Music Reviews : California Iconoclasts at Japan America Theatre

Because the adventurous CalArts New Twentieth Century Players have joined the more conservative Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group under “The Green Umbrella,” there’s not much of a paradox in a program labeled “California Iconoclasts.” But when the concert is dominated by elder masters--John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and Lou Harrison--as it was Monday at the Japan America Theatre, one worries about the health of the apprentice iconoclasts. Can it be that the terrain already has been covered?

John Harbison, the New Music Group director, admits that he worries about hanging “from a thin limb” as a commissioner of music by the untried and unknown. Although his goals are humane, his fears proved not entirely groundless on this occasion.

Even now, Cage would seem to remain the simplest, purest exemplar of iconoclasm. While his “Second Construction” (1940) typically evolves from minimal materials, it has one compelling point of interest: the imperceptibly built cosmic revelation that evolves amid small-scaled, playful percussion impulses.

Too bad that Jeffrey Mark Gall, whose “Beg, Plead, Scream and Rant” received its world premiere, did not discover much either from the above-mentioned models. Instead he apparently has learned the knack of dissipating attention. Notwithstanding its title, his piece--full of short phrases and romantic flirtations--came across as tame and faceless.

Conductor David Allan Miller went about this task, here and elsewhere, with utmost care, flair and precision.

Nancarrow’s Piece No. 2 for Small Orchestra, which followed, offered contrasting invention. After an innocently brash beginning, it takes a temporary but wonderfully sneaky detour through piano and bass jazz syncopations before arriving at a final bacchanalia led by a feisty trumpet.

That camaraderie can exist between iconoclasts was evident in the rousing “Double Music,” composed by Cage and Lou Harrison in 1941. Its pleasingly tinkly, tin-plated kind of percussion made a nice introduction to the evening’s other debutant, Leon Milo, whose “Verset” was the second commission.

A sense of pent-up, unresolved tension characterized this piece. Ascending lines that took the shape of attenuated arpeggios contributed to its specific structural form. Well-crafted and engaging, it deserved space on the program.

Harrison’s “Concerto in Slendro”(1961) ended the evening. By crossing Vivaldi and Chinese music, he came up with an altogether delightful concoction that mixed galvanized gongs with softly clangy keyboards and a luminously beautiful violin part, played for all its carefully gauged, elegant portamento by Guido Lamell.