MUSIC NOTES : UCI CONCERTS TO TUNE IN ELECTRONICS

UC Irvine composer Paul Hodgins wants to convince people that electronic music is not just “squeaks, rattles and things that go bump in the night.”

“That was the nature of the music at the beginning,” agreed Hodgins, 29, chairman of the new Gassman Electronic Studio at UC Irvine. “Until the advent of digital technology, (electronic music) was really primitive music making.”

But advances in technology over the past 10 years have changed all that.

“It has become exceedingly simple to create very complex sounds without (needing) the expert programming knowledge that you used to,” Hodgins said. “So we can really get into the more musically interesting aspects of sound.”

Demonstrations of these advances will be given in two music concerts inaugurating the UCI facility at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday.

The studio was established last October through a bequest of approximately $250,000 by composer Remi Gassman (best known for his score to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”). Gassman died in 1982.

On the 3 p.m. program, pianist Richard Grayson will perform his own compositions and improvise in different styles, from Baroque to post-tonal. He will be assisted on the synthesizer by Clark Spangler.

The 8 p.m. program will include works by UCI composers Peter Odegard, Eric Wright and Bernard Gilmore, in addition to Hodgins, and guest composer William Alves. All the works will utilize a mix of electronic and acoustic instruments.

“The traditional concept of an electronic music concert is that people would go into a darkened room and disembodied sounds would emerge from speakers,” Hodgins said. “We’re trying to emphasize that these instruments can also be used in a live-performance context.”

Hodgins’ “Seven Songs of War,” for example, is scored for mezzo-soprano and tenor, in addition to amplified oboe, synthesized percussion and the newly developed Yamaha MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) piano. Hodgins drew his text from the Old Testament and several war poems.

“I wrote a sound cycle about Armageddon, about the end of the world because the kinds of sounds I had at my disposal were perfect for such a subject. But I chose that subject because no matter what I was doing electronically, the effects ultimately would be secondary to the emotional intent of the piece.

“We knew there was going to be a certain gee-whiz factor about the full range of the sounds that synthesizers can create. But we wanted to make that secondary to the music.”

Hodgins feels that the real star of the concert will be the Yamaha MIDI.

“It’s an amazing instrument,” he said. “It looks, feels and smells like your standard concert grand. Well, it’s only a six-footer, so technically it’s not a concert grand. But it’s outfitted with about $3,000 to $4,000 of electronic wizardry, which allows it to act as a synthesizer control as well. Someone who is a virtuoso keyboard player can play a piano but can play an orchestra as well.”

Still, Hodgins does not believe that the goal is to imitate an orchestra.

“Synthesizers are coming closer and closer to duplicating real instrumental sounds,” he said. “But to me, that isn’t the important point. Creating incredibly beautiful and complex sounds that someone’s never heard before--that’s the true potential of the instrument.”

The Laguna Beach Chamber Music Society will open its 28th season on Oct. 5 with a concert by the Westwood Wind Quintet. The program will be announced later.

The season will continue:

--Nov. 9--Guarneri String Quartet.

--Feb. 21, 1988--Emerson String Quartet, with guests violist Oscar Shumsky and pianist Menahem Pressler in a program of music by French composers.

--April 11--Takacs Quartet.

--April 27--Colorado Quartet.

A sixth concert date has not been arranged but probably will be in March, 1988.

Appointments and Gifts: Moshe Hammer, former leader of the Toronto-based Amadeus Ensemble, will take over as concertmaster of the South Coast Symphony in the 1987-88 season. Martin Weil, managing director at Opera Pacific in Irvine, has been named to the music panel of the California Arts Council. The Center Dance Alliance recently gave $50,000 to the Orange County Performing Arts Center for dance presentations at the Costa Mesa facility.