MUSIC REVIEWS : WORKS BY LOIS VIERK AND GUY KLUCEVSEK

Many composers have attempted the deceptively difficult task of writing new music for the accordion. Usually, they try to avoid anything that may be associated with a popular style of music. Yet for accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek, drawing ideas from popular idioms and using them in new ways is nothing to avoid.

Sunday at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, works by Klucevsek and Lois V Vierk made up a well-attended and received evening of new music for the accordion. The concert was presented by LACE and the Independent Composers Assn., in association with Meet the Composer.

Klucevsek’s work for solo accordion divides different ethnic motifs, meters and tonalities between left and right hands. The result is more meditative than toe-tapping--a sort of new-age contrapuntal collage.

In this way, his “Scenes From a Mirage” overlies polkas, oom-pah-pahing and other European accordion sounds, while “Old Woman Who Dances With The Sea” flirted with ragtime and “The Grass, It’s Blue” displayed samples of Cajun, Tex-Mex and Brazilian music.

In contrast, Vierk’s compositions are more abstract and tightly knit. In “Manhattan Cascade,” a brief work for live and taped accordion, a repeated melodic shape built with tone clusters undergoes a process which Vierk refers to as “exponential structure.” Gradually, the shape becomes smaller as an entirely new melodic structure evolves. Overall, her mastery of this technique yields an extremely satisfying result.

Vierk’s familiar “Go Guitars” and Klucevsek’s Penderecki-like “Flying Pipe Organ” and completed the program.