NEW MUSIC AMERICA ’85 : ‘FUTURETRENDS’ FROM RAGAS TO RHYTHMANTICS

The wild, wondrous and sometimes tedious New Music America ’85 Festival meanders onward.

Monday night, it invaded the Japan American Theatre for a relatively intimate, reasonably conventional concert involving the New Music Group of the august Los Angeles Philharmonic. The festivities, somewhat incoherently arranged, sampled a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

The level of experimentation seemed rather modest, the level of inspiration likewise.

Although the new director of the New Music Group, John Harbison, was prominently listed in the program credits, Philharmonic officials admitted that he had nothing to do with the program in question. That may bode well.

For better or worse, Monday’s quasi-extravaganza looked and sounded like a CalArts hodgepodge. It embraced some live music masquerading as taped music, some not-totally-concrete musique concrete with environmental overtones , some forced duetting between live and electrified strings, some new-fangled semi-jazz and some keyboard splotches and ripples. For a not-very-grand finale, there was a pretentious fusion of South Indian fiddling and Vegas-band noodling in which Eastern and Western twain never really met.

The multidirectional agenda bore a trendy catchall title: “Futuretrends.” That gives one pause.

The festivities began with “Fanfare erafnaF,” a clever series of blasts and stsalb by Rand Steiger of E.A.R. Unit fame. It is a 2 1/2-minute network of instrumental flourishes that is played first forward, then backward.

Playing music backward is easy, of course, with a tape recorder; not so easy even with the Philharmonic’s finest. Steiger is virtuosic, however, when it comes to making art imitate mechanics.

In “Fog Tropes,” Ingram Marshall rolled out a boomy and misty 10-minute tapestry that enlisted a Wagnerian brass sextet plus a prerecorded sound track that mixed San Francisco fog horns with mating calls of a gull with noises of the sea and the keening of a Balinese flute a.k.a. gambuh. It was loud if one happened to be seated near a speaker. It also was beguiling, for a while.

“The New Rhythmantics” by Ivan Tcherepnin found a somber string quartet competing with electronic devices that distort, dissect, enlarge and refocus the old-fashioned performance impulses. The title, we are told, plays with words-- rhythm plus man plus antics --just as the complex structural procedures play with reactionary formal perception. Before the work runs its brash and often bright 15-minute course, Tcherepnin fractures a little Bach canon for good, witty measure.

“The Sacred Mind of Johnny Dolphin” by Ornette Coleman introduced a whistling-doodle called the EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument) with amplified accompaniment. Jim Self mustered masterful, gently dissonant EVI riffs and rambles. Philharmonic strings, trumpet and percussion ambled along amiably in free-jazzy drag.

According to a gushing program note, Mel Powell’s little Intermezzo for Piano (1984) contains “absolutely beautiful sonority alongside lyricism, drama, an extraordinary contrapuntal display, and a profound sense of virtuosic pianism at all points.” Although this listener didn’t hear everything described in the preview review, Aki Takahashi’s performance did seem virtuosic.

The Concerto for Indian Violin and Orchestra by L. Subramaniam sent the attendant avant-gardists home with schmaltz and schlock clogging their ears. It sent some of them home, incidentally, long before the final cadence.

One could savor the exotic bravura of the solo group on the stage floor--Subramaniam’s violin was played in percussive tandem with Ramnad V. Raghavan’s mridangam and the tamburas of Vijaya Shree and Viji Subramaniam. One could be lulled by the improvisatory rituals. And one could be appalled by the sprawling, awkward, intrusive, popsy-cheap orchestral frosting.

Stephen L. Mosko served as efficient and versatile conductor, where needed.