Five Aussie Composers at Monday Concerts

A founder of Terra Australis, the Australian/American chamber ensemble devoted to new music from Down Under, conductor/composer Matthias Kriesberg specifies exactly how new music from Australia is different from other contemporary expressions:

“It’s iconoclastic music, music that doesn’t necessarily adhere to any rules, music that feels free to be influenced by the United States, by Asia, by the aboriginal culture. And these influences are fused in a way that defines Australia. This music has a distinctive identity that has been fashioned, rather than one that has just been accepted.”

This week, at the final Monday Evening Concert of 1987-88, Kriesberg will conduct the touring sextet in works by Australian composers Peter Brideoake, Martin Wesley-Smith, Vincent Plush, Michael Smetanin and Richard Meale, works written between 1971 and 1984. Terra Australis is touring the United States this season partially through funding from the Australian Bicentennial Authority and the Australian/American Bicentennial Foundation.

“The longest and oldest of these pieces is ‘Incredible Floridas’ by Richard Meale”--the 55-year-old Australian who once studied ethnomusicology at UCLA.

“It’s about 33 minutes long, written for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin/viola and cello--our exact instrumentation,” Kriesberg said Tuesday on the phone from New York City. “It shows the influence of Schoenberg and Boulez, as does much of the music of Meale’s contemporaries, now the older generation of Australian composers.”

Plush’s three-movement, 14-minute “On Shooting Stars” (1981), Kriesberg explained, are instrumental settings of folk songs by the Chilean composer Victor Jara, “who was killed in the 1973 coup there. Plush is concerned with the political dimension, and interested in the Southern Hemisphere affinity between Australia and Chile. In the third movement, Jara’s own voice, on tape, emerges from the ensemble, and is accompanied. It’s very emotional.”

The 35-year-old Kriesberg said that because he now concentrates on composing and conducting, he does not miss being a pianist much. (It was as a pianist that he last appeared in Los Angeles, playing at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in 1980.) “I certainly don’t miss it as much as I thought I would,” the New York-born musician reflected.

“Composing is so predominant, and so consuming, there’s no time to think about anything else. Besides, when I started, 15 years ago, there were very few pianists specializing in new music. Now, there are huge numbers of people doing that.”

Terra Australis--whose members are flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, clarinetist Bronwen Jones, pianist Lisa Moore, percussionist Peter Jarvis, violinist Rohan Smith and cellist Mark Stewart--plays in the Monday series this week, at 8 p.m. in Bing Theater at the County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

ALSO THIS WEEK: In the midst of celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre returns to Royce Hall at UCLA for three performances, Thursday through Saturday nights at 8 p.m. Being offered in two programs are seven of Nikolais’ choreographic works: “Graph,” “Crucible,” “Contact,” “Blank,” “Excerpt From Kaleidoscope,” “Tensile Involvement” and “Arc en Ciel.”

Among events planned around Long Beach Opera’s opening weekend of Monteverdi’s “Return of Ulysses” are symposia, social events and a musicale, the latter on Saturday afternoon in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center. Two items on the program at the 4:30 musicale are Monteverdi’s brief (20-minute) opera, “Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” and George Crumb’s “Vox Balanae.” Admission to the musicale is free. An activity package called Sea Weekend is available; for information: (213) 596-5556.

Three community dance demonstrations by the Lewitzky Dance Company begin Saturday at Japan America Theatre in Little Tokyo. Subsequent community events are scheduled May 26 at Occidental College and June 23 at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Led by company founder Bella Lewitzky, audiences will be guided on “a 75-minute exploration of the art form of modern dance.” Members of the troupe will illustrate with movement while Lewitzky talks about the making of dances, improvisation and training; excerpts from the company repertory follow. The demonstrations will conclude with dialogues between observers and the performers. Information: Japan America Theatre, (213) 680-3700. Occidental College, (213) 259-2737. Pierce College, (818) 719-6473.

MORE COMPOSERS: The 10th annual New Music America festival will take place in Miami Dec. 2-11 and will offer no fewer than 25 world premiere performances, 25 U.S. premieres and the presentation of music by 20 composers from South America. All this in a 10-day, 22-event format, with performances scheduled daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Dedicated to the memory of Morton Feldman (who died in September), the festival will present “one of the most extensive surveys of Feldman’s work ever to be offered in North America,” according to the festival management. Among the artists participating in the festival will be Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Frank Zappa, Ornette Coleman, John Cage, John Zorn, Astor Piazzola, Laurie Anderson, Charles Wuorinen and Anthony Braxton. For information, write New Music America, Miami Festival, Wolfson Campus, 300 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami, Fla. 33132.

The first public performances of the new and complete critical edition of Edvard Grieg’s Incidental Music for Henrik Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” will be given by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, Wednesday through Saturday in Davies Symphony Hall in the Bay City.

Works by Andrew Akopov, George Clinton, Laurel Gonzalo and Conrad Pope--winners of a second annual Pacific Composers Forum competition for new music--will be heard next Sunday at 1:30 at Verdi Ristorante di Musica. Information: (213) 651-2070.