Chamber Music Finds a Home : The Civic Arts Plaza is just one of the venues for a series of top-quality performances.

Among other notable news in this, a transitional period for Ventura County’s classical music season, the year is shaping up as a stellar one for chamber music. Just last week, the Civic Arts Plaza’s Forum Theatre in Thousand Oaks played host to bold performances courtesy of the Bach Camerata and the Ventura County Symphony’s “Clarinets Alive!” program.

And things are just heating up: The Ventura Chamber Music Festival prepares to unfold its ambitious inaugural event May 17-21. The idea is to bring chamber music, in many different varieties, to several locales around the county for five concentrated days of music.

One beauty of festivals is the unique sense of possibility they can facilitate. Highlights include the forward-leaning California EAR Unit at the Ventura Holiday Inn’s Top of the Harbor at 11 p.m. on May 19, an evening of Art Song at the Victorian Rose Wedding Chapel on May 18, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at the Ventura Mission on May 19, and a Spanish program by the Ventura County Chamber Orchestra on May 20.

Why the sudden flowering of chamber music in these parts? For one thing, the potential power of chamber music is reliant not only on the caliber of musicianship and programming vision, but the quality of the chamber in which it is played.

As demonstrated last week, the Forum Theatre, the intimate smaller venue in the Arts Plaza, is a splendid house of music. An adaptable and acoustically friendly space, the theater is a welcome and needed addition to the county’s musical landscape.

In its fifth and most enterprising season yet, the Bach Camerata performed six programs in three places--the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Ventura City Hall and in the Forum Theatre, the finest of them all. In its finale, the Camerata presented an all-American program anchored by the comfy familiarity of Copland’s lovely, original chamber version of “Appalachian Spring” and Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Opus 11, containing the Adagio that is Barber’s signature lament.

Violist Don McInnes dazzled with sensitivity three nights later, in the same hall, on the theme of Ernest Bloch’s “Suite Hebraic,” this time with Charles McDermott at the piano. The Forum Theatre was the site for the second of three “Musics Alive!” programs presented by the Ventura County Symphony. This month’s model: “Clarinets Alive: Musics in the Hebraic Tradition.”

An almost-full house heard sizable portions of music, and plenty of talk thereof. The series has an informal and informative structure, with ample discussion of the music played and isolated snippets of the repertoire. Aspects of lecture/demonstration/audience participation are integral to the series’ goal of expanding average classical listeners’ Western/conservative musical perspective.

The centerpiece of this program was Meyer Kupferman’s picturesque, cross-idiomatic “Images of Chagall,” a 30-minute work written in 1987. It unapologetically takes root in post-Stravinsky soil, where Modernism and folkish traits blend. As individual Chagall paintings were projected on the screen overhead, the accompanying musical responses--often entrancing, and always a workout for percussionist Deborah Schwartz--were realized in real time.

Kupferman was in the house and explained his attraction to Chagall’s work--”like a world coming alive”--but later commented that the writing of his Chagall-inspired music was less systematic than intuitive: “As a composer, I just let my mind go.” In this case, it went in provocative directions.

Ironically, a more definitively “world music” program took place at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium the previous Saturday night as guest conductor Fernando Lozano led the full Ventura County Symphony in a fascinating survey of Mexican concert music.

The too-rarely heard music of Chavez, Revueltas and Moncayo, as well as a premiere by composer and popular KUSC programmer Enrique Gonzalez Medina, filled the hall. The concert evoked memories of the symphony’s leadership under founding conductor Frank Salazar, who succeeded in bringing Mexican orchestral music to town with some regularity.

LAST HURRAH

Speaking of veteran conductors in the area, founding Conejo Symphony conductor Elmer Ramsey will take the podium for his last official classical program before retiring. This Saturday at the Civic Arts Plaza, a meat-and-potatoes program will be Schubert, Dvorak and Schuman’s Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, with guest soloist Vladimir Feltsman.

This will end Ramsey’s 30-year run, which has seen the orchestra grow from a community ensemble based out of Cal Lutheran University to the resident orchestra of the Arts Plaza. After this classical foray, the orchestra will end its season on a light note as the backup band for Shirley Jones on May 20.

MORE FESTIVAL NEWS

On the subject of area festivals, the Ojai Festival--always the highlight of Ventura County’s musical calendar and its sole claim to international fame--is creeping into cultural consciousness. This year’s festival, taking place the weekend of June 9-11, hosts music director Kent Nogano, who will bring his Lyon Opera Orchestra to town.

Nogano last appeared at the Ojai Festival several years back, when the featured composer was the late great Frenchman Olivier Messaien. Fittingly, Nogano will perform Messaien’s “Quartet for the End of Time” on the Saturday night program. This year, there is a decided accent on things French: music by Milhaud, Poulenc, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Boulez and Satie.

Overall, the weekend’s five concerts will offer what appears to be a well-balanced celebration of fairly easy-to-digest 20th-Century fare, including Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony and Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” with Wagner and Strauss tossed into the mix. Mark those calendars.

Details

* WHAT: Conejo Symphony Orchestra, with pianist Vladimir Feltsman.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

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

* HOW MUCH: $10-$50, available through Ticketmaster and at the box office.

* CALL: 495-6833.