MUSIC REVIEWS : Engaging Program From E.A.R. Unit

With a dozen years in the trenches, the California E.A.R. Unit still strives to make the world--or at least the Southland--safe for new music. It made good on the proposition Wednesday, in the seasonal finale of its residency series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In a program both engaging and satisfying, the chamber group, fluctuating from a duo to a sextet, avoided being either dryly academic or emptily trendy.

Local and/or world premieres from a quartet of thirtysomething composers with fresh ideas were capped off with a work from that late, great icon John Cage, a kind of spiritual guidance counselor for the Unit. Cage’s 1984 piece, “Music for Seven,” designed with his typical blend of chance and calculation, closed the concert in a wash of pixilated sound. Lyrical in its own disjointed way, the piece found the group scattered around the Bing Theater, flinging isolated phrases artfully into the air.

Opening the concert in a subtler mode, Charles Wood’s “Nothing Lives Long, Only the Earth and Mountains” explored the sonic and rhythmic properties of sandpaper blocks. The sound-producing material itself proved as interesting as the resulting musical material.

More eventful was the world premiere of Scott Lindroth’s rubber-pulsed Quartet. Spiky, terse motives are presented with various degrees of synchronization, in a playfully dismantled minimalist approach.

By contrast, in Douglas Cohen’s haunting “Movement Through Stasis,” long notes progress languidly and harmonic relationships shift gradually, evoking objects spinning in slow motion through space, in a way reminiscent of Cohen’s teacher, the late Morton Feldman.

David Lang’s driving, driven “Illumination Rounds” took its title from a type of ammunition used in the Vietnam War, and has the quality of a punk counterpoint etude. Robin Lorentz’s coarse violin nipped at the heels of Gloria Cheng’s piano, and vice versa.

The E.A.R. Unit tackled the works with customary curiosity and clarity. Dealing with new music, from both sides of the stage, can be risky business, but this evening’s process of discovery was a fetching one.