MUSIC REVIEW : I Cantori Visits ‘Small Planet’

I Cantori take chances. They are not content merely to coast on their dignity and deliver safe, formal vocal recitals. Instead, founder-conductor Edward Cansino loves to exercise showmanlike flair, whimsy and a willingness to admit that he lives in the late 20th Century.

In that spirit, Cansino unveiled his cute yet pointed 16-minute multimedia theater piece, “A Visit to a Small Planet,” as the centerpiece of I Cantori’s opening concert at Occidental College’s Thorne Hall Saturday night.

In this update of Gore Vidal’s play, Cansino’s adorable one-eyed alien tourists ask a 15-year-old girl why earthlings insist upon polluting their planet.

It is the kind of obvious, to-the-point question that a child might ask--and, of course, everyone denies responsibility.

Cansino cleverly backs his message with a snazzy, distancing jazz trio, spacey synthesizer effects and video monitors that provide needed English subtitles for the aliens and harrowing TV news clips.

Elsewhere, taking advantage of I Cantori’s ability to sing Renaissance material with a gorgeously limpid, glistening tone, Cansino split the octet into two quartets, which then did mock battle. Mezzo-soprano Kerry Walsh offered a melting, beautifully shaded performance of “Ain’t It a Pretty Night” from Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,” and the men smoothly tackled the sophisticated harmonies of Toru Takemitsu’s tiny “Hand-Made Proverbs.” There was a semi-staged selection of numbers from Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha,” visually camped up yet mellifluously sung.

In all, a lovely, eclectic entertainment, marred only by three silly preemptive strikes in the first half by disembodied “alien” voices.