Few Have Heard of the Oud, but Virtuoso Doesn’t Brood

Internationally acclaimed as a classical virtuoso and called “an extraterrestrial music dazzler” by one reviewer, John Bilezikjian, 40, likes to bring himself down to earth with sayings like “I’m just an old country oud player.”

Oud player? Knowing that few Americans ever heard an oud doesn’t bother “The Kid,” as the Laguna Hills resident is often called by those who see him play for belly dancers six nights a week in nightclubs in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

On the seventh day, his day of rest, he’s either playing at an Armenian wedding or a bar mitzvah, singing in the appropriate language. “The oud is very big in Israel,” explains the rotund musician.

Bilezikjian feels he was born to play the oud, an 11-string, pear-shaped instrument developed 2,000 years ago in Persia and traditionally played with an eagle’s feather attached to a pick. It sounds something like a cross between a lute and a soulful guitar.

But that’s not the only sound. For instance, Bilezikjian once played a rock ‘n’ roll gig with Little Richard in Las Vegas and put together a Willie Nelson country music piece for his friends and performed it at the beach.

Is this any way for a performer of classical Middle Eastern music to behave? After all, he’s played major oud concerts in Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and at UCLA. Raised on traditional classical pieces, Bilezikjian feels that while that training is still valuable, it now must be tempered by “whatever I feel like playing. If it happens to be country music, it’s country music I play.”

Confident that he is a world-class oud player--”technically, no one can touch me”--Bilezikjian makes his own ground rules to perform what he feels is right for the moment. “I have no restrictions,” he said. For instance, in concert, he once played Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” and followed with a medley of tunes from “Chariots of Fire,” “E.T.” and “Star Wars.”

And when he isn’t playing in concert or for belly dancers, weddings, anniversaries or beach parties, “I’m either practicing, giving lessons, making recordings or shooting television commercials.” He said he provided the music for Chrysler television commercials with Ricardo Montalban.

And the oud isn’t his only instrument. Bilezikjian claims he can play 40 different instruments such as guitar, drums, zither, lute and violin, the first instrument he learned to play.

“But the oud is my life,” he said.

There are gorilla-grams, strip-a-grams, and belly dance-a-grams, among others. Now there’s a violin-a-gram. “It’s a class act,” said founder Jennifer Silk, 26, of Laguna Hills. Silk, former high school orchestra teacher and South Coast Symphony player, dresses in a concert gown for her $39.50 performance with her 100-year-old violin. She plays three songs for that fee.

Prince Charmings have called her ((714) 380-1382) to play for their ladies fair in a driveway, on the beach, in a bank and under a balcony. “And sometimes they ask me to bring along a red rose,” Silk said. “So far, it’s been a blast.”

On the other hand, she’s also been hired to play parking lot openings.

Before joining the priesthood, Father Stephen Frost, 36, had hopes of becoming an artist, going so far as securing an art degree from California State University, Northridge.

So wouldn’t you know, these days you can find Frost on a scaffold, painting an original mural of the Resurrection of Christ on the back wall of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Santa Ana, where he has been associate pastor for the last two years.

It is no easy task for the busy priest. The mural will be 35 feet high by 20 feet wide and is the culmination of a year of planning, which included dozens of drawings and countless conferences with other mural artists.

It will have mirrors that will project people into the painting as they view it, and the mural will be incorporated in the series of events to celebrate the centennial of the church in July, 1987.

Painting from a scaffold was no easy task for Frost. “I don’t like heights at all,” he said. It’s good to trust in God.

Acknowledgments--Corona del Mar High School senior Jill Tyler, 17, president and founder of a candy-making company, on March 16 will compete with five other national finalists in New York City for the 1986 All-American Girl of the Year contest co-sponsored by Teen Magazine and Noxema Skin Cream.