Return Engagement : Ventura chamber festival is back with 30 events performed by notable lineup.

The Ventura Chamber Music Festival began humbly enough three years ago, as a five-day adjunct to the then-fledgling Ventura Chamber Orchestra’s season. As of 1998, the chamber orchestra has withered, but the festival has taken on a life of its own.

The fourth and most ambitious event so far kicks off next Thursday and includes 30 events running through May 10.

There will be return engagements by popular instrumentalists who appeared here last year including pianist Santiago Rodriguez and guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening, in a tribute to his mentor Andres Segovia.

Even more significant, the respected Mexico City-based string quartet, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, will be the artists-in-residence, presenting four concerts over the length of the festival.

The outside observer might wonder: Isn’t the classical music world in an era of financial belt-tightening--as exemplified by the recent New West Symphony’s decision to cancel an important concert in the eleventh hour?

Of course, a music festival offers a fine way to focus energies and lure public attention, offering a concentrated dose of activity versus the broader forum of a concert season.

In the case of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, it picked up momentum from the start and has kept growing.

On the eve of the first festival, founding artistic director Burns Taft, who also leads the Ventura County Master Chorale and the Ventura Chamber Orchestra, was hesitant about the variety of music on the charter program--and, indeed about the future of the festival.

“We wanted to speak to the whole city and not exclude any one segment,” he said in 1995. “In some ways, it may be a little more diffuse than I would prefer. If it’s a success, we can make it an annual event, and I think it would be more distinctive to have a little narrower focus so we could stand out among all the other festivals in California with an identity.”

At this juncture, the festival has, ironically, carved out an identity as a well-rounded celebration of chamber music, from staples of the repertoire to more obscure new works and influences from outside the usual European sources.

There’s a global-local dialogue involved as well. The respected Oxnard-based composer Miguel del Aguila will have his new work, “Clock,” premiered by the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, with the composer playing piano--one of the festival’s highlights--at the morning concert May 9.

Del Aguila has, like others on the music scene, watched the festival’s dramatic maturation process. “It started pretty big,” del Aguila said, “but many things start big and then, after two years, they are gone. But this has done very well. The marketing and the promotion is done well, and there is good quality music.”

He added, with a sly grin, “With Ventura no longer having a symphony with its name on it anymore, it’s good to have a chamber music festival. I think it’s going to stay for awhile, and I’m really glad to be a part of it.”

Del Aguila, who won the coveted Kennedy Center’s Friedheim Award in 1995 and whose reputation has been steadily expanding in recent years, was a part of the festival two years ago when guitarist Matthew Greif premiered the Oxnard-based composer’s guitar piece, “Tennessee.”

But this year, del Aguila’s role is much more integral to the festival. Not only has his new quintet been commissioned by the festival, but he’ll perform the piano part with the Cuarteto, which has had other del Aguila music in its repertoire.

This will be the first time the composer and the musicians have collaborated onstage.

“Clock” involves unusual techniques and sonorities, relying heavily on pizzicato and harmonics from the strings. Del Aguila explained that the work “explores the mechanical world of ticking clocks. There are a lot of mechanical rhythms. It’s a pretty quiet piece.”

As it happens, this was the first of three quintets, all of which were for a soloist and a string quartet that del Aguila wrote in this busy season for commissions.

A clarinet quintet, “Pacific Serenade,” was written for and recently performed in the Los Angeles-based concert series also called “Pacific Serenades.” He wrote a bassoon quintet to be premiered in Arizona in June.

Taft sees the Cuarteto Latinoamericano’s residency as a sure sign of progress in the festival’s evolution.

“When you get a fine string quartet, which plays an extensive repertoire, just to hear one concert doesn’t really give you a good taste of what they can do.” But it is in a university community, he said, where you will generally “have exposure to artists for more than just an evening, but over the course of a week at least.”

The quartet’s repertoire, Taft noted, “comes from all of the Americas, which is really exciting. Some of the performing groups based primarily in the United States would not have explored that literature.”

The other resident group in the festival is the Ensemble Galilei, an all-female band that leans in the direction of original, Celtic-inflected folk music. Taft said of their lighter fare, “They represent another extension in the life of chamber music.”

As the festival has spread its wings, so have ambitions and organizational structure, through an active board of directors. The city of Ventura has stepped in--particularly such people as Sonia Tower and Elena Brokaw in the Office of Cultural Affairs--and support also has come from a growing roster of corporate sponsors.

“It’s becoming more and more obvious to people in the business world and community civic leaders that an event of this nature brings with it an element of prestige,” said Taft. “I don’t want to sound commercially crass, but if I were a corporation and wanted to get some exposure, I would love to have my name associated with something like this. It’s a very good thing for everybody all the way around.”

He laughed, “I’m talking more like an administrator than a music director now.”

