SOUNDS AROUND TOWN : Different Notes : Composer breaks the musical rules, with pleasing results.

Apparently nobody told Ventura-bred composer Robert Bourneman that new music requires brow-furrowing seriousness. No one mentioned that musical instruments are meant to be played in the manner designated by tradition, or that the striking or stroking of everyday objects should not be done in service to the musical muse.

Then again, maybe too many people told him these things. A friendly neighborhood rebel, maybe he naturally veered off to the paths less traveled.

Whatever his problem or inspirational source, Bourneman’s musical inventions were a local hit when he and his group, The Ordinary Arts Ensemble, played a number of off-the-wall works at the Performance Studio in Ventura’s Livery Arts Center on June 8.

This was the first of three enticing New Music concerts in the small space. Later in the summer watch out for Jim Connolly’s concert on the African mbira in July and some deviant electric guitar music from Ted Killian and Cohorts in August.

Bourneman grew up in Ventura County, studied music at the Oberlin conservatory, has been teaching at Villanova Prep School in Ojai, and is now going to the University of San Diego to study geography. Needless to say, he hasn’t taken the most traditional route to the composer’s life.

To an overflow crowd, Bourneman and company kicked off the miniseries, which was organized by the ubiquitous Jeff Kaiser and sponsored by The Performance Studio. It was a show full of avant-garde notions and good clean fun.

The stage was set (not to mention the table) with the opening piece, “Dinner Music.” In it, 10 “diners” calmly sit down at a table and proceed to bang out hypnotic rhythms on the dinnerware. Don’t try this at home.

Other pieces included such unorthodox techniques as the layering of vocal parts. His chorus stacked up notes from, say, “Amazing Grace” or “Ode to Joy,” and organized them vertically into chords with eerie, swirling harmonies. In another piece, rhythmic etudes were realized with those underrated musical tools--bouncing basketballs.

One undeniable concert highlight was “Kyo-Ju or Kyo-Saku.” Academic contrapuntal exercises were combined with the practice of Zen Buddhist monks who thwack each others’ backs while praying, testing spiritual will over physical awareness. Seeing shirtless performers carrying out this strange, rhythmic ritual was oddly fascinating. Talk about suffering for art.

Audience participation was also part of the program, as bottles and other noisemakers were orchestrated to poetic texts. Closing the show was the Ventura-specific “At One,” which Bourneman conceived while standing on the old pier and noticing the incidental poetry in the convergence of everyday sounds--the train passing, the foghorn, the wind. Here, his recounting of the moment was illustrated with the meditative, windy gush of many beer bottles being blown in a nearly darkened space.

For a concert grounded in experimentation and overturned conventions, Bourneman’s show went down almost too easily. His pieces are brief, tied to some clever and/or gently subversive ideas, and are resoundingly listener-friendly. In the concert program notes, Bourneman offers special thanks to “Mom and Dad, who taught me how to use a spoon.” We assume that he learned various abuses of the spoon on his own.

Another overflow crowd turned out last Saturday at the old Ventura City Hall to hear guitarist Carlos Gonzalez give the last of three concerts in the 10th anniversary City Hall concert series.

The Oxnard-born Gonzalez provided an elegant primer in the Spanish and Latin-American traditions of the classical guitar. Despite occasional missteps, almost everything was right with Gonzalez’s approach, from his aptly romantic leaning to an overall technical expertise.

Gonzalez’s program touched on many of the signposts of the Spanish guitar repertoire, with music by Fernando Sor, Frederico Toroba and Francisco Tarrega. Tarrega’s familiar, tremolo-laden “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” moves lyrically from minor to major, from dark to light.

Gonzalez proved himself especially adept at the music of Antonio Lauro--all spidery fingerings and supple harmonic turns--and the haunting purr of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ works. When played well, as is was this night, Villa-Lobos’ semi-primitive techniques that are tailored to the guitar, and his raw emotional state add a vivid counterpoint to any guitar recital.

Gonzalez provided a fitting finale to a concert series that had some rousing moments. The well-received first concert in April featured pianist Sofia Cosma and the Albani Trio.

Three-fifths of May’s concert, by Bryan and Susan Pezzone, was successful and inspiring, as the couple moved gracefully from a Haydn sonata to an early Pierre Boulez sonatina to concert series director Robert Lawson’s intriguing electro-acoustic invention.

Unfortunately, things took serious aesthetic dips when it came to Bryan Pezzone’s own breezy new-age noodlings and a shameless “turned-on Prokofiev” arrangement for flute, piano and some irrelevant digitized synthesizer. The dubious adaptation process here was analogous to buying a Kandinsky painting and adding a few dabs of synthetic color here and there to please the collector.

I’m still trying to sort out the series’ subtitle, “Composers from the Cutting Edge,” given that most of the music hovered around mainstream repertoire. One person’s cutting edge is another’s middle ground.

Overall, though, the series offered a healthy diversity of impulse and settings. Serious music hit the resonant marble-encrusted lobby of City Hall with a pleasant vengeance. Here’s to another 10 years.

* WHERE AND WHEN

Robert Bourneman performed as part of the New Music Concert Series, which will continue with a concert of African mbira music by Jim Connolly at 7 p.m. July 13. Ted Killian and Cohorts will perform electric guitar music Aug. 10 at 7 p.m. The Performance Studio in Ventura’s Livery Arts Center is at 34 N. Palm St. Concerts are free of charge. For information, call (805) 643-5701.