Ballet and Master Chorale Top Bill of Weekend Fare : ‘Nutcracker’ debuts at Civic Arts Plaza. A Camarillo church and San Buenaventura Mission will be sites for vocal program.

If it’s true that an arts compound isn’t truly broken in until it hosts the perennial “Nutcracker,” this weekend will be a landmark one in the life of the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks. Doing the honors will be the California Dance Theater along with the Conejo Symphony Orchestra.

Whatever you might think about Tchaikovsky’s lavish ballet, it’s one of the more benign of seasonal phenomena. It also enjoys special distinction as a piece that offers young concert-goers early exposure to classical music and dance. From “The Nutcracker” sprouts potential classical aficionados.

For other holiday-minded music, don’t forget “A Christmas Odyssey,” the Ventura County Master Chorale’s thinking-person’s program. Vaughan Williams’ “Carol Fantasy,” Britten’s “A Boy Was Born” and Santa Barbara-based composer Emma Lou Diemer’s “A Feast for Christmas” all will be performed.

The Master Chorale will sing at Mount Cross Lutheran Church in Camarillo on Saturday night, but for more ambience, catch the program at the San Buenaventura Mission on Sunday at 4 p.m.

SPEAKING OF THINGS CHORAL

Is Ventura County’s classical music scene threatened by overcrowding, with its complement of classical organizations and the ante now upped with the programming at the Civic Arts Plaza? You wouldn’t know it by head counts.

An overflow audience packed into the evocative confines of the Ojai Presbyterian Church a few weeks ago for the opening concert of the Ojai Camarata’s short season. During the three years of its existence, music director Charles McDermott has honed his 24-voice ensemble into an admirable musical entity, often with an exploratory spirit in its programming.

With the title “Hispanica Viva!” the concert’s theme was self-evident, but the range of music on the program defied easy categorization. Material shifted from that of Spanish Renaissance composer Cristobal Morales to a short piece by Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Vocal works were interspersed by cameos from guest soloist Deborah Schwartz, a marimbist of no uncertain power.

In a sense, the primary attention went to the premiere of a choral suite extracted from Miguel del Aguila’s yet-to-be-produced opera “Cuauhtemoc.” Del Aguila, the bold young Uruguay-born composer who now lives in Oxnard, wrote the opera, based on the last Aztec emperor, two years ago and is beginning to hear snippets of the huge opus manifested in concert settings.

In Ojai, del Aguila accompanied on piano as the Camarata spun through several themes detached and rewoven from the original operatic context. Even in this truncated form, we got a sense of the melancholic thrust of the story, about an emperor stripped of power and a once-mighty culture deflated by conquerors.

From the robust yet teasing evidence heard here, the musical language remains true to del Aguila’s pluralistic tendencies, combining Latin American and Western European musical tradition and high and pop culture without apology. No apology necessary.

ON THE CHAMBER FRONT

Another healthy-sized crowd filed into the Ventura College auditorium recently for the Ventura County Chamber Orchestra’s program, “The Art of the Concerto.”

Seasonal timing was auspicious. Somehow, chamber music, with its intimate scale and easily grasped vitality, is a form well-suited to this time of year. Add to that a mostly baroque program and the lovely repast of Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto” to open and you had a concert in sync with the holidays.

The chamber orchestra, under Burns Taft for two years now, is a taut yet flexible unit. The ensemble makes a persuasive case for the importance of this humbler orchestral force in the county’s classical music scene, especially at a time when the Civic Arts Plaza tends to have us thinking in terms of bigger, better, brighter, more expensive.

At this genteel and satisfying concert, a lot was made with a little. Flutists Carol Lockart and Charla Gulino shared the spotlight on Galuppi’s Concerto for Two Flutes in E Minor and Telemann’s Concerto in A Minor for Two Flutes, spinning crisp, amicable lines together and apart.

Flutists, not often called upon for soloist services, need love, too. Ditto, guitarists, whose opportunities as orchestral soloists are less than abundant.

Another guest soloist, guitarist Matthew Greif, brought clarity to Giuliani’s early 19th-Century Concerto in A Major for Guitar. This is a smart guitarist’s vehicle clearly built around the instrument, with its inherent dynamic limitations and capacity for precision.

Greif rose to the musical occasion, from the richly tuneful Andante to the digitally challenging Polonaise to close. Taft led his modest, deft complement of a dozen players over an orderly musical terrain and left a solid impression.

Although the first two concerts of the Chamber Orchestra season have focused on older repertoire, newer sounds are imminent. The remaining two concerts in the season, on March 18 and May 20, will feature music by Hindemith, Falla and respected Ventura-based composer John Biggs.

Despite competition from other parts of the county, the still-fledgling Ventura Chamber Orchestra marches onward, armed with good intentions and a fine sound.

Details

“The Nutcracker,”

presented by the California Dance Theater and the Conejo Symphony Orchestra.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday.

* WHERE: Civic Arts Plaza Auditorium, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks.

* HOW MUCH: $15 to $30.

* CALL: 449-2787.

“A Christmas Odyssey,” from the Ventura County Master Chorale.

* WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Saturday, Mount Cross Lutheran Church, 102 Camino Esplendido, Camarillo. Also, 4 p.m. Sunday, San Buenaventura Mission, Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: $18, $15 senior citizens and students; family and group rates.

* CALL: 653-7282.