Oxnard Composer Returns Home for Symphony Debut : Miguel del Aguila’s 1988 piece “Toccata” receives its West Coast premiere Saturday.

This will be a big week for the Ventura County Symphony. The comfortable midsection of its current season brings a romantic program of Dvorak’s tuneful old standby, the New World Symphony, and Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1. Nothing new there.

But all ears should be trained on the opening piece, the first local performance of a work by the young, internationally recognized composer Miguel del Aguila, who calls Oxnard home but whose commissions and performances often take place in Europe. Del Aguila’s 1988 piece “Toccata,” receiving its West Coast premiere this Saturday, is brief but pungent, an elegant whirling dervish of a work that manages to use an accessible, mostly tonal language toward original ends.

The Uruguayan-born, Vienna-trained composer has an intriguing compositional voice, at once celebrating his Latin American heritage and embracing such musical influences as early modernism, post-romanticism, jazz and pop music.

His clever, energetic Piano Sonata No. 2 (also written in 1988) was recently included on the compact disc “Piano Music of the Americas,” performed by James Miltenberger for the ACA label. Del Aguila’s Sonata fits neatly in a program that includes music of the Argentine modernist Alberto Ginastera and George Gershwin, composers whose influence is woven into del Aguila’s ideas.

It will be good to hear the composer’s work in his own hometown.

But wait, there’s more. The most provocative news from the symphony front comes Tuesday, when conductor Boris Brott kicks off an inventive non-subscription, three-concert series called “Musics Alive!”

For anyone who has felt that Brott--now in only his second season--has followed a mostly straight and narrow programming path thus far, this is the music director’s promised payoff, a series dedicated to contemporary composers and world music.

True, the concerts have been relegated to small, offbeat venues around the county--Tuesday’s concert takes place at the Poinsettia Pavilion in Ventura--but the entire project is an ambitious step in the right direction.

Brott, typically ebullient and peripatetic, called from LAX just minutes before his flight took off, to have a few words with a reporter. His itinerary would take him to Toronto, Rotterdam, New York and Montreal. The road is the constant companion of a conductor with multiple commitments and guest shots.

He spoke about the conceptual seeds for the series. “The world of composition is becoming more and more international, as is the world of everything else, as well. Composers who live and work in Western spheres are, I think, influenced by world music.

“It can be said that throughout the 20th Century there’s been an intrigue and interest in the East, for instance, and in non-Western musical languages and techniques, and sound colors, from Ravel and Debussy on. But I think this is even more prevalent today. We wanted to explore that relationship in each of these concerts.”

Tuesday’s concert focuses, for its non-Western component, on the music of Indonesia. The Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra, from CalArts, directed by I Nyoman Wenton, will perform, alone and with Western instruments. Wenton’s composition “Crossovers,” will feature gamelan, African instruments and woodwind ensemble.

There will also be music in the middle, from East-leaning Western composer Lou Harrison, whose fascination with Indonesian culture dates back decades.

We will also hear Mel Powell’s “Modules, an Intermezzo for Chamber Orchestra.” Powell, who will be present to answer questions from the audience, is--despite his relative obscurity to general audiences--one of the most important and well-rounded living composers. He joined the ranks of Pulitzer Prize winners in 1990.

Powell is the product of multiple influences over a life in music. He studied jazz, was in on the seminal era of electronic music, and has produced a striking body of uncompromising post-serial pieces. What we hear in Powell’s work is a finely honed and personalized cross-section of musical impulses from the 20th Century.

Rounding out Tuesday’s concerts will be work by those 20th-Century pillars Milhaud and Stravinsky.

Next in the series, which is sponsored by the Barbara Smith Foundation, is the “China Alive!” concert at Ojai’s Rancho del Ray on March 15. “India Alive!” will be at the Spanish Hills Country Club on April 12.

With the series, Brott sees his role as that of a cautious crusader. By presenting the concerts in a casual atmosphere and in humble venues, he hopes to build interest from the ground up.

“Hopefully, in the long term, our whole audience will become educated and be more interested in this sort of thing, and then we’ll be able to play it in our main series. That’s my goal. My goal is not to keep people firmly in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” he said, laughing.

When it comes to the delicate task of presenting contemporary or non-mainstream music to a symphony audience, Brott noted, “Personally, I haven’t seen many positive results in forcing it down their throats. They don’t like it, and they stay in the lobby. It serves to reinforce their resistance. They’re going to say ‘Oh, not that again.’

“Whereas, I think we can get people from the main audience to come to the series. I know this from the experiences I’ve had in Hamilton (Ontario, where Brott lives), where I’ve built audiences for this kind of music, specifically. At the first concert, we had 35 subscribers, and by the third year, we were having 600 people. I think the same thing will happen here.”

Stranger things have happened.

Details

SYMPHONY

* WHAT: The Ventura County Symphony performs “The Brahms-Dvorak Connection.”

* WHERE: Oxnard Civic Auditorium, 800 Hobson Way.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

* COST: $12 to $27.50.

* ETC.: Call 643-8646.

ORCHESTRA

* WHAT: The Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra performs “Indonesia Alive!”

* WHERE: Poinsettia Pavilion, 3451 Foothill Road, Ventura.

* WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

* COST: Advance tickets, $20; at the door, $25.

* ETC.: Call 643-8646.