Avant-Garde Festival, Non-Traditional Turnout : Music: Organizers of the Ojai event call their tribute to contemporary artists a ‘bold statement,’ but ticket sales have been bland, down perhaps 25%.

John Frankel has come to the Ojai Festival for the past 20 of the musical event’s 45 seasons.

He brings his wife and their friends every year for the music, which continues today at Libby Bowl in Ojai. But Frankel also enjoys the grassy outdoor theater, where a canopy of oak trees filters out the hot sun and people spread blankets to loll over picnic baskets between concerts.

Standing beneath the shade of an oak after listening Saturday to a piano composition performed and written by Frederic Rzewski, Frankel, a retired Los Angeles man, praised the music.

“I enjoyed it immensely,” he said, after the hourlong dramatic solo recital.

But Frankel, voicing what concert organizers fear is the sentiment of many who stayed away from this year’s festival, was not so enthusiastic about Friday night’s avant-garde and experimental musical theater.

The star of that concert, attended by about 570 people, was performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, who used her powerful movements, versatile voice and expressive face topped with a shaved head to convey the need for protection of the Amazon rain forest.

“We were somewhat disappointed last night,” Frankel said. “I come from Europe, 52 years ago now, and that’s just not the same kind of classical music I enjoy.”

It was a chance that festival organizers knew they were taking when they planned the 1990 three-day event as a tribute to contemporary American artists, said Glenn Fout, festival production manager.

“It is always a challenge to balance the economic with the artistic,” Fout said. “The festival really made a bold statement this year.”

But the bold statement will cost the festival, he said. Ticket sales were running low this year, and Fout estimated that they might be off as much as 25% from previous years.

“We’re looking at a sparsely attended festival,” he said.

He estimated that Saturday night’s concert, including Steve Reich performing his “Desert Music” choral arrangement, would draw about 1,000 people at most.

That, together with today’s two concerts, should bring the festival’s total attendance to about 4,500, compared to the 6,000 of previous years.

Fout would not speculate whether this year’s poor attendance would affect next year’s concert program, but he said each year’s theme is different.

“It was clear in the beginning that this year’s statement of new American composers was for this year only,” he said.

But Fout, like others who brought the production together, was hardly apologetic about the 1990 festival.

Jeanette O’Connor, festival artistic and executive director, cited the success of Saturday morning’s Children’s Concert, which drew about 300 people. It was the first time the program was offered at the Ojai Festival.

It was a lively skit in which a rock ‘n’ roll guitarist meets a classical musician. The resulting piece shows children the similarities between the two musical venues, and, producers hope, introduces them to the joys of classical music.

“I think it prepared a lot of people for the rest of the music we’re doing today,” O’Connor said.

Susan Munn, director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, which performed the Children’s Concert, said she was delighted to see an audience filled with families.

“I hope we opened their minds,” she said.

Saturday’s Elliott Carter Chamber Music concert performed at the Ojai Presbyterian Church offered more for the traditional music lover, organizers said. About 300 fans packed the pews of the stately old church, officials said.

Amid the church’s open-beam ceiling, red tile floor and deep blue stained-glass windows, the audience was hushed and reverential as the cellist performed his Cello Sonata and other selections.

Today’s agenda offers still more of something different for lovers of contemporary music, Fout said.

Both the 11 a.m. and the 5:30 p.m. concerts feature computerized and electronically generated music by Morton Subotnick and others.

“This one could be very popular among electronic enthusiasts,” Fout said.