First Move Taken on Clearinghouse

The initial step toward organization of a major umbrella group and clearinghouse for the promotion of new music has been taken with the formation of a not-for-profit corporation, initially called New Music Los Angeles (NMLA).

Formed at a recent meeting with 17 representatives of 11 performance organizations--including CalArts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Independent Composers Assn. (ICA), Pacific Composers Forum and the California E.A.R. Unit--NMLA’s charter is “to provide an infrastructure for the advancement of new music in Southern California and to produce an ongoing new music festival.”

After Los Angeles-mounted festivals in 1984, 1985 and 1987, the new-music community, said Richard Amromin, outgoing president of ICA, “feels the need of coming together again.”

One of the benefits of creating a body called New Music L.A., Amromin says, “is to de-amateurize the way Los Angeles has been treating new music.” Among the problems audiences and impresarios have faced, he says, are “an appalling amount of double-booking (multiple appearances by a composer in a short time span) and an abysmal lack of venues appropriate for the presentation of new music.”

At the August meeting, the process of organization was begun with the naming of a steering committee to oversee the process. Members are Cheryl Tiano from the County Museum of Art; Carl Stone of Meet the Composer; Drew Lesso, incoming president of ICA; Amy Knoles of the E.A.R. Unit; Murielle Hodler-Hamilton from LoCal Composers, and Amromin.

With a grant of $12,500 from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department yet to be used, said Amromin, the next step is the hiring of an interim director. That person will work on incorporation and non-profit status, establishing an office, production of a needs assessment study of presenters in the area, creation of a three-year organizational plan and publication of a new music calendar of events in Greater Los Angeles.

TO TBILISI: Eighteen-year-old Calvin Kitten of the San Diego-based California Ballet is in the Soviet Union as part of a dancer exchange program. He will be at the Tbilisi Choreographic Institute in Soviet Georgia for nine months.

“He’s going there to study,” said Maxine Mahon, director of California Ballet, who’s had a relationship with the Soviet dance community for five years. “He’s a young man with a lot of talent and it’s important that he gets as much (training) as he can.”

Next year, California Ballet will host a young male dancer from Tbilisi.

“This ballet company has had relations with the Soviet Union for five years,” she says. “We’ve had guest artists and choreographers, and in May eight dancers from the Leningrad State Ballet will be coming here. And they’ve invited us to perform there.

“That will probably happen within the next 18 months. This is a long-term project and there are many aspects. This . . . program with the student (in Tibilsi) is just one.”

ALSO IN DANCE: Festival International de Nouvelle Danse opens Tuesday in Montreal and continues through Oct. 1. Twenty-one companies will be bringing 31 dance productions, including three world and nine North American premieres. Four troupes from Japan include Karas, the company founded by Saburo Teshigawara, called by some “the little prince of Japanese dance.” From Germany comes Susanne Linke; from Belgium the company Ultima Vez, led by Wim Vandekeybus; from France, two companies, Groupe Emile Dubois and Compagnie Bagouet; from the United States, two more troupes, Dana Reitz and Susan Marshall & Company. A dozen companies represent Quebec and the rest of Canada . . . In Portland, Ballet Oregon and Pacific Ballet Theatre (PBT) have merged to create Oregon Ballet Theatre. James Canfield, formerly artistic director of PBT, has been named artistic director of the new troupe, and Dennis Spaight, formerly artistic director of Ballet Oregon, has been named associate director and resident choreographer of the new body. Oregon Ballet Theatre begins its 1989-90 season Oct. 27 and 28 in the Portland Civic Auditorium with a program of works by Canfield and Spaight. . . . Two soloists and six members of the corps de ballet are new at San Francisco Ballet, bringing the total membership to 59, plus four apprentices from San Francisco Ballet School. Joining the company as soloists are former Kirov Ballet dancer Yuri Zhukov and former Joffrey Ballet dancer Ashley Wheater. The new corps de ballet dancers are Galina Alexandrova (from the Bolshoi Ballet), Melissa Carpenter, David Justin, James Thompson from Boston Ballet, Alexander van Alstyne from Ballet West and Jais Zinoun, winner of the Prix de Lausanne Competition . . . Pacific Northwest Ballet travels from Seattle to Washington this month for seven performances. The regional company opens the dance series at the Kennedy Center Sept. 26-Oct. 1.

BRIEFLY: The four-year old World Festival Choir, a non-profit, international choral ensemble which launched itself at a Handel Tricentennial concert in Sweden and appears in configurations of from 3,000 voices down to merely 300-strong, seeks new members. For particulars of upcoming Los Angeles auditions, call (818) 793-2560 . . . The UCLA Piano Competition, which this column mistakenly identified as taking place last week, actually is this week. Semifinals are scheduled in Schoenberg Hall Auditorium Wednesday and Thursday, with the finals to be heard next Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. in Royce Hall. Information: (213) 825-4761 . . . Meanwhile, in Switzerland, pianist Gustavo Romero, 24, has taken the first prize at the 1989 Clara Haskil competition in Vevey. Romero, a Juilliard graduate who grew up in San Diego, beat out a field of 42 other pianists from 20 nations. His prize is worth $7,500. Runners-up among the six finalists were Patricia Pagny of France and Marietta Petkova of Bulgaria.

Rachel Altman contributed to this column.