Working in Harmony

In Ventura County, the choral music field has enjoyed robust health, thanks to the efforts of its twin peaks--the Los Robles Master Chorale (formerly the Moorpark Masterworks Chorale) and the Ventura County Master Chorale. This Saturday night, paths will converge when the two groups join forces to present Verdi’s Requiem at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. It should be a sublime spectacle.

In a sense, this is a historic local occasion, a collaboration between groups that have been friendly competitors for years. Los Robles’ director Jim Stemen and the Ventura County Master Chorale’s director Burns Taft decided that a guest conductor should be brought in to preside over the massive chorale. Enter musical mediator Vance George, the renowned choral director who has appeared twice as a guest conductor with Los Robles.

George spoke on the phone last week from his home base in San Francisco, where he had just led the 25th anniversary concert of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which he directs in addition to a handful of guest appearances each season. The San Francisco ensemble is celebrated in the choral world, and George has accepted two Grammies in the past few years for its recordings.

For the Ventura County Verdi performance, George explained that he “provided a carefully marked score, with all my musical ideas and wishes in it, the nuances that aren’t already supplied by Verdi. From that, they rehearsed before I arrived.”

Between the two groups, the performance will boast some 150 voices, a grandeur fitting Verdi’s monumental score. Because of the large orchestra and the work’s scale, George explained, “you need a very large choir, at least 100 voices. Verdi is trying to paint an enormous canvas of the days of judgment. If you use all the forces in the piece, it requires a lot of musicians.

“There are also a lot of passages, though, that are very quiet. There are many special color effects in the music. This was written late in Verdi’s life, after he had been a star of the opera world, and it’s a very mature work.”

Choral music, in Ventura County and the nation, has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years. The growth has been spurred by the formation of Chorus America, an umbrella organization based in Philadelphia that promotes choral music and hosts the syndicated radio program “The First Art.”

Still, George feels that “choruses are unsung heroes in the music world. They’re buying their music, they’re getting their uniforms and rehearsing to get the music ready to perform, and there is not such a huge audience. They deserve more attention and greater accolades.”

* The Los Robles Master Chorale and the Ventura County Master Chorale, performing the Verdi Requiem, Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. $15-$35. (805) 449-2787.

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Auspicious Beginnings: For the New West Symphony, season No. 3, began auspiciously enough last weekend, as the orchestra played to a sold-out house at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Friday, and then at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center on Saturday. It even kicked off the program with a world premiere, Mark Carlson’s “New West: A Celebration,” dedicated to the orchestra.

Interestingly, the real highlight of the show was not so much the orchestra itself--although the ensemble led by music director Boris Brott is sounding perfectly solid. The hero was Arnaldo Cohen, the Brazilian-born pianist who dazzled with his kindness and precision-geared passion a year ago. Here he made a triumphant return, performing two works, plus encores.

Despite a bold performance by the orchestra, Carlson’s work is more pleasing in sound than in design or structure. A fanfare with an identity crisis, it’s an openly eclectic work, mostly relishing Copland-ish harmonies--that American sound of guarded optimism. At times, though, the music veers too close to Hollywood gloss for comfort, and when it slips into a gratuitous Minimalist moment, things seem to unravel.

The evening’s best music came when Cohen was onstage, bringing a sturdy assurance and musical dignity to the Romantic terrain of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor and Liszt’s Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major. Nicely complemented by Brott’s well-honed orchestral forces, Cohen captured the heroic flourish and technical bravura of the Lizst piece. But he also showcased its moments of emotional vulnerability. In short, he made great music of it.

Coaxed by a generous ovation, Cohen returned to the piano to play a spunky tour de force by Miklos Rozsa and a lyrical finale by Lizst.