Ensemble--singers Delcina Stevenson, Darlene Romano, Janet Smith, Rickie Weiner-Gole, Jeffrey Araluce, Paul Johnson, Dale Morich and Michael Gallup, pianists Raul Herrera and Guzelimian--will precede its Sondheim second half with unhackneyed music of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Guzelimian describes the opening piece as a brief, one-movement cantata in C by Franz Schubert; it is followed by one of the ensemble’s “big hits,” Rossini’s “Peches de Vieillesse” (Sins of My Old Age), and a group of songs by Francis Poulenc.

“The sophisticated and harmonically ambiguous music of Poulenc is the perfect lead-in to a Sondheim sampler,” the artistic director believes. More important, “the many vocal demands of Sondheim’s music, demands which are so extreme they have not always been overcome on Broadway, and which really require highly trained voices, are met by our singers.”