Let There Be ‘City Lights’

Had things gone as originally planned, symphony-goers would have encountered a fount of Russian angst and seminal cinema last week in Thousand Oaks. As it turned out, instead of a performance of Shostakovich’s score to Eisenstein’s silent film classic “Battleship Potemkin,” the New West Symphony substituted the lighter fare of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights.”

The upshot: pure joy, and a lesson in the beauties of simplicity and virtuosic rhythm. Maestro Boris Brott led the orchestra gamely from the pit in front of the stage, performing the score written by Chaplin himself--and orchestrated by Arthur Johnson--for the film that is arguably his masterpiece. A good time was had by all. Angst will have to wait.

The program, first done at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza last week, will be repeated tonight at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. It’s a bit jarring at first to hear the contrasting effects of film, inherently a canned, predetermined medium, and an orchestra, which is a breathing, three-dimensional organism.

Nothing goes wrong with film, short of projection problems. An orchestra is live, human, and therefore fallible. A few miscues and overly pregnant pauses from the pit last Thursday didn’t detract from the overall strength of the performance. If anything, the wrinkles in the fabric reminded us of the grand real-time experiment at hand.

As noted in David Robinson’s program notes, Chaplin’s genius was, on a fundamental level, linked to music. His comedy was all about choreography and a keen sense of rhythm, and his narrative themes convey a fairytale-like, romantic sense of humanity. It’s not surprising, then, that his musical score follows a similar course, with melodic luster and bouncing rhythms, beautifully underscoring the flow of imagery.

“City Lights,” like most Chaplin films, verges on melodrama but gets away with it, and ends up being poignant instead of cloying. The tramp cavorts with a drunken man of means, and falls in love with a poor blind woman selling flowers for sustenance. The plot leads to requisite slapstick set pieces and such plot devices as an eye operation to cure the heroine’s affliction and a sacrificial jail sentence.

In the end, of course, love does out. As lovers meet for the first time visually, Chaplin’s score surges into an uplifting finale, yet ultimately landing on a minor chord. Such is the bittersweet nature of Chaplin’s work, in which its naivete and buoyancy are flecked with nuances of sadness.

The merger of orchestras and film screening is an all-too-rare but inspiring phenomenon, especially given Ventura County’s relationship to Hollywood, as a countrified next-door neighbor. The New West is to be commended for venturing into the field--the first, one hopes, of many such programs.

* New West Symphony, performing the orchestral score to “City Lights,” tonight at 8 p.m. at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Road. Tickets are $12-$55; 497-5800.

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JAZZ R.I.P.: Jerry Garcia is dead, and long may he live. The Grateful Dead has had a splintered and multifaceted afterlife in the wake of Garcia’s passing, as musicians and the band’s legion of fans seem to be exploring the legacy through different means and musical tributes.

One such tribute band goes by the cheeky name of Jazz Is Dead. Grateful Dead repertoire is its thing, but you can be sure it takes the material in some surprising directions, given the personalities in this all-star band, which has released an album on the Zebra label.

The lineup: keyboardist T Lavitz, whose bandography includes the Dixie Dregs and Widespread Panic; drummer Billy Cobham, a veteran of the proto-fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra and a player, along with the Dead’s Bob Weir, with Bobby and the Midnites; bassist Alphonso Johnson also played with Bobby and the Midnites, as well as with an early incarnation of the jazz band Weather Report; and Jimmy Herring is a guitarist who played with Aquarium Rescue Unit.

Together, they assert new ways in which the Dead lives.

* Jazz Is Dead, tonight at 8 at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St. in Ventura. Tickets are $22; 653-0721.

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S.B. RUNDOWN: It’s a good week for music from off the beaten path in the greater Santa Barbara area. Tonight, UCSB professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin’s Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) gives a rare public performance at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall.

The following night in the same hall, the Ensemble for Contemporary Music gives its final concert of the season, performing music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Wayne Peterson, Steve Reich and others.

The Music Academy of the West doesn’t officially open its season until summer, but there’s a special concert featuring Music Academy alumni Friday.

“Gianna and Friends” is centered on cellist Gianni Abondolo, who will feature her own compositions along with a program including music of Kodaly, Debussy and Martinu.

Also performing will be her brother, bassist Nico Abondolo, also a faculty member at the academy; alumni Josefina Vergara, violinist, and Matthew Talmage, percussionist; as well as Aloke Dutta on tabla and Luca Brandoli on udu and djembe.

* CREATE concert, tonight at 8 at UCSB’s Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. Free; (805) 893-3230.

* Ensemble for Contemporary Music, Friday at 8 p.m. at UCSB’s Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. $5; (805) 893-3230.

* “Gianna and Friends,” Friday at 8 p.m. in Lehmann Hall at the Music Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Road in Santa Barbara. $10 and $15; (805) 969-4726.