Lo Cal Composers Ensemble Pulls Its Own Weight : Music: The group keeps blazing a local trail with its own version of contemporary classical works. It performs tonight at Zola Fine Art Gallery.

The Lo Cal Composers Ensemble--a group of diverse musicians--is like the little guy going up against the contemporary music establishment. Operating on a shoestring budget and limited concert schedule, the ensemble has been blazing a trail on the local contemporary music scene for six years, offering a distinct viewpoint in contrast to the better endowed Green Umbrella and Monday Evening Concerts.

The ensemble’s widely varying backgrounds are reflected in their compositions. It encourages its composers to run wild all over the musical spectrum, bringing ethnic or vernacular influences into their music. “One of the things we were interested in is having a situation where there is a lot of freedom to explore,” said Carlos Rodriguez, the founding member who now serves as Lo Cal’s president.

The group also has one notable achievement: longevity. Founded in 1984 by a circle of young UCLA composers, eyes set aflame by the example of the Olympic Arts Festival, the Lo Cal group still exists today, albeit in different form.

Rodriguez, 29, is the only founding member who is still with the group--and instead of old UCLA chums, his five partners now hail from diverse places such as Montreux, Switzerland; Tijuana, Mexico; and up and down the East Coast. Besides Rodriguez, the current lineup includes Jane Brockman, Murielle Hodler-Hamilton, Chris Guardino, Enrique Gonzales and Joel Hamilton. Some of Lo Cal’s recent sonic adventures will be on display tonight at the Zola Fine Art Gallery in West Hollywood.

“We get people who did not know that they liked this kind of music,” said Hodler-Hamilton. “They come and they go, ‘This is amazing.’ We get a lot of crossover from people who do not listen at all to contemporary classical music.”

Indeed, said Brockman, tonight’s concert should provide a taste of the eclectic Lo Cal agenda. Brockman’s own entry, “Character Sketches”--which consists of three piano pieces based on bell themes by Wagner, Schoenberg and Mussorgsky--is strictly classical in idiom. But then there is a Rodriguez piece called “Crater Lizards” which has a movement that he describes as “kind of an homage to funk bass players for pizzicato amplified cello.”

“In an academic situation, I would have encountered some kind of frown or, ‘You’re not serious,’ ” Rodriguez said.

Yet, like many of today’s younger musicians who grew up with access to all kinds of music through recordings, he doesn’t really care.

“Except for Stravinsky and the early 20th Century, there’s a lot of music that’s happened in this century that really doesn’t speak to me,” he said.

Noting that the last three Lo Cal concerts were sold out, Brockman believes that she and her colleagues are fulfilling a need, charging that some of the high-profile new-music series here are mostly interested in music from the East Coast or Europe.

“That’s what it seems to be if you look at the Green Umbrella series or Monday Evening Concerts,” she said.

“I came here because I think what’s happening here is very exciting and yet the major series stuff rarely deals with that. This is part of the inferiority complex that L.A. suffers from.”

A spot check of the 1990/91 Green Umbrella Series reveals that there is some truth in Brockman’s claim: Five of the seven concerts on the series are devoted entirely or almost entirely to non-Southern California composers. In previous seasons, the Green Umbrella covered even less local ground, occasionally huddling composers into one program under titles like “California Iconoclasts” or “California Choice.”

Yet, Lo Cal’s composers are quite aware that they are trying to overcome the undisciplined student-composer image that the group had in its early years. In the beginning, Rodriguez admits that Lo Cal’s zeal outran common sense; for example, they would put on marathon four-hour concerts not knowing how much an audience could tolerate.

“There was a feeling of, ‘Hey, kids, let’s put on a show,’ ” he recalled. “There was a lot of enthusiasm and we didn’t know exactly what was going to be the format.”

“Now we figure about an hour-and-a-half of music,” Brockman said. “We don’t want to scare people away.”

Once funded literally out of the composers’ shallow pockets, Lo Cal became a non-profit organization in 1986. Recently, the collective was buoyed by a substantial grant from BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.).

Eventually, Lo Cal would like to have a flexible resident ensemble ( a la the Philharmonic New Music Group) on hand, along with a permanent music director and an outlet for recordings. But money is always a major hurdle to be leaped over and over again.

“You want to talk about shoestring budgets?” Rodriguez said. “Even with BMI’s generous support, we wouldn’t pay the Philharmonic’s catering bill!”