JOAN LA BARBARA MIXES VIDEO AND VOICE

The marriage of music and video--such a happy, prosperous one in the pop world--was bound to be consummated in the arena of new and experimental music, as will be evident at Joan La Barbara’s solo vocal program at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Monday.

Discussing her new work, “Untitled,” for interactive voice and video, the singer noted: “I hope the visuals will be a nice complement to the vocal. I certainly don’t want them to distract.”

Judging from her description of “Untitled,” included in an ambitious four-part program of her own compositions, that may be tricky.

“The visual element of the piece (devised with video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka) is almost like seeing the voice,” La Barbara noted during a telephone conversation from New York. “The basic video is scenes of Santa Fe (N.M.) and Iceland. But we’re able to bleed through a second video, based on my vocals. Steina and Woody developed a set-up where the shapes in the video are affected by what sounds I make. If I do a high fluttering, for instance, the image becomes almost a pulsation. It looks like it’s raining.”

Will we find “Untitled” on some future MTV Top Videos Countdown? “I doubt it,” she said with a laugh. “And the technique really isn’t applicable to rock, since only one sound can be interpreted.”

In general, the visual element seems to be a crucial one to La Barbara’s program on Monday. Assisting the New Mexico-based singer will be environmental artist Lita Alberquerque. (“I checked it out,” La Barbara said with a chuckle, “and it just happens to be her real name.”) “In ‘Performance Piece,’ which is sort of a left brain-right brain exploration, a series of projected words will be seen raining down into a grid on the stage.” Most intriguing, perhaps, is “Berliner Traeume,” in which, according to La Barbara, “a series of historical photographs will be projected onto a fog pouring down from the ceiling.”

La Barbara played down this visual-aural blending as a sign of a specific new direction in her work. “I’m just trying to expand beyond what I’m doing,” the pioneer in extended vocal techniques noted. “Others are involved too--Meredith Monk and Diamanda Galas, for instance. There’s also a couple of guys out of San Diego called THE. They’ve been adding comedy into their music.” But this is serious stuff, isn’t it?

Not necessarily, the singer admitted. Some of the unusual sounds she makes might strike the listener as funny. “I don’t mind an audience laughing,” La Barbara said. “As long as it isn’t in the wrong place.”

ABT IN TOWN: American Ballet Theatre opens its three-week engagement at the Shrine Auditorium on Tuesday. Works new to local audiences include David Gordon’s “Murder” (see Page 52) and Kenneth MacMillan’s “Requiem.” The latter will be included in the opening night gala with Act II of “La Bayadere,” “Bourree Fantasque” and a pas de deux with Cynthia Gregory and Patrick Bissell. The bulk of the opening-week performances will be devoted to the full-length “Giselle,” which occupies the agenda from Thursday through next Sunday. Artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, forced to skip some recent tour appearances due to recurring knee problems, is still listed to dance in “Requiem” and “Murder” this week, and in Thursday night’s and next Sunday afternoon’s “Giselle.”

Speaking of Ballet Theatre, a much-celebrated former principal, Fernando Bujones, will soon be seen on television. This week he is in Sweden, taping a Bob Hope special in which, according to his management firm, he will perform “a classical pas de deux, as well as . . . some comedy excerpts with Bob Hope.” On March 16, he will dance on a Beverly Sills-hosted “Gala of Stars” over PBS. The program will be taped in Vienna.

AT THE PHILHARMONIC: This is an eclectic week for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On Monday, a recital at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion by violinist Itzhak Perlman (with pianist Janet Guggenheim). The program includes works by Schubert, Strauss, Debussy and that Perlman staple, “selections to be announced from the stage.”

On Tuesday, there’s a concert at the Japan America Theatre by the New Music Group, led by CalArts-based conductor/composer Stephen Mosko, titled “California Choice.” Works by Roger Bourland, Andrew Imbrie, Edward Applebaum (his “Princess in the Garden” for string quartet will receive its world premiere) and Ernst Krenek.

On Thursday, Saturday and next Sunday, music director Andre Previn returns to lead the orchestra in the local premiere of Roger Sessions’ Symphony No. 2. Also on the agenda: Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini” overture and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Horacio Gutierrez as soloist).

PEOPLE: The family of late theater owner William R. Forman has presented the Los Angeles Music Center Opera with a grant of $1 million. The sum will be used to establish the Forman Family Fund, which will help “strengthen the new company’s economic position,” according to an opera spokesman.

Two Southern California musicians are among the finalists in the Seventeen magazine/General Motors National Concerto Competition, to be completed on March 10 at Ann Arbor, Mich. Pianist Esther Won, 16, of Mission Viejo and violinist Robert Chen, 17, of Northridge are among the 31 finalists in the piano, violin and trumpet categories, competing for three top prizes of $5,000 each.

Soprano Teresa Stratas, who has sung no less than 25 roles at the Metropolitan Opera, will appear in the new Broadway musical “Rags,” which opens Aug. 7. Stratas will play Rebecca, a young woman who, according to a press release, “comes to America for safety (and finds) a culture shaping itself to the rhythm of the ragtime beat.”

Manuel Rosenthal, the 81-year-old former music director of the Seattle Symphony, has been named conductor of the new Seattle Opera production of “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” replacing Armin Joran, who had to cancel due to back surgery. Rosenthal will lead his first-ever “Ring” performances in August. The French conductor, a student of Maurice Ravel and a specialist in French operatic repertory, noted that “Wagner didn’t like the French, but he always said we were the ones who understood his music best.”