MUSIC REVIEW : California EAR Unit Offers Program of Local Premieres

Wednesday the California EAR Unit opened another season as ensemble-in-residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with a typically eclectic, uncommonly blithe concert of local premieres.

The fresh program put a premium on brightly colored, generally emotionally buoyant music--which is not to imply that it was short on substance.

The lively, subtly bent quality of much of the music was immediately apparent in “What She Saw There” by Evan Ziporyn. Amy Knoles and Arthur Jarvinen began rapping out on marimbas a gentle pattern of generic gamelan-inspired minimalism, but every time it settled into a background groove, a sudden metrical twist would goose the pattern back into foreground consciousness.

Against this, cellist Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick played jaunty little pop-quality tunes. Or rather, started little tunes, for they too quickly turned slippery, into unexpected haze.

For pure, unreconstructed minimalism there was Joep Franssens’ “Consort Music,” reminding us both what a cleansing force this style once was, and just how mechanical it can sound, as Franssens simply let his material work out its patterned fate.

Rick Baitz’s “River of January” shared some of the pulse power of “Consort Music,” but in a freewheeling medley of stylistic allusions, mostly vernacular. Rand Steiger conducted the synthesizer-dominated ensemble in a taut performance.

A shimmering respite from more traditionally textured and beat-oriented music came in the form of Eleanor Hovda’s “Regions.” Though deftly scored for the full mixed ensemble--violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano and percussion--a tangible feeling of bowed friction informed the paradoxically light and intense, slowly evolving soundscape.

Mario Davidovsky’s “Synchronisms 9” gave violinist Robin Lorentz--undercut by amplification problems in several of the ensemble pieces--a welcome solo spot. She integrated her strenuous part with the gleaming electronic partner as an organic improvisation, poised in lyric reverie and decisive in athletic argument.

The cheerful, cheeky closer was “I’m Considering a Move to Memphis,” an obscure tune from the Colorblind James Experience as deconstructed by Unit reedman James Rohrig.