CalArts Music Festival to Bring Audiences Ear-to-Ear With the Unexpected

Musicians will seat themselves before contraptions with names such as the Roland D-10 Digital Sampler and the Akai S 700 MIDI. Electronic sounds will fill the air, mixed with carefully timed recordings of cars honking and crowd noises.

If this sounds like music for Future Shock, it is.

The fourth annual SCREAM Festival at CalArts on Saturday will be a rare forum for electroacoustic composers who write new types of music both for traditional instruments and burgeoning electronic technology such as computers and MIDI keyboards.

Theirs is a largely ignored world of composition that lies someplace beyond the environs of the Hollywood Bowl and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“People are used to certain kinds of expectations, both in terms of the performance situation and the music they’re hearing. All of us grow comfortable with the norm,” said Barry Schrader, a professor at CalArts in Valencia and director of this year’s daylong festival. “When you’re dealing with things in contemporary electroacoustic music, you very well might come face-to-face with the unexpected.

“I think that’s part of the adventure of art.”

Schrader founded SCREAM (Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music) four years ago because he wanted some sort of organization for contemporary composers who don’t have many outlets for their talents.

He rounded up professors from USC, UCLA, Harbor College and Cal State Dominguez Hills and Cal State Northridge. In 1986, the groups began presenting an annual festival at various sites to coincide with American Music Week.

This year’s gathering at CalArts will offer prerecorded, pre-programmed music and live performances. Also--in keeping with CalArts’ eclectic tradition--the festival will include dance performances, video presentations and an installation artwork.

“I thought I’d take advantage of the people and facilities that are here,” Schrader said.

The music will range from Roger Bourland’s “Portable Concerto No. 2 for Flute and Tape,” a more traditional piece, to Craig Naylor’s “ Hokshichankiya ,” a tribute to the Sioux Indians that is composed entirely of recorded animal noises--wolves, coyotes, various owls, crickets and red-tailed hawks.

Acclaimed pianist Dolores Stevens will perform, as will the California E.A.R. Unit, one of the most recognized new-music ensembles in the country.

Four dance performances will be set to new forms of music, as will several of the video presentations. Among the videos will be Reynold Weidenaar’s sound and video tribute to the “heavy stone architecture” and “spidery structural steel’ of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Some of this will be enormously different from what most people are used to . . . probably a lot of it will be enormously different,” Schrader said. “The reason I started this festival was to put the spotlight on people who have been lost in the shuffle of traditional performances.”

The SCREAM Festival will be held from 1 to 7 p.m. Saturday at CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia. The installation art and some music performances are free. Tickets for other performances are $6 and $3 for students and seniors. All-day passes cost $15, $7.50 for students and seniors. For information or reservations, call (805) 253-7800.