XTET Seeks to Amuse, Enlighten : Modern Music: The Los Angeles contemporary chamber ensemble strives to make new music user-friendly.

Clarinetist and composer David Ocker, a member of the contemporary chamber ensemble XTET, was extolling the democratic nature of the group. Working together as a musical cooperative, XTET members arrive at programming and interpretive decisions by consensus. Ocker contrasted this process to his experiences playing in symphony orchestras.

“After you’ve finished rehearsing a movement of a symphony, the second clarinet can’t raise his hand and say, ‘Excuse me maestro, but I think we should take it faster next time.’ ”

Ocker and four of his XTET (pronounced ex-tet) colleagues will make their local debut at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in a concert at the La Jolla Athenaeum. Ocker explained that unlike a quartet or an octet, whose size is unequivocally specified by its label, the “X” in XTET stands for the variable “x” in mathematics. Each performance simply uses the number of players, from two to 12, needed to realize the repertory chosen, although 10 musicians form XTET’s regular core.

In addition to the group’s flexible composition, XTET is characterized by its commitment to making new music user-friendly to audiences.

“Our goal is to make what seems challenging to be less so for the audience. Part of the problem is that new music has the reputation of being inherently difficult. Not only do we explain what we are playing to our audience, but we also try communicate that we have a good time playing music that we think is important.”

Unlike San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet, which tours the country year-round performing contemporary music, XTET is not a full-time project for its members. (“In pure economic terms, playing new music is not cost-effective,” Ocker admitted.) They prepare six to eight programs each season, but the rest of the time the musicians are employed elsewhere. Some play with the Los Angeles Philharmonic or the L.A. Chamber Orchestra; Ocker is a music engraver (someone who turns a composer’s manuscript into printed music) when he is not practicing or working at his composition desk.

XTET’s La Jolla program will include music by Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, John Cage and Ocker, who is one of two composers in the XTET family. As a founding member of the group, which has been promoting contemporary music in Southern California since 1986, Ocker has used XTET as a congenial platform for airing his compositions.

“When I look at our repertory list, I see my name down more than any other composer. I tend to be quite shameless in advocating my own pieces,” he said.

Ocker’s contribution to Sunday’s concert is “Backward, Looking, Forward,” a piece for clarinet, vibraphone and piano he wrote 15 years ago as a memorial to his father. The composition is based on a musical segment 77-measures long, one measure for each of his father’s 77 years. The title refers to the subject of time, a thematic thread that links the other compositions XTET will play in La Jolla.

Lukas Foss’ four-movement “Time Cycle” for soprano and four instruments is the most obvious thematic link, although two songs by the late John Cage, “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs” and “forever and sunsmell,” also tie into the theme of time’s passing.

* XTET performs Bernstein, Foss, Ocker, Cage and Rosenboom at the La Jolla Athenaeum, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday (information: 454-5872).

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All in the family. Abraham Talmi, father of San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi, opens a one-man show of paintings, watercolors and lithographs at La Jolla’s Riggs Gallery Oct. 22. A native of Poland, the senior Talmi studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. After he emigrated to Palestine in 1936, he taught both art and music in kibbutz Merhavia.

The exhibit, which includes works from 1936 to the present and will remain at Riggs through Nov. 20, traces Talmi’s development from an artist who recreated hazily realistic village landscapes to one whose more boldly colored abstract constructions may be seen to reflect a musician’s concern for purely architectural relationships.

Later in the season, flutist Er’ella Talmi will make her local orchestral debut as soloist with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. On Jan. 11 and 12, Er’ella, wife of the maestro, will solo in Danzi’s Second Flute Concerto and Faure’s Flute Soliloquy.

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Pregnant Butterfly. Although pregnancy and motherhood are necessary turns to the plot of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” the state of impending motherhood has taken a pair of sopranos out of the lineup for San Diego Opera’s February production of the evergreen opera. Scheduled soprano Young Mi Kim will not sing the title role because of an expected birth that month, and general director Ian Campbell’s second choice, Hiroko Nishida, who sang the role for San Diego in its 1989 production, was unavailable for the same reason. Last week, Campbell announced that he had signed American soprano Elizabeth Hynes to sing the role.

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Campus benefits. Raising money is nothing new for university music departments, but the state of California’s recent budget cuts have inspired local music faculty members to stage more clever events to lure donations.

The San Diego State University music department is throwing a “Wild West” dinner dance Oct. 23 at Tom Ham’s Lighthouse to raise funds for instrument repair and replacement. The annual fall event, this year called Western Jamboree, will award prizes for authentic costumes and honor department alumnae from before 1950. (For information and tickets: 594-6031)

Across town at UC San Diego, bassist Bertram Turetzky, trumpeter Edwin Harkins and colleagues will recreate the sounds of the John Kirby Sextet Oct. 30 at the UCSD faculty club.

One of New York City’s landmark 1940 jazz ensembles, the Kirby Sextet was known for blending its classic swing style with familiar classical works by Beethoven and Schubert. Pianist and Third College provost Cecil Lytle will be the evening’s master of ceremonies. This benefit will provide funds for the department’s graduate student fellowships. (For information and tickets: 534-4830.)

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The San Diego Brass Consort will premiere Brass Quintet No. 3 by Merle Hogg, San Diego State University emeritus professor, in its Monday concert at 7 p.m. in the university’s Smith Recital Hall. . . .

Virtuoso organist Roberta Gary opens a new season of recitals presented by the American Guild of Organists Sunday at 7 p.m. on the superb Baroque-styled mechanical action organ at All Soul’s Episcopal Church, Point Loma. . . .

Local pianist Bryan Verhoye, winner of several competitions including the 1986 Joseph Fisch Competition, will give a solo recital at 7 p.m. Sunday in the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church of San Diego.

CRITIC’S CHOICE / Baroque for Lunch

The Los Angeles early music group La Chanterelle III, formerly La Stravaganza, will offer Baroque gems at a noon concert Monday in the Lyceum Theatre at Horton Plaza.

While music aficionados and downtown workers consume their brown-bag lunches, the visiting instrumental trio (Baroque violin, viola da gamba, and archlute) will play sonatas by Corelli, Vivaldi, Zamboni and Handel.