NEW EAST COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER PROGRAMS

Although El Cajon’s East County Performing Arts Center is considered one of the finest concert facilities in the county, it has yet to make its mark as a local performance mecca. Earlier this year, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society dropped out of its co-sponsoring role in the center’s chamber music series, which featured regular visits by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. When the San Diego Symphony moved into its new home in downtown San Diego last November, it discontinued a well-attended Saturday evening series at the center.

The center is attempting to bounce back, however, with some aggressive programming of its own. A new series called Arts Alive will open Thursday night with a performance of Guitarjam, a trio composed of guitarists Laurindo Almeida, Sharon Isbin and Larry Coryell. Arts Alive will bring such diverse acts as the Peking Acrobats, who performed at the center in January; the Ballet Espanol de Madrid; the Alley Theatre of Houston, and singer Mel Torme with the Gene Krupa Orchestra.

But chamber music devotees have not been abandoned by the center. A series of six concerts by visiting chamber orchestras, including three appearances by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, will be inaugurated Oct. 31, with a concert by trumpet virtuoso Maurice Andre and maestro Henri Temianka’s California Chamber Symphony.

Guitarjam is an unusual collaboration of Isbin, a classically trained guitarist; Coryell, a jazz guitarist, and Almeida, a master of Brazilian bossa nova. A Washington Post reviewer called their performance “tight as a sonnet and loose as a back-room jam.”

In a phone interview from New York City, Isbin admitted that the trio’s cutesy name was their press agent’s brainstorm.

“We’re thinking of having the cover of our second album splattered with Smucker’s strawberry jam,” she said, laughing.

The three guitarists first played together at Isbin’s suggestion when she was administering the State University of New York at Purchase Summerfare festival two years ago. Later the trio played in a series of Carnegie Hall concerts and made a record for Pro-Arte called “Three Artists Three.”

Each musician plays an acoustic but amplified guitar. Their repertory is a mix of spiced-up classics and sophisticated popular compositions.

“Coryell takes Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and turns it into a rock piece--his energy level as a performer is really high,” Isbin said. Coryell’s own idiom is fusion, a union of rock and jazz.

Almeida, who is probably the most widely recognized guitarist of Guitarjam, will perform solos by Latin jazz composers Antonio Carlos Jobim and Rhadames Gnattali, as well as his own “Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ Samba.”

Although Isbin is steeped in classical guitar idiom, she described her work in Guitarjam as “a freeing process. From the trio, I’ve learned a looseness and spontaneity in performance. It’s a more natural way of playing, even if it is not as meticulous as performing a Bach saraband.”

The 30-year-old Isbin studied guitar with Alrio Diaz and Baroque ornamentation with noted pianist Rosalyn Turek, with whom she published editions of Bach’s Lute Suites for guitar. In addition, she continues her interest in serious contemporary music. Composer Joan Tower has completed a new work for her, and Joseph Schwantner, resident composer at the Eastman School of Music, is writing her a guitar concerto on commission.

A staple of Guitarjam’s repertory is the adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” arranged by Almeida, a work he has also frequently performed with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Isbin admitted that Rodrigo’s concerto is one of the most popular works of the modern guitar repertory--popular to the point of being overplayed.

“When I visited Rodrigo in Madrid,” she explained, “he proudly showed me a closet with three shelves filled with nothing but recordings of his ‘Concierto de Aranjuez.’ ”