LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL : PIANO SERENADE BESIDE THE HARBOR FREEWAY

Although her plan to serenade rush-hour traffic from a parking structure adjacent to the Harbor Freeway seems--at least superficially--one of the flakier happenings of the Fringe Festival, pianist Sandra Tsing Loh is not entirely happy with that impression. “I’m not doing this just to be weird,” she said.

“Spontaneous Demographics” is Loh’s contribution to the festival marathon today. Beginning at 5 p.m., she will play two 45-minute sets of her own piano pieces from the top of the Citicorp Plaza parking facility, on the east side of the Harbor Freeway south of the 7th Street overpass.

Though she often uses electronic instruments and effects in her music, Loh prefers an acoustic piano, and will play a Steinway concert grand--heavily amplified, of course. According to a spokesman from the Sherman Clay piano company, which owns the instrument, it is one of only two of the nine-foot-long Model D instruments to come from the factory finished in white. As such, it is frequently used in concerts by pop performers, and will be played during the Pope’s appearance at Dodger Stadium.

Loh considers the downtown skyline surreal, especially when approached from the south. She has been thinking about this performance for three years, originally hoping to place it on a freeway center island. When Caltrans vetoed that idea, she turned to easily visible parking structures, and has found Citicorp officials receptive and helpful.

Her work is both for and of the commuters. Loh is happy to corner an upwardly mobile, temporarily stationary audience. And the traffic sounds are themselves part of the musical environment, although Loh expresses some concern about the noise from a construction project across the freeway from her location.

Loh is an articulate, persuasive proponent of her ideas--a careful listener, and an ebullient, slightly hyper talker. The 25-year-old has a degree in physics from Caltech, and a master’s in English from USC, where she teaches such heady courses as “Disorder and Perception” while working on a Ph.D. She has written a one-act play, “Too Full for Love,” which opens a four-day Fringe Festival run Sept. 17 at the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose Avenue.

She is also a veteran of the local new music scene, composing tight, expressive, often restless, jazz-influenced piano pieces, which she is not afraid to combine with environmental effects. One example would be “Music for the Bonus Car Wash,” a work designed to be heard on a car stereo while traveling through a Santa Monica car wash.

So while Loh cheerfully acknowledges the deliberate absurdity of the site for “Spontaneous Demographics”--which she describes in brash, bantering marketing terms--she is nonetheless giving of her best musically.

“Even though the situation is somewhat ridiculous,” she said, “I’m playing the most beautiful pieces I am capable of. Even though it’s absurd, it’s not just a parody.”

Loh talks readily and knowledgeably about culture and aesthetics. But while she does want to produce emotional responses in her car-bound listeners, she is reluctant to suggest a specific program or message for the “Spontaneous Demographics” experience.

Indeed, the pianist is seriously interested in, and amused by, the prospect of critics finding elaborate metaphors and symbolism in the work. “If people want to read all that into it, that’s fine with me,” she said.

Instead, she offers an Ezra Pound quotation as an aesthetic credo: “A work of art is an emotional and intellectual complex in an instant of time.”