Room to Show Blend of Acoustic, Electronic Sound

Room may be an unusual name for a New Music ensemble, but according to group member Chris Brown, the word doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

“It was just one of those words that seemed to resonate well with what we’re doing,” Brown said in a recent phone conversation from San Francisco. “I don’t want to define it as anything in particular. It just seems to fit.”

What the name fits--what the group does--involves electronic manipulation of live sound. A sample by members composer-pianist Brown, percussionist William Winant, saxophonist Larry Ochs and sound mixer Scott Gresham-Lancaster will be given Saturday at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. The performance is part of the museum’s ongoing Contemporary Culture Series.

“The aim of the group is to find--and use--a delicate balance between acoustic sound, which we love and don’t want to get away from, and electronic sound, which is like a magical transformation of what begins as an acoustic instrument. We have love for both kinds of sounds,” Brown said.

While each member of the Bay Area group has an individual career, they play together, Brown said, “because a certain part of improvisational music involves group dynamics. Often it is a matter of playing with different people and finding who you can work with the best. This is one of the combinations that works.”

The music is characterized by improvisation and interaction between live performers and electronic sound, using a computer to modify the musicians’ sound.

“The computer is responsible for keeping (things) going,” Brown said. “Sometimes it keeps just a preset sequence, a pattern that we’ve become familiar with. Most of the time, that (pattern) is timbre modification, changing our sound.

“In other cases, it’s following along, changing whatever pitches, rhythms or loudness we’re doing.”

Brown said he had to design his own circuitry and even create his own instruments to accomplish what he had in mind, which was inspired by the gamelan orchestras of Southeast Asia.

“(On Saturday), I’ll be performing on an instrument that I’ve made,” he said. “I call it a ‘Gazamba.’ It’s really an electronic-percussion piano, an updated version of the prepared piano that John Cage invented, that’s been prepared to sound like a percussion orchestra.

“Half the piano is tuned to sound like bells. The other half--the upper register--is all percussive sounds that might be similar to drums or metal percussive instruments.”

For a while, Room was just a threesome of Bay-area musicians who had gotten together in the early 1980s.

Gresham-Lancaster joined in 1986, Brown said, because “the music had become so involved with the processing. And I had been so involved in playing instruments as well as doing electronics, (that) to really have control over the sound, we needed to have someone do that specifically.

“So he’s a substantial part of making that happen in performance.”

Brown cites two major influences on the group, one being the experimental tradition in the United States that includes such composers as Henry Cowell, Ives and Cage.

“We’re familiar with that tradition,” he said. “But the other parallel influence has been our interest in improvisation, which comes out of the jazz tradition. Some of the way we work comes out of something that might be similar to the Art Ensemble of Chicago group-improvisation tradition.

“At this point, though, that’s kind of a long time ago. . . . “

The program Saturday will be divided evenly between Brown’s and Ochs’ compositions. Titles include Brown’s “Post Mortem,” “Hall of Mirrors” and “Snake Charmer,” and Ochs’ “Edge Time,” “Lobster Time” and “Sum of the Part”.

“Some of the pieces don’t use electronics at all,” Brown said. “We try to run the whole gamut of the kinds of sound texture we can produce as a group, from the purely acoustic, as in Larry’s ‘Sum of the Part’ . . . to the very electronic, like my ‘Snake Charmer,’ which is the only piece we do that involves any kind of synthesizer.

“I sometimes describe this music as ‘electronic chamber music’ because a small group of people plays it but also because it’s about making the acoustic and the electronic sounds blend and balance in a space. . . .

“The music is, in some sense, difficult for new audiences. But it is also very beautiful. We appeal on that level. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart, but it’s not either designed in any way to be alienating. We’re just looking for new forms of beauty.”

Room will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Lyon Room at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Tickets are $5.50 for museum members, seniors and students; $7.50 for general admission. Information: (714) 759-1122.