Pacific Serenades to End Second Year

Completing its second full season as a concert-producing organization this week, Pacific Serenades seems unique in its purpose and format. Under its founder, composer Mark Carlson, and a volunteer board of directors, the nonprofit group puts on chamber music concerts with a difference: At each event, a new work, usually commissioned by Pacific Serenades, receives its premiere performance.

“My idea was to present new music in a context of standard repertory, in the real world, so to speak,” says Carlson, the 35-year-old UCLA composition instructor who dreamed up the series six years ago.

So far, the organization seems to be thriving while realizing its goals. When this season is complete, Pacific Serenades will have introduced, in its first 10 concerts, 12 new works by seven composers. The group operates on an annual budget in the neighborhood of $15,000, the impresario reports.

“Another ideal is to hear chamber music in sympathetic rooms, in places where the surroundings are appropriate,” Carlson continues. To that end, Pacific Serenades gives each of its series programs twice, once in a private home, the next night in a concert hall.

Carlson says the public auditorium the group used in its first season proved “less than elegant, and noisy as well.” So this season, Pacific Serenades scheduled its performances in the Emerald Room at the Biltmore Hotel, downtown. “Acoustically, the Emerald Room is very fine,” Carlson says.

For this week’s season finale, Pacific Serenades sponsors two appearances by the Los Angeles-based guitar duo Elgart/Yates (Matthew Elgart and Peter Yates, who formerly performed under the title Stately Rage). And, untypically, the program is completely 20th-Century.

“Normally, our programs give strong contrasts of period and style. We often surround a brand-new work with Haydn and Brahms. This time the contrasts will come from the range of composers being performed, not their historical distance.”

Elgart/Yates have scheduled works by Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Jack Body, Carl Nielsen and others in a program built around the world premiere of a work by David Conte. Conte, Carlson says, is a San Francisco Bay composer well known there mostly for his choral pieces.

Information: (818) 767-2434.

JOFFREY: A three-week repertory season, Tuesday through May 22, marks the fifth anniversary of the Joffrey Ballet as resident dance company at the Music Center of Los Angeles County. The repertory includes “Concerto Grosso”--a new ballet by James Kudelka--and revivals of Fokine’s “Petrushka” and Gerald Arpino’s “Suite Saint-Saens” (see article on Arpino by Lewis Segal on Page 60).

Chosen by the late Robert Joffrey, founder of the company, this repertory includes 19 ballets by 10 choreographers; among the works are the reconstruction of Nijinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps,” which entered the repertory in the fall of 1987 in Los Angeles; “Light Rain”; “Round of Angels”; “L’Apres-midi d’un faune,” and “Les Patineurs.”

“Concerto Grosso” receives its local company premiere on the opening-night program, Tuesday in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was commissioned by the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Arts Festival, where it received its world premiere Feb. 3. The musical score is by Jean Papineau-Couture and the costumes are by Sylvain Labelle, with lighting by Thomas Skelton. See Listings for complete programs.

OPERATICALLY: Casting for Monteverdi’s “The Return of Ulysses,” second and final production of the 10th season of Long Beach Opera, has been announced. At the performances in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center May 20, 22, 26 and 29, the title role will be sung by Jake Gardner, with Cynthia Clary as Penelope. Among their colleagues will be Lisa Turetsky, Kathy Schwartzman, Elise Ross, Angelique Burzynski, Ken Remo, Bruce Johnson, Robin Buck, David Downing, Paul Johnson, Louis Lebherz, John Collis and William Olvis. As previously announced, the opera will be conducted by Nicholas McGegan and staged by Christopher Alden, the team that produced the company’s “Coronation of Poppea” in 1984.

The U.S. premiere performances of Alexander Zemlinsky’s opera “The Chalk Circle” (1932) will be given by forces of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, May 12-15. The seventh of Zemlinsky’s eight operas, “The Chalk Circle” (“Der Kreidekreis”) inspired acclaim at simultaneous premieres in Munich, Berlin and Vienna in 1933. The Austrian composer was a close friend of Schoenberg and Berg. The Cincinnati performances will be conducted by Gerhard Samuel and staged by Malcolm Fraser.

Ticket sales for the 1988 winter season of Opera Pacific topped $2.38 million, officials of the Orange County company have reported. These sales include both subscription and single-ticket sales to 31 company performances and the net proceeds ($204,250) of the Luciano Pavarotti concert in January. In all, 59,123 tickets were sold to the performances of “Aida,” “Kismet” and “Die Fledermaus,” realizing $2,175,856 for the company. These figures do not count the performances of “Aida” and “Kismet” at the new McCallum Theatre at the Bob Hope Cultural Center in Palm Desert.