Making Music Out of Discord : Arts: Pianist/composer uses unpleasant experience on an Oxnard panel as the subject of a satirical work to be performed Sunday.

Inspiration is fickle and fleeting, as many an artist will attest. But it is a rare day indeed when a renowned composer can find musical fodder in the petty bickering of an Oxnard advisory committee.

That is just what happened to Miguel del Aguila, an Oxnard-based pianist/composer whose operas and chamber music have been performed from Vienna to Moscow to New York.

Del Aguila, who was appointed to Oxnard’s Cultural & Fine Arts Commission earlier this year, has written a five-minute musical satire for piano based on his frustrating experience with fellow panelists, whom he describes as, well, less than bright and informed.

He will perform the “Vals Brutal,” or brutal waltz, Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The event will be broadcast live on KUSC 91.5 FM at 4 p.m.

“In February, 1995, I became a member of the city of Oxnard’s Fine Arts Commission, and some of the people I met became a source of inspiration for this waltz,” del Aguila wrote in the program leaflet.

“Describing their talk and actions, Vals Brutal has neither theme nor message. It merely goes on and on in an uncompromising whole-tone mode until it reaches a dramatic climax that turns ridiculous.”

Del Aguila, whose work has also been performed by the Ventura County Symphony, says he is having a lot of fun lampooning his enemies on the commission.

But his adversaries have taken a more serious approach to their bickering skirmish.

Mona Broyles, chairwoman of the arts commission, has written a letter to the City Council asking that the 38-year-old composer be kicked off the advisory panel. The letter was also signed by panel members William M. Simpson and Bernard Leventhal.

“Although Mr. Aguila is undoubtedly an accomplished composer,” Broyles wrote, “the attitude he displayed in our first meeting was disruptive, accusatory, disrespectful, and he exhibited a total lack of ability to function as a team player.”

Broyles, who has been on the seven-member panel for 15 years, said she has been able to successfully work with many different personalities during her tenure. But having to talk to del Aguila was too much to bear.

At del Aguila’s first and only commission meeting, Broyles said, he became boorish and belittled his fellow panelists so ruthlessly that she was still shaking when she got home. Broyles has since refused to schedule another commission meeting.

“He evidently just didn’t like anything or anybody,” Broyles said.

The core of the conflict lies in the dealings of a nonprofit group, Patrons of the Cultural Arts of Oxnard. Although the group has no direct connection to the arts commission, del Aguila questions its grant-giving practices and says he wants to abolish it.

Del Aguila said the group, made up of city officials who accept private donations and dish out the money to the Oxnard arts, is funding out-of-town artists when it was created to fund locals. He said there are shady dealings going on in Oxnard’s art world, and he wants to bring them to light.

“They don’t want to have the meetings until I’m out of there, because they don’t want to answer the questions I’m asking,” del Aguila said. “This is sad, because all I want to do is help the young people in this city, and I have to deal with people with little minds.”

But Andrew C. Voth, Oxnard’s cultural arts officer and treasurer of the patrons group, said del Aguila is misinformed and bitter because he was passed over for a grant in the past. He said the group was created to help Oxnard citizens see the arts and to fund artists who perform in Oxnard, not solely those who live in Oxnard.

Indeed, the group’s by-laws state that its purpose is not necessarily to fund Oxnard artists, but to assist programs at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium and the Carnegie Art Museum. The patrons’ budget is roughly $20,000 a year, Voth said.

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez, who has met with both sides and is attempting to mediate the dispute, said he would like to see the matter settled without removing del Aguila. But he said such a solution may not be workable.

Lopez said he is curious to hear del Aguila’s Oxnard opus, and will surely tune in Sunday.

“I’ll listen in,” he said. “This is hardly politics [as usual]. It’s more sad than anything. I think it’s about personality differences as much as anything else.”