L.A. Guitar Quartet Bridges Music Worlds

When the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet performed at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on Saturday, it proved to be an adventure in altered perceptions and an object lesson in adaptability. Bach begat Led Zeppelin begat Chilean folk music, all in an evening’s work. Over the course of 15 years together, the quartet--John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant and Andrew York--has shaped up to be a sharply honed and invitingly unconventional ensemble.

For all of its seeming sense of daring, the quartet also has a conservative, crowd-pleasing bent. The “classical” segment of the program consisted of chestnuts revisited: a sturdy four-guitar rendition of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 and Kanengiser’s lusty, pristine arrangement of Bizet’s “Carmen Suite.” This was a concert more about range and bravado than cerebral musings.

On fresher turf, Ian Krouse’s “Labyrinth” takes, as a conceptual springboard, the Led Zeppelin song “Friends.” Rather than using the chamber-rock angle as a novelty, a la the Kronos Quartet’s “Purple Haze,” the composer pays due respects to Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page--one of rock’s great exotic riff-makers--by extending the harmonic language of the original tune.

Extra-classical guitar effects abounded, with the use of picks, slides and open tuning, and a blues chord progression inserted in the middle seemed irrelevant. But, in the main, this was a gutsy attempt to bridge different musical worlds.

In other new music news, York’s percussively charged “Bantu” is a rousing, hope-filled fanfare. Bryan Johanson’s “On All Fours,” written for the group, may have been the brightest surprise of all. An exhilarating little etude, the intricately meshed score brings out the quartet’s muscular machinery and poetry.

As encores, the quartet flexed its adaptive muscle on themes of Count Basie and John Philip Sousa for Americana’s sake.