Music Reviews : Haden Orchestra Offers Complex Works

On Sunday night’s segment of the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, Charlie Haden fronted the latest edition of his on-again, off-again Liberation Music Orchestra. This one, though, was composed of CalArts students.

Haden, who usually plays from within his big band, found it necessary to abandon his bass and conduct his group up front. Nevertheless, the students in the Modular Theatre were able to produce convincing, at times vivid, echoes of Haden’s past ensembles.

Unwilling to bow to today’s political and jazz fashions, Haden continues to produce complex, multihued works that fling an “in-your-face” challenge to the Wynton Marsalis-inspired conservatism of today’s younger jazz generation. While at times the agitprop ambience is a bit too poker-faced for comfort, there is always a welcome sense of affirmation.

“Dream Keeper,” the major work on the program, rumbled with street marches, folk tunes from Spain, Venezuela and El Salvador, and a wailing, chaotic, partial free-form episode that the young players went at with understandable gusto. The piece was marred only by some maudlin choral settings of Langston Hughes poetry--the instrumental music conveys all we need to know.

In an entirely different mood, K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat and the Musicians of Gamelan Kyai Kumbal cast a mesmerizing spell in “Dream Shadows,” accompanied by a pair of graceful shadow dancers. The serenely plodding, ritualistic gamelan sounds had the effect of gently cooling down the heat produced by Haden’s group.