Taft’s own role as a festival conductor takes shape May 2, when his Master Chorale performs “Carmina Burana,” and again May 9 at the Ventura Theater, when the Ventura Chamber Music Festival Orchestra performs a program including Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (with Santiago Rodriguez as soloist), and Benjamin Britten. Opening that program will be “Ash,” by the dynamic young composer Michael Torke.

Torke’s music, which follows its own post-minimalist language, was the most memorable part of last year’s orchestral concert. He could be called a mascot composer of the festival.

“It has a very limited harmonic vocabulary,” Taft said of this year’s Torke piece, “but it has a motivic development that, I swear, makes it seem like he’s a third cousin of Beethoven. He’s endlessly inventive. Every page comes up and you think, ‘I’ve heard that before,’ but then I haven’t heard that before. That’s the high point of the festival for me--getting to learn a new score by Torke.”

In looking at the festival’s future, Taft sees grand things on the horizon, and he entertains ideas like bringing a composer such as Torke in for a residency or promoting the building of a mid-size festival hall, which would alleviate a current problem: a lack of suitably scaled venues.

Taft said he and the board want the festival to “have significance beyond a local event.” They would like it to attract visitors from throughout the world, and they have set high goals to raise the resources to enable that to happen.

“We also want to have in it a strong educational component. I think of the Aspen Festival as largely a teaching festival, a fabulous retreat for students, artists and teachers to intermingle.”

Intermingling, of people and music, is the whole idea of a good festival. And this one is getting its act together.

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BE THERE

Opening Gala, “An Evening in Shangri-La,” 6 p.m. April 30 at Spa Ojai, Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, 705 Country Club Road. Performance by Bali & Beyond and a dance band. Tickets are $100.

“Tea and Trumpets,” with Ventura Chamber Orchestra Festival Trombones, at 3 p.m. May 1, Nona’s Courtyard Cafe, Bella Maggiore Inn, 67 S. California St., Ventura. Tickets are $36.

“Musical Mosaic,” with Cuarteto Latinoamericano, at 8 p.m. May 1, San Buenaventura Mission, 211 E. Main St., Ventura. Tickets are $32. “Violin Virtuoso,” with violinist Corey Cerovsek and pianist Katja Cerovsek, at 4 p.m. May 2, Community Presbyterian Church, 1555 Poli St., Ventura. Tickets are $19 and $24.

“Carmina Burana,” Ventura Master Chorale, Ventura Chamber Orchestra Percussion and the Ventura Master Chorale Children’s Concert Choir, at 8 p.m. May 2, Our Lady of the Assumption Church, 3175 Telegraph Road, Ventura. Tickets are $19.

“The Four Seasons,” Ventura Chamber Orchestra Festival Strings and violin soloist Corey Cerovsek, at 3 p.m. May 3, Community Presbyterian Church, 1555 Poli St., Ventura. Tickets are $19 and $24. “Golden Flute,” with flutist Carol Lockhart and pianist Lisa Sylvester, at 3:30 p.m. May 6, First United Methodist Church, 1338 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura. Tickets are $9 and $19.

“Celtic Dance Celebration,” with Ensemble Galilei and the Pure Joy Moving Company, at 7 p.m. May 6, Masonic Temple, 482 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura. Tickets are $9 and $19.

“Tea and Trumpets,” with Ventura Chamber Orchestra Festival Trombones, at 3 p.m. May 7, Nona’s Courtyard Cafe, Bella Maggiore Inn, 67 S. California St., Ventura. Tickets are $36.

“Portrait of a Romantic,” with pianist Santiago Rodriguez, at 7:30 p.m. May 7, Church of Religious Science, 101 S. Laurel St., Ventura. Tickets are $25.

“Coffeehouse Blends,” with guitarist Matthew Greif and bassist Randy Tico, at 1 p.m. May 8 and 9, Daily Grind Coffee House, 607 E. Main St., Ventura. Free.

“The Mystic and the Muse: Six Women and Six Centuries of Music,” with Ensemble Galilei, at 8 p.m. May 8, San Buenaventura Mission, 211 E. Main St., Ventura. Tickets are $32.

“Quintessential Quintet,” with Cuarteto Latinoamericano and soloist Miguel del Aguila (performing the world premiere of del Aguila’s “Clock”), at 10 a.m. May 9, Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St., Ventura. Tickets are $24.

“Beethoven’s Magnificent 4th,” Ventura Chamber Music Festival Orchestra, performing Torke, Barber and Beethoven, with pianist Santiago Rodriguez and soprano Cynthia Clayton, at 8 p.m. May 9, Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura. Tickets are $24 and $34.

“Metropolitan Opera Competition Winners,” with soprano Cynthia Clayton, baritone Malcolm MacKenzie and pianist Vickie Kirsch, at 11 a.m. May 10, Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St., Ventura. Tickets are $20.

“Segovia Tribute,” with guitarist Christopher Parkening, at 3 p.m. May 10, Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura. Tickets are $34 and $39.

For tickets to any of the above events, call (805) 648-3146 or toll free from outside Ventura County: (888) 882-VCMF.