POP MUSIC REVIEW : ‘Wave Fest’ Focuses on New Age

A wine-and-cheese tent in the parking lot? New Age music on stage? At the Greek Theatre? Let’s take the Volvo today, honey.

NNew Age music made a bid for the big time on Sunday as David Lanz, David Arkenstone, Suzanne Ciani and Michael Tomlinson were packaged on a concert billed as “The Wave Summerfest.” Did it work? Did New Age make its case to become the dominant sound of the ‘90s?

The answer to the first question: Well, sorta. To the second: Not on your life. In fact, a good portion of the long, long program was like swimming through a vat of mayonnaise.

Arkenstone’s opening set was dominated by an eclectic array of keyboard sounds, seasoned with occasional guitar and flute solos. One piece blended into another with the innocuous quality of television film scoring. Arkenstone is a fine melodist, but he has not yet found a way to give his music any real density or substance.

Pianist Lanz, looking like Lord Byron revisited with his elegantly graying hair and loose, white poet’s blouse, performed with a nervous intensity that was strikingly more abrasive than his gentle-sounding recordings. Only on “Cristofori’s Dream” and “Leaves on the Seine” did his softer, more appealing qualities begin to emerge.

Ciani worked, as she usually does, with the considerable aid of computer sequencing. The addition of a live woodwind player and percussionist added a trace of vigor to music that otherwise did little more than disguise its rudimentary melodies with thick layers of synthesized sound.

It remained for Tomlinson to bring energy and excitement to a show that was reaching toward the four-hour mark. And the guitarist-singer-composer delivered, performing one appealing song after another.

Inaccurately described as the “first New Age singer,” Tomlinson mixed traces of Tom Petty, Michael McDonald and John Sebastian in a briskly energetic style. In songs like “Blue Eyes,” “All Is Clear” and “I’ll Not Go Down for Long,” he tapped unusually shadowy depths of feeling. But he and his crisp, crackling sextet were equally capable of finding a light and easy pop groove.

Tomlinson’s only flaw was a tendency to repeat harmonic patterns in too many of his songs. Still, his creative vitality was the saving grace for a festival that might otherwise have drifted into the bland haziness of a yuppie abyss.