Quartet: It’s About Time for a Change : Music: After a decade of performing transcriptions, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet wants to play more new music and broaden its audience.

Although the members of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet have maintained successful solo careers, they continue to dedicate much time to improving their now internationally acclaimed ensemble. Those who have experienced their virtuosity and polish may wonder why, after a decade, the group now is trying to change its audience and appeal.

“After living on a diet of mostly transcriptions for 10 years, we want to move in a different direction, and the medium is only going to grow with new material,” explained member William Kanengiser from his home in Los Angeles. “There are also crossover elements that we want to explore, and hopefully our new member, Andrew York, who has experience in that area, will help us with this.”

The other members, who, like Kanengiser, have been in the group since it began are local guitarists Scott Tennant and John Dearman. Their recital tonight at Irvine Barclay Theatre, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, will give them a chance to demonstrate the new directions. In addition to transcriptions of familiar music by Rossini and Falla, the program will include substantial works by contemporary composers Leo Brouwer, Stephen Funk Pearson and Ian Krouse.

“When we started the group back in 1980, we were all students at USC,” Kanengiser recalled. “Pepe (Romero), who taught there at the time, formed us and was our main influence. We ended up reading through arrangements for the Romero Quartet and playing just for fun. Two years later, we went on a tour of Mexico, playing 48 concerts in five weeks. That was our baptism of fire. Suddenly, we were a professional organization with a future.

“At that time we would play duos and solos along with works for the full quartet, but after a few years, we wanted to present the quartet as the main focus. Now, we only play quartet music.”

The Romero Quartet--made up of a father and three sons--often claims to have been the first modern guitar quartet. Kanengiser pointed out that the Romeros were by far their major influence, but not the only influence.

“Actually there are precedents for the guitar quartet before the Romeros,” he observed. “In the 1920s, there was a group in Spain and (another) in the 1950s in South America. There are many examples of lute quartets which have to be rewritten because of the different ranges. And there is actually a piece from the late 1800s written by a German composer for guitar quartet. We used to play it, but it isn’t really the best of works.”

The lack of good music for guitar quartet is why the group has had to do a lot of transcriptions. The members themselves take turns doing most of the arrangements, trying to keep the status among themselves fairly equal.

“Actually, we’re very democratic about dividing parts,” Kanengiser said. “We really try to mix it up in our arrangements, whereas in a string quartet, the viola usually has to do a lot of accompanying while the first violin does most of the melodies. Here, everyone gets to play first fiddle.”

But because a guitar is plucked and a violin is bowed, a guitar quartet carries an entirely different set of problems than a string quartet. In the past, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet transcriptions have been of favorite classics, or anything that could be adapted without emphasizing the shortcomings.

For instance, Kanengiser said, there is a problem with sustaining notes “which limits us as compared to a string quartet. Four years ago, John (Dearman) added a seventh bass string to his instrument, which broadens our range, but the lower register still just doesn’t sustain like a string section would.

In any case, for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet to carry on the tradition of the Romeros, it feels it needs to attract a younger audience. That’s why the members are looking for new music and ideas.

“Interest in classical guitar simply isn’t what it used to be in the days of Andres Segovia,” Kanengiser said. “But there are things that are changing for the better. It used to be that all great guitar players came out of Spain. But now they come from all over the world.

“We’d like to be more like the Kronos Quartet. There’s an example of a group that broadened its appeal by stepping out of a traditional cast of what a string quartet is supposed to do. . . .

“They always do what they love. That’s what we want to do.”

* The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet plays Rossini’s Overture from “The Barber of Seville”; Telemann’s Concerto in G; Krouse’s “Bulerias”; Pearson’s “Elassomorph”; Brouwer’s “Cuban Landscape With Rain,” and de Falla’s “El Amor Brujo” at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $12 to $20. Presented by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Information: (714) 854-4646.