‘Night of Trios’ Promises to Bend Jazz Conventions

Last fall, Ventura’s stalwart new-music maker and presenter, Jeff Kaiser, announced a return to public life after a self-imposed hiatus. He staged his own ambitious Double Quartet to a full house, as the kickoff of a new-music concert series in town, and this Saturday, the series continues with “The Night of the Trios.” Trios led by Vinnie Golia and Brad Dutz will offer a window into a lively creative fringe of the Los Angeles music scene.

Golia, who also appeared in Ventura as part of Kaiser’s concert, is no stranger to jazz and new-music circles. The multi-instrumental reed player has been a beacon of improvisational zeal for 20-odd years, having run his label Nine Winds since 1977 and performed around the world.

If less widely known, Dutz too has enjoyed increasing attention. While a mainstay in the studio scene, in which he is gainfully employed as an accomplished percussionist, Dutz has always maintained an active creative agenda. As a player and composer, he’s one of the voices on the West Coast deserving of wider recognition.

“Making Ice,” released last year by the Truemedia label from Cleveland, is the latest entry in Dutz’s sizable catalog of CDs, mostly recorded on the do-it-yourself plan and often released on Golia’s Nine Winds label. This latest release shows a greater refinement of musicality than previous efforts. His beds of undulating, tuned percussion parts and hand drums are fleshed out by such guests as reed player Kim Richmond, trumpeter John Fumo, bassist/tuba player Trey Henry and violinist Jeff Gauthier.

Experimental vocalist Kaoru, Dutz’s wife, sings and speechifies (e.g., “Please dispose of used smiles in a wastebasket. . .”) over Dutz’s hypnotic marimba and frame-drum textures on the spousal duet “It’s Only a Guess.” She is also the subject of the bittersweet “Kaoru, a Love Ballad,” played by Dutz on overdubbed vibraphone parts.

As always, Dutz emerges here as a serious musician with an appreciation of the quirky factor and a nimble way of mixing harmonies and genres that is sometimes reminiscent of Frank Zappa. Levity rears its head in Dutz’s work, as evidenced by “I Have Teeth and You Don’t” and “There Is a Gorilla on My Head.” But both tunes blend pensive and sophisticated qualities. In this music, humor is leavened by intellectual probing.

Although Dutz’s percussion approach touches on music from other cultures, most often the music checks in with a jazz tradition, if in peculiar ways. “Tribute to Don Cherry” bows in homage to the late trumpeter, who melded jazz and world music. Dutz’s impressive piece “Borfin” is a swinging, angular chart for an unorthodox little big band, rendered unusual by the lack of a drum set (Dutz fuels the swing on a ride cymbal and congas), and a solo by Charles Fernandez on bassoon, hardly a typical tool in the service of jazz.

Then again, Dutz, as a player and a leader, has also thrived off to the side of jazz. He is wont to mix up instruments in unexpected ways: This Saturday, he’ll play an array of percussion devices alongside saxophonist Richmond and bassist Jeff Hamilton. For his part, Golia will be the one-man woodwind contingent, with drummer Alex Cline and bassist Mike Elizando.

It promises to be a hot night, full of sounds alternately cathartic, anarchic and melodic. In short: new music, jazz division.

* “The Night of the Trios, featuring the Vinnie Golia Trio and the Brad Dutz Trio,” Saturday at 8 at Ventura City Hall, 500 Poli St. in Ventura. Tickets are $6.

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Alive Again: As musical venues in the county go, the GTE California headquarters in Thousand Oaks may be the hardest to find, and also one of the most worthy to seek out. Starting last season, the venturesome chamber/world music series known as “Musics Alive!”, sponsored by the New West Symphony, landed in the sprawling, acoustically kind atrium of this corporate site, to good effect.

Focusing on the interaction of contemporary classical music and musical inspirations from other, not necessarily Western, global corners, the series is modest--only three programs this season. But in some ways, it’s more ambitious than the regular New West Symphony series. Sunday, the geographical starting point was Japan, and the musical goods, from both Western and Eastern perspectives, were generally resplendent.

Listeners were greeted with the rhythmic thrust and precision of the three members representing the Taiko Center of Los Angeles, led by the Rev. Tom Kurai. The revered Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who died last year, was represented by his 1980 chamber piece “Rain Spell,” a pastiche of instrumental colors and gestures with a floating sense of time and structure.

Stravinsky’s “Three Japanese Lyrics,” composed in the same year as “Rite of Spring,” is a brief but substantial setting of short anonymous poems, sung with bold tone and focused expressivity by soprano Jessica Tivens. The work, graced by Stravinsky’s delicious, tart harmonies and vivid rhythmic design, was sharply conducted by the Pasadena Symphony’s Jorge Mester, filling in on short notice for the absent Boris Brott.

The broad-minded and inventive koto player Miya Masaoka was the special guest: As the saying goes, she stole the show. Her own solo koto composition “Unearthed/Unbound” introduced her innovative touch to a centuries-old, tradition-bound instrument, alternately suggesting delta blues guitar effects, Japanese conventions and techniques of her own devising.

Masaoka also seized the spotlight in Henry Cowell’s Concerto for Koto and Orchestra, No. 2, an agreeable experiment in East-meets-West writing. The variant influences don’t always make for a seamless accord, but the generosity of spirit in the score wins us over. Masaoka’s own rich, surprising cadenzas proved as interesting as the score they were attached to.

This fifth annual series, which concludes with “Indonesia Alive!” featuring Lou Harrison at the Forum Theatre on April 5, continues to impress.