More of Same Means Growth on Music Scene : Familiar performers and programs are on tap in the new year, as well as some interesting developments in the margins.

Looking at the roster of things to come in jazz and classical music in Ventura County, we find a continuation of organizations and programs that have been building over the last few years. But more of the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you view it in evolutionary terms.

Looming over the landscape still is the cultural palace known as the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. The ink is still wet on the New West Symphony, working through its stormy birth and suffering residual grumbling over the demise of the Ventura County Symphony and the Conejo Symphony. Consolidation can be a double-edged sword, but, as always, we hope for the greater cultural good.

The New West’s inaugural season, taking place on consecutive nights at the Civic Arts Plaza and the Oxnard Civic Auditorium, includes a Romantic program with guest pianist Daniel Pollack on Feb. 9 and 10, a Beethoven program with pianist Anton Kuerti on April 12 and 13, a production of “La Traviata,” led by San Jose Opera’s Daniel Helfgot on March 15 and 16, and a concerto extravaganza, with cellist Dennis Brott and violinist Kathleen Winkler, on May 17 and 18. A special “Stars of Tomorrow” concert, featuring young musicians from the county, will take place Jan. 20.

More interesting developments are taking place in the margins. Take, for instance, the “Musics Alive!” series of contemporary-cum-world music concerts, now in its third season under the guidance of Boris Brott and Charles McDermott. This spring’s concerts, at Ventura City Hall, focus on Mexican music on Feb. 25, African music on March 31, and Polynesian music on April 28.

The Santa Barbara-based Bach Camerata will present a compact and ambitious six-concert season, between Feb. 1 and April 14, in Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, Ventura City Hall and the Civic Arts Plaza’s Forum Theatre, an acoustically inspired little jewel of a space. The season ranges from the complete Brandenburg Concerti of Bach to open, Messiaen’s challenging “Quartet for the End of Time,” and a reprise of Miguel Del Aguila’s Wind Quintet No. 2, which the Camerata performed at the Kennedy Center in October at the awards ceremony for the Freidheim Competition.

Not all cultural roads lead to Thousand Oaks these days. This spring, Ventura will have access to a healthy dose of chamber music, presented under the auspices of the Ventura County Chamber Orchestra. The next Chamber Orchestra concert, on Feb. 17 at the Ventura College Theater, will be guest-conducted by Frank Salazar, who, as founding conductor of the Ventura County Symphony, played a crucial role in developing local classical music awareness.

Regular conductor Burns Taft returns to the helm on May 4, when he leads both the Chamber Orchestra and the Ventura County Master Chorale in Bach’s grand Mass in B Minor, at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium.

More intimate chamber concerts also dot the calendar. On Jan. 14, harpist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz performs as part of the Ventura City Hall Sunday afternoon concert series, followed by a recital by pianist Julia Green on Feb. 4. The Amici Trio performs at the Ventura Mission on March 10. Chamber Music has its long weekend in the sun May 8-12, when the second annual Ventura Chamber Music Festival lands in various venues around Ventura. The hosting Chamber Orchestra performs at the Community Presbyterian Church on May 11.

There is a buzz, too, on the choral music front. The Ojai Camerata, now in its fifth year, has three concerts left in its season, all at the Ojai Presbyterian Church. The Jan. 20 concert is a French-bred program featuring Faure, Poulenc and Ravel, while the March 9 concert, titled “The Child Within,” focuses on repertoire with links to children. On May 18, the season closes with a program called “Gloriae!” devoted to liturgical music of the ages, and including a premiere by Santa Barbara-based composer Emma Lou Diemer.

Meanwhile, back at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza’s Auditorium, the 18-year-old Las Robles Master Chorale continues its season on March 3 with Vaughn Williams’ Mass in G Minor. On April 28, they turn to Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” with guest conductor Vance George and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. And on June 8, they close with a program of opera snippets.

On The Jazz Front: Locally, some of the finest jazz performances in recent years have taken place at the Wheeler Hot Springs restaurant up Maricopa Highway, above Ojai. The chance to hear jazz by the likes of Joe Henderson, Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell and many others in an intimate non-urban setting, and in the afterglow of a sumptuous prix fixe meal, qualifies as one of the county’s cherished indigenous commodities.

Noble jazz programming, though, is always fragile--more so than classical music, with its infrastructure of grants and patrons. But the dinner-concert series seems by now to be running on its own internal momentum.

Wheeler’s intrepid musical coordinator Lanny Kaufer explained that the periodic jazz concert series will continue “as long as we can keep getting people up here. It seems like just when I think there’s nothing on the horizon, someone calls up and says, ‘Hey are you interested in so-and-so?’ I keep putting out feelers every time I talk to someone.”

Actually, the only dinner-concert officially on the books at press time is one with a local/global slant--a reunion of pianist Roger Kellaway, who has adopted Ojai as his hometown, and sax player Tom Scott, who played with Kellaway in the seminal pop-jazz group, the L.A. Express 20 years ago. Original Express drummer John Guerin will also be on hand when the reunion takes place, on Feb. 25.

A new twist on the Wheeler schedule is a trial run of dining/dancing evenings. Starting on Jan. 19, the Elliott-Calire Band, featuring trumpeter Jeff Elliott and keyboardist Jim Calire, will provide grist for the dancing mill. For now, the plan is to book the group once a month. “If it catches on, we’ll do it more often,” Kaufer said.

“This should be one of the better dance bands around, for swing dancing and ballroom dancing. I guess you could call it R & B and danceable jazz. There aren’t many options for a nice place for couples to go out dancing. There are the bars, and then the hotels sometimes have a lounge pianist, but it’s rare to find a dance band that people my age would want to dance to,” the fortysomething Kaufer said.

Meanwhile, down at 66 California in old town Ventura, the jazz pulse carries on, with greater regularity than any other venue in town. A roster of pianists keeps the baby grand warm nightly, and weekends are held down by bassist Henry Franklin’s trio, with regular drummer Chuck Flores and a rotating cast of pianists.

Every Saturday night, a special guest shows up to change the sonic scenery. On Saturday, it will be vocalist Jeannie Tatum; on Jan. 13, the versatile multi-instrumental windman Ray Pizzi plays; on Jan. 27, the stage belongs to jazz-soul urgings of Billy Mitchell and John Bolivar.

On an as-yet unspecified Sunday in February, there will be a benefit for keyboardist Les McCann, still recovering--physically and fiscally--from a stroke last year. McCann will perform, along with others, for a distinctly good cause.

The Ventura Theatre has been known to get in on the jazz act as well, though usually leaning toward the breezy, friendly fire of fusion. On Feb. 3, though, Latin-jazz hero Poncho Sanchez will play at the theater. On Jan. 26, a sturdy blast of pop-jazz will be delivered to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza by David Benoit, with Strunz and Farah opening.

From this perspective, the music calendar in 1996 seems to be a rarely-a-dull-moment proposition.

Josef Woodard is an avowed cultural omnivore who covers art and music.