VENTURA COUNTY WEEKEND : SOUNDS : Review of ’95 Reveals Some Good Beginnings : Civic Arts Plaza acted as a catalyst for some progress in music, though the programming has been fairly conservative.

Hindsight, that hobgoblin of little and large minds, comes to roost around this time of year, for columnists and normal humans alike. The very act of tossing away one densely scrawled calendar and putting up a relatively clean one inspires a look backward to gain perspective in the rearview.

In the field of music around Ventura County, it has been a strange trip. Significantly, 1995 was the first fully operational year for the freeway-close culture palace, the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Its influence was simultaneously potent--a spur to action for such local organizations as the Los Robles Master Chorale, eager to use the showcase facility--and mild, in terms of generally conservative concert programming.

And 1995 was the year that two orchestras gave their lives in order to facilitate a new symphonic order. More to the point, the Ventura County Symphony and the Conejo Symphony--both thirty-something orchestras--dissolved and evolved into the New West Symphony, now in the midst of its inaugural season at both the Civic Arts Plaza and the Oxnard Civic.

At the helm is the enterprising and talented Boris Brott, who hails from Hamilton, Ontario, but travels the globe and commutes here to attend to the season.

Birthing the New West Symphony has not been painless. Brott said, “It’s quite serious when you decide to terminate the existence of an orchestra with a 30-year history. That part of it did not thrill me. On the other hand, the potential to put the orchestra on a much sounder footing and therefore do the kind of program ventures that I wanted--it just seemed like a dream come true.”

The dream took a sour turn last summer. Brott’s decision to audition all the musicians for the new orchestra fostered discord among veterans of the previous orchestras, and the New West found itself placed on the International Unfair List of the American Federation of Musicians union, a kiss of--if not death, then deadly stasis. A compromise was struck and the show has gone on, for the time being.

In fact, some of the biggest and most promising news came in small, substantial packages. Lovers of chamber music were never more tempted with possibilities. The first annual Ventura Chamber Music Festival, put on in part by the organizers of the Ventura County Chamber Orchestra, proved successful, and plans are underway for this spring’s fete.

The Ventura County Symphony’s splendid “Musics Alive” offered its invigorating spin on world and contemporary music--and the link thereof. “Musics Alive” took advantage of the acoustically fine Forum Theatre in the Civic Arts Plaza, as did the Bach Camerata, in its juicy spring series.

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As always, the ne plus ultra of the county’s cultural scene comes just after the official concert seasons ends, with the half-century-old Ojai Festival. Last summer’s festival hosted a return visit from Kent Nagano, with his Lyon Opera Orchestra in tow. It proved to be a fulfilling weekend of things mostly French, from Ravel to Boulez (next year’s music director).

On the Ventura County composer front, John Biggs had the distinction of presenting the opening work on the opening program of the New West Symphony in October, his “Ballad of William Sycamore.” A veteran independent composer, Biggs is at once resourceful and gifted. As he said, “I’ve always had a performance in mind. Without that, it’s like a photographer who takes shots but then doesn’t have a dark room.”

The young Uruguayan-born and Oxnard-based composer Miguel del Aguila has kept very busy, on the regional scene and beyond. His amicably wild “Caribbean Bacchanal” was performed both on two pianos at Ventura College and in orchestral arrangement by the Santa Barbara Symphony (conducted, incidentally, by Uruguayan Gisele Ben Dor). Del Aguila’s “Back in Time” will be played by the New West Symphony on Feb. 9 and 10.

Meanwhile, del Aguila’s Wind Concerto No. 2, premiered by the Bach Camerata last winter, was a finalist for the Kennedy Center Friedheim award. On a sharper, local note, del Aguila also penned the piece “Vals Brutal,” fueled by the frustration he felt during his brief, combative tenure on the Culture and Fine Arts Commission in Oxnard.

Guerrilla composer, trumpeter and situationist Jeff Kaiser continued apace. Each year of the ‘90s, Kaiser has put his energies into a major project, usually musical theater works built from eclectic mixtures of electro-acoustic sounds and arcane texts. This was the year Kaiser finally released his first CD, called “Excerpts from The Prince,” on the Los Angeles-based Burnt Tongue label.

The work, based on Machiavelli’s treatise, began its life as a theatrical collaboration with Taylor Kasch, and the two performed a stripped-down version at Ventura City Hall this fall. But the CD artifact is an impressive entity all its own, a darkly impressionistic sonic saga.

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In other CD news, Oxnard’s Estrada Brothers, the longtime keepers of the Latin-jazz flame, released their acclaimed debut album, “About Time,” on their own Rumba Jazz label. Led by vibist Ruben Estrada, the group also has a dynamic musical and motivational presence in percussionist Raul Rico Jr.

Jazz-wise, the year started out boldly, and ended humbly. The short-lived Ventura jazz club Friends and Strangers boasted good intentions and a nice venue--if off the beaten path. 66 California remains the jazz hub in town, with regular programming and a constant roster of special guests on Saturday nights.

Ojai’s idyllic Wheeler Hot Springs is a great place to hear pianists the likes of Milcho Leviev and Cecilia Coleman while dining, or to catch the continuing dinner-concert series. This year, the series included James Williams, Oscar Brown Jr., the Ray Brown Trio, Charlie Byrd, and Anne and Robben Ford.

We even caught wind of the Southern Californian jazz avant-garde, when reed player Vinnie Golia and boy wonder guitarist Nils Cline came to concertize at Ventura City Hall in the spring. Not at all bad for a beach town.

It may be culturally correct to let the official resident conductor Boris Brott have the last word here. In an interview before the New West’s debut concert, Brott noted, “you know the Chinese curse, ‘may you live in interesting times.’ These certainly are interesting times.”