Tokyo Ensemble to Open CalArts Festival : Music: Group plays to the ‘new tradition’ of contemporary compositions for traditional Japanese instruments.

There may not be much in the way of contemporary music scheduled for the Pacific-themed Los Angeles Festival in September, but other presenters are making up the difference. The CalArts Festival of Contemporary Music this weekend, for example, is actually subtitled “Contemporary Music of the Pacific Rim.”

“We knew about the L.A. Festival theme,” said Alan Chaplin, acting dean of the CalArts School of Music. “We consider our effort complementary, not competitive.”

The idea of orienting the 1990 CalArts festival around a Pacific theme goes back two years, when Chaplin and the school wrote their first grant proposal for this event, for the California Arts Council. “A Pacific Rim theme seemed to be very much in keeping with the current thinking at CalArts about the kind of multicultural world in which we live,” Chaplin said.

The festival gained its headliner almost by accident, however. Opening the festival tonight is the Tokyo International Music Ensemble. Directed by composer-pianist Toshi Ichiyanagi, the ensemble is devoted to the “new tradition” of contemporary compositions for traditional Japanese instruments, some in combination with Western classical instruments.

The ensemble--13 performers plus a manager and stage assistants--was formed specifically for its current tour, which began on the East Coast. With funding from a Japanese government agency for the tour already in place, CalArts was quite receptive when approached about scheduling a performance. “They fit in just perfectly, by coincidence,” Chaplin reported.

The program includes works by John Cage, Toshio Hosokawa, Yoshihiro Kanno, Toru Takemitsu, Ichiyanagi and Maki Ishii. On Saturday the ensemble moves to the Japan America Theatre for a similar program, though the JAT agenda includes the local premiere of Ichiyanagi’s “Michi (The Way),” a piece incorporating gagaku- style dance and music.

In May, ensemble members harpist Ayako Shinozaki and koto player Kazue Sawai return with other Japanese performers for the East Meets West-themed Fifth Chamber Music/LA Festival at the Japan America Theatre. There, the featured composers include Ichiyanagi, Takemitsu and Ishii, plus Isao Matsuhita and Tadao Sawai. On April 24, flutist Michiko Akao and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic play other works by Ishii, Takemitsu and Joji Yuasa, on an “Under Grand Music” program at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Not all of the CalArts programming is Japanese. Saturday afternoon the bill lists music by Chinese and Australian composers, as well as Californians. Saturday evening the program features the premieres of hybrid works for chorus, gamelan and percussion ensemble by CalArts faculty members--John Bergamo’s “Five Haiku,” K.R.T. Wasitodinigrat’s “Sapta Swara” and Barry Schrader’s Tian An Men Square tribute “TWO: Square Flowers Red: SONGS.”

The chorus for that concert is Cantinova, an ensemble that premiered last December in CalArts-sponsored concerts at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It is directed by Paul Vorwerk, who teaches at CalArts. Unlike most of the members of other resident ensembles, however, the Cantinova choristers are professionals, not students. Though providing its students with vocal ensemble experience, CalArts no longer has a voice major program.

“We’re gradually increasing our enrollment from the low-water mark, two or three years ago,” Chaplin said. “Our philosophy of performance study is that students should play along with faculty.”

The Sunday afternoon program lists pieces by Julio Estrada and Lou Harrison, and the premiere of Nyoman Wenten’s “Under Current,” which merges jazz, Balinese gamelan and dance elements. There is a retrospective character to the Sunday evening finale, which begins and ends with works by Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick that premiered on earlier festivals.

This year the festival is actually a subset of a larger Spring Music Festival, which also features campus groups in an all-day “Jazz for the 21st-Century” program March 31 and world music components on two weekends in April.

“It’s kind of an umbrella thing we decided to do this year,” Chaplin said. Next year may be different, but the current Spring Music Festival celebrates the school’s 20th anniversary with “the integration of one viewpoint. I hope it’s going to be both a challenging and pleasurable experience.”