EAR Unit Performs Unusual ‘Dreamtime’

Composer Virko Baley may have Western ties, being based in Las Vegas and having studied in Los Angeles, but his Ukrainian roots run deep. That much was clear Monday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, when his concert-length piece “Dreamtime” was given its Los Angeles premiere by the California EAR Unit, which commissioned the work and premiered it in New York last March.

Elements in the music--a certain old but modern language, rhythmic fervor and a rustic, folk music air--align his music with such recently popular composers as Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki, who represent a fashionable new Eastern Bloc, musically speaking.

Baley’s piece is, as the title suggests, somewhat dreamy, even impressionistic, ambiguous in structure and tonality, but also forceful and charismatic in its own way.

Though the piece kicks off with agitated rhythmic traffic and knotty lines, it soon settles into brooding. Over its 19 smoothly woven sections, “Dreamtime” continues to alternate between strict, precisely defined time and free-floating rubato passages.

Baley beautifully complements the group’s strengths, as a unit and as a collection of gifted individuals. Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick’s solo cello passages were suitably gutsy yet plaintive.

Violinist Robin Lorentz at one point fiddled with Bartokian abandon, interspersing vocal utterances. Later, she played a harsh melody, at cross-tonal purposes over hymn-like chords in the ensemble, followed by Dorothy Stone’s madly skittering flute part.

Unusual sounds popped up, as well: the sweet whine of fingers on wetted wine glasses, the sudden twang of Jew’s harps and the exotic percolations of Amy Knoles’ congas. The EAR Unit was on top of its game.

As chamber music goes, Baley’s opus is grand--at 76 minutes, roughly the maximum length of a CD--but it never seems ponderous or self-consciously epic. “Dreamtime” lays easily on the ear and the mind, without ever falling into a lull. In short, an intuitive, eventful evening, and work.