MUSIC REVIEW : Monday Evening Series Opens in Chaos and Repose

Noisy and often blurred performances of a remarkably motley program marked the opening Monday Evening Concert of 1992-93 this week in Bing Theater at the County Museum of Art.

The culprits--hardly the usual suspects--included composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, composer and keyboardist David Rosenboom and trombonist George Lewis.

They were aided by at least two dozen colleagues, including the 12-member CalArts New Century Players and a number of credited and uncredited “guests”--though the term guests seems disingenuous when applied to a series that already teems with ad-hoc ensembles.

Since Braxton--often called a crossover artist by those who subscribe to that concept--now teaches at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Rosenboom is dean of the school of music at CalArts, Lewis retains his post at UC San Diego and Donald Crockett, whose work was also represented on this program, is well known as a member of the USC composition faculty, this well-attended start to the 55th MEC season might have been dubbed: Academia on Parade.

The parade was really two: Chaos and Repose. Two loud, boisterous, rather sophomoric and finally disappointing pieces by Braxton, called Composition No. 63 and Composition No. 135, were given places of honor.

Both, being heard in Los Angeles premieres, employ large forces--say, more than 15 players--in aggressive, apparently hostile, unfocused music that seems to wander an improvisatory landscape.

At times, the sound profile resembles enthusiastic warming up from all participants; at others, block chords, mosaic silences and intermittent quietude give the impression of an unstructured Varesian nightmare. Apprehendability is not an element here; neither, apparently, is cohesiveness or musical goal-seeking.

Three tied-together pieces by Rosenboom, titled “Two Lines,” “Song of Endless Light” and “The Buckling of a Spring,” appear to be cut from the same rough cloth.

In these works, unison statements from a larger instrumental body alternate with frenzied riffs by a solo trio--percussionist, wind-player and keyboardist. The point seems to be self-excitation, the result a loud tedium on, and a relentless irritation of, the listener. Reduced to one word, these pieces are simply: unpleasant.

There was contrast here, also. At the beginning of the program, Chinary Ung’s gripping “Spiral” for a trio of cello, piano and percussion exerted its aesthetic muscle and offered rest from the noise-to-come; despite loud and heated climaxes, this is basically a lyric and pensive piece in an atonal style rife with exotic colors--Magyar and Chinese scales, for instance.

Then, after intermission, Crockett’s old-but-new, antiquarian-fresh “Occhi dell’ Alma Mia” for soprano and guitar proved a welcome palate-cleanser.

The impassioned but controlled performers in the Crockett work were Jacqueline Bobak and Stuyart Fox; in the Ung piece, Erika Duke, Bryan Pezzone and David Johnson.

With elan, Rosenboom conducted the large chamber orchestra in both the Braxton works; Pezzone led the three, run-together Rosenboom items. Braxton played solo saxophones throughout; Lewis proved a virtuosic trombone soloist. Among other strong musical voices was that of percussionist William Winant.

This concert, incidentally, was the final event in a four-day series called “New Music Across America, Los Angeles.”