A Musical Odyssey at the Getty

Summer reading: You know the routine. You grab something “light” (though it often weighs a ton), a bestseller probably, some Bruce-Willis-movie-to-be, head outdoors with a lawn chair, sun block and sunglasses, maybe a glass of iced tea or chilled white zinfandel in hand, put the brain on hold and turn the pages in a trance. It’s not exactly improving.

The same rules apply to classical music in the hot months. We grab those plump little candies called light classics, head outdoors (though usually at night, sans sun block) and let the music waft over us with the mindless intensity of a Calgon bath.

But the people at the Getty have something different in mind for our musical summer. They intend to make us think. They intend to perform obscure and difficult works that we can’t whistle or tap our feet to. They intend to explore the less-traveled road, where the musical and the visual arts intersect.

Beginning this weekend, the center unveils the Gordon Getty Concerts--a loose-knit series designed to support various exhibitions at the museum. The events may remind Getty-goers of similar summer-only concerts at the old Malibu museum, but the new series will be year round and very specifically themed. It’s also separate from the center’s other performing-arts evenings, which aren’t exhibit-related.

The first installment of the Gordon Getty series--six programs, each performed twice--is titled Ancient Echoes: Music and Dance Evoking Greco-Roman Antiquity. Its artistic director (curator is probably a more accurate term) is Jorge Mester, longtime music director of the Pasadena Symphony.

“Ancient Echoes,” says the accessible Mester, seated in the cool confines of a hastily requisitioned conference room at the Getty, “is meant to comment on and illustrate, to interconnect with the show ‘Beyond Beauty’ [the Getty Center’s inaugural exhibition of ancient art]. It’s a starting point to some kind of contemplation of the Greek ideal of beauty and the higher elevation of the human spirit.

“It’s a way also of linking up with later views of what the Greek ideal was, as seen through the eyes of the Renaissance and also the 20th century, to realize how strong and universal this Greek ideal was.”

Held Saturday and Sunday nights through Aug. 30, Ancient Echoes additionally will feature a program of dances inspired by antiquity and performed by the American Repertory Dance Company; a modern, scholarly re-creation of ancient Greek music; and a complete performance of Handel’s mythological masque “Acis and Galatea.”

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Although much admired for his programming abilities and wide-ranging tastes--he made more than 70 world premiere recordings as music director of the Louisville Orchestra in the ‘60s and ‘70s--Mester, in programming the Getty series, extended himself beyond his normal symphonic orbit. He hit the books--studying the history of Greek art, brushing up on his music history, not summer reading--looking for themes and program ideas.

“The way I thought of it was a little bit in Jungian terms, of collective unconscious. Because these [Greek] ideals are things that one seems to see throughout history as fountainheads of modern civilization, at least in the West.”

In the process, Mester tapped into another collective as well. “I sent e-mail to all the performing organizations and all of the management organizations in California, explaining what the general aims of this particular set of concerts was to be, and [asked] if they had any ideas, to please be in touch. So I got lots of [responses], out of which many of the programs were built.”

Mester avoided making what he calls “facile connections” between the musical and visual arts in his programs. “I don’t think composers set out to write like painters,” he says. “But I think there are certain currents, in certain periods of time, that kind of coalesce through the arts.”

As a case in point, the first program will present the work of composers and poets associated with the 16th-century Florentine Camerata, a group of artists and thinkers who, Mester explains, “undertook specifically to re-create Greek [drama], a combination of rhythm and prosody and music.” Their experiments led directly to the birth of opera.

Experimentation is the focus as well in the second program, a re-creation, on reconstructed instruments, of ancient Greek music by the Oregon-based group De Organographia. “I think it will be interesting as a speculative kind of exercise,” says Mester. “Nobody will ever know what [this music should] sound like. But of course nobody will ever know what Bach sounded like [either].”

With members of the Pasadena Symphony, Mester himself will conduct 20th-century neoclassical works, including such bona fide rarities as Britten’s late cantata “Phaedra” and Hans Werner Henze’s hybrid tone poem/harpsichord concerto “Apollo et Hyazinthus.” Also slated are Stravinsky’s “Apollon Musagete”--in which, Mester says, the composer “very consciously tried to evoke the nobility and the peace of the Greek ideal” but not necessarily its sound--and Erik Satie’s symphonic drama “Socrate”--a static piece that Mester only half-jokingly characterizes as “more like the [Greek] statues themselves” than an evocation.

Named for the composer, philanthropist and recently retired Getty trustee, the Gordon Getty series has no set schedule. “We’ll have concerts that relate to the exhibitions, [only] when there is a really wonderful musical analog,” explains the Getty’s Guy Wheatley, who, along with museum director John Walsh, is overseeing the series.

Future installments planned for this year and next include concerts in tandem with exhibitions of Man Ray’s photography (scheduled for the fall), 15th century Flemish manuscripts and the paintings of little-known Italian Renaissance artist Dosso Dossi. A dance program will accompany a dance photography show. Each set of Gordon Getty Concerts will have its own curator.

Scheduled after regular museum hours, and requiring a separate admission fee, the concerts will allow audiences to view the relevant exhibitions beforehand and at intermission. Purchasing tickets guarantees a parking reservation at the Center.

In a nod to the norm, the summer concerts will be held outdoors in the museum’s courtyard. A sleek, wooden acoustical canopy has been designed for the space by the Getty architects, Richard Meier & Partners. Attendance will be limited to around 500, the exact number depending on the stage setup.

Wheatley and Walsh chose Mester as curator of the inaugural concerts for a number of reasons, including word of mouth. “His name just kept coming up at various points,” Wheatley says.

But mostly they kept their own counsel. “I go to his concerts,” Wheatley explains, “and I think, ‘God, what a great program,’ and during and after the performance I think, ‘Boy, he did that really well.’ It was largely that kind of gut reaction to his work.”

Mester, however, has limited himself to performing in just two programs. By way of explanation, he mentions Musica Angelica, the period-instrument group that will open and close Ancient Echoes.

“They are fantastic at what they do; they are really a premiere organization. My job was to find the best people, and I don’t think I could do a very good job re-creating the things that they do--it’s their meat and potatoes.”

At any rate, Mester points out, he’s comfortable in the impresario role: He did the same thing at the Aspen Music Festival for 22 years.

“What I loved about [programming] the Getty series,” he says, “is that it gave me an opportunity to learn a lot of things that I should have learned in college but I was too busy studying scores to do so. This gave me a well-rounded education.”

And in keeping with the series’ adventurous slant, the seasoned conductor will actually be performing several of the pieces for the first time. The moral? “It’s good,” Mester says, “for one’s brain to be continually expanded.” Even in the summer.

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ANCIENT ECHOES: Music and Dance Evoking Greco-Roman Antiquity, Getty Center courtyard, 1200 Getty Center Drive. Dates: Saturdays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 30. Price: $22, plus $5 parking. Phone: (213) 365-3500.