Music and Dance Reviews : Saxophonist Gary Louie at County Museum

If anyone can pull the maligned classical saxophone into the mainstream of concert life, Gary Louie may be the one. He has a tough task ahead of him, though, for at this point, he could only draw a sparse audience into the Bing Theatre of the County Art Museum on Wednesday night.

Without a doubt, Louie is an astonishing player, one who draws a wealth of varied tone colors and shadings from his alto saxophone much the way Richard Stoltzman and Heinz Holliger do on clarinet and oboe, respectively. His tone could evoke shades of such jazz saxophonists as the late Paul Desmond without straying out of the classical idiom. And he cuts a lively, youthful physical figure--bobbing, leaning, posing, forever brushing back the hair that falls over his eyes.

Louie’s brief, intermissionless program lasted only a bit more than an hour, slowly increasing in difficulty as it unfolded. He opened with four transcriptions from Ibert’s 10 “Histoires” for piano, a quartet of reflective, jaunty, yet always urbane miniatures. Rodney Rogers’ “The Nature of This Whirling Wheel” found Louie and his assertive pianist, William Bloomquist, tumbling around in flowing episodes of gently bubbling, liquid agitation and sustained contemplation.

Ned Rorem’s “Picnic on the Marne” rather graphically chronicled an afternoon jaunt to a spot outside Paris, complete with a funny yet accurate depiction of Paris’ crazy traffic, a lovers’ quarrel and reconciliation. During the movement entitled “Vermouth,” Louie managed to veil his tone so completely that it nearly sounded like a French horn.

From this point, William Bolcom’s “Lilith” took off on a sometimes frenzied exploration of spiky dissonance and multiphonics, borrowing some squalling influences from the jazz avant-garde of the 1960s. In the section labeled “Child-stealer,” Louie was obliged to turn around and aim his saxophone into the piano, cutting loose with a hollow yet restrained shriek. It was demented stuff, though not one of Bolcom’s more musically inventive pieces--and Louie doused the flames with a delicate Falla Lullaby as an encore.