Latin Themes Will Set Tone for Festival of Chamber Music : The event runs Wednesday through May 21, with a wide range of performances throughout Ventura.

What becomes a music festival most? Is the emphasis on advocacy of culture, the promotion of the hosting community, or a mutually beneficial relationship between art and civic interests?

In the case of the upcoming Ventura Chamber Music Festival--an ambitious venture that runs from Wednesday through May 21--both sides have worked toward the middle.

Diversity isn’t lacking, either in terms of aesthetics or venue. Therein lies the beauty and clout of a festival setting like this. The standing rules of performance context can be twisted. Red tape can be sliced through with well-placed phone calls.

A well-designed festival, armed with city and commercial support and good intentions, brings its own momentum. Under what other circumstances could you expect to encounter such wide-ranging performances in five days in Ventura?

For example, next Wednesday’s gala opening concert at Ventura Harbor features the Nicoletti String Quartet, harpist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz and floating sound sculptures by Robert Lawson; an evening of art song with soprano Cynthia Munzer takes place in the Victoria Rose Wedding Chapel next Thursday, and new music with the California E.A.R. Unit will be heard inside the Holiday Inn’s Top of the Harbor on May 19.

Needless to say, the Ventura Chamber Music Festival takes place, literally, all over town, a fact that reflects on the very nature and origin of the event. It was a year ago that artistic director Burns Taft was persuaded by Sonia Tower of Ventura’s cultural affairs office to apply for a festival grant. The idea was to have his Ventura Chamber Orchestra as the presenting body of a new festival.

Taft is no stranger to the shifting cultural tides of Ventura, or to launching new babies. Two years ago, the longstanding music teacher at Ventura College and director of the Ventura County Master Chorale undertook the launching of the Ventura Chamber Orchestra, now completing its third season.

But whereas the chamber orchestra formed largely through the efforts of private sponsors, the festival took root directly through the intervention of City Hall. In addition, a steering committee was formed that, according to Taft, “carried the major burden of the fund-raising, establishing policies and looking after all kinds of details, like promotion and advertising, hosting all the concerts. It’s been a really big community effort. The orchestra isn’t responsible. We’re just a part of it.”

Looking at the schedule, one is impressed by the many different chamber music angles on display during the festival. Taft said, “We wanted to speak to the whole city and not exclude any one segment. In some ways, it may be a little more diffuse than I would prefer. If it’s a success, we can make it an annual event. I think it would be more distinctive to have a little narrower focus, so that we could stand out among all the other festivals in California with an identity.”

Despite its overall variety, the festival carries through with an underlying accent on Spanish and/or Latin-related music.

“Ventura was a city brought into being by the Spanish, the padres and their missions up and down the coast,” Taft said. “Of course, they found culture here already with the Indian cultures. But that seems to be our genesis. I couldn’t see any better way to start our first festival than to acknowledge the Spanish presence here--including Mexican or Latin American music. There’s something in every program that would reflect that, but none of them are exclusively that.”

Two specifically Latin-oriented events are the Danza Floricanto U.S.A. performance, free at Plaza Park in downtown Ventura on May 20, and the South American group Arco Iris at the Pierpont Inn on May 21.

One of the key concerts in the festival will be the May 19 appearance by the acclaimed Los Angeles Guitar Quartet in the acoustically generous ambience of the San Buenaventura Mission.

For the contemporary music component of the festival, head to the Holiday Inn at the late hour of 11 p.m. on May 19. The E.A.R. Unit is, by now, one of the veteran new music ensembles both on the West Coast and in the country. Its Holiday Inn gig will include music by noted percussionist--and Piru resident--John Bergamo and young Mexican composer Bernardo Feldman.

Taft is excited by the prospect of the performance’s strange setting in the revolving Top o’ the Harbor room.

“I may have killed (attendance), to be candid, by insisting that it be late at night,” Taft said, but “it sounds to me like the greatest fun, to go out and hear a concert, overlooking the ocean at 11 p.m. Grab a friend and a glass of wine and let these people transport you.”

The inclusion of contemporary music was a necessary item on the agenda for Taft, who believes that “a festival has to open a window to fresh ideas. Unless you’re concentrating on Renaissance or something as an exclusive focus, new music has to have some sort of access.”

As for his own chamber orchestra, Taft and company will present a program of mostly Spanish music at the Community Presbyterian Church on May 20. This will be the first time the orchestra has performed outside of its regular locale, the Ventura College auditorium.

On the subject of the orchestra’s state of affairs, Taft admitted that the ensemble is “having a tough time. It’s almost like the Andy Warhol statement: You get famous for 15 minutes, and then nobody pays attention to you. Well, we just burst on the scene in the beginning. Then, the hard pull came. We’re finishing out this season with a deficit. For a new organization, it’s tough.”

If the orchestra itself is in the process of soul-searching and facing the adversity common to many cultural organizations at the moment, Taft’s current brainchild seems to be starting life with a bang. “The festival is just the opposite,” Taft noted. “At the moment, it has captured the imagination.”

As Taft knows from his experience in starting up the chamber orchestra, community support and corralled energies are critical to making projects such as this become a reality.

“Nothing happens unless that’s there,” Taft said. “You can’t just dream a dream. My friend says that ideas are cheap. We can all dream of big things. It takes a lot of nuts and bolts effort to make it happen.”

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Details

* WHAT: Ventura Chamber Music Festival.

* WHEN: May 17 to 21.

* HOW MUCH: Prices vary.

* CALL: Tickets and information, 648-3146.

* WHERE: Nicoletti String Quartet, harpist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz and sound sculptures by Robert Lawson, at Ventura Harbor, 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday; Chamber Orchestra Festival Brass at Bella Maggiore Inn, 67 S. California St., 3 p.m. May 18, 19, 20; soprano Cynthiz Munzer, with pianist Armen Guzelimian, at Victorian Rose Wedding Chapel, 896 E. Main St., 8 p.m. May 18; Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at the San Buenaventura Mission, 211 E. Main St., 8 p.m. May 19; California E.A.R. Unit at Top of the Harbor, 450 E. Harbor Blvd., 11 p.m. May 19; Chamber Orchestra Festival Players at Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St., 11 a.m. May 20; Danza Floricanto U.S.A. at Plaza Park, 2 p.m. May 20; Ventura County Chamber Orchestra at Community Presbyterian Church, 1555 Poli St., 8 p.m. May 20; Arco Iris at Pierpont Inn, 550 San Jon Road, 2 p.m. May 21.