CalArts’ Improv Is Not Quite Gillespie

Opening the 10-day 1998 CalArts Spring Music Festival on Thursday with an event devoted to improvisation was a good idea. A multistylistic look at some of the ways in which improvisatory approaches have invigorated contemporary music provided an opportunity to display the eclectic, open-minded qualities of the institution’s creative attitudes.

Calling it the Dizzy Gillespie Chair Concert, however, was stretching matters a bit. Although two of the primary artists, trombonist George Lewis and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, have convincing jazz credentials, the program’s works only rarely referred to the manner of improvisation that would have been familiar to the legendary jazz trumpeter. Still, when they did, they produced some of the most communicative moments of the evening.

Viewed from a broader perspective, the music, with its cross-disciplinary, genre-bashing blendings, was intriguing--sometimes more so conceptually than in its execution. The opening work, selections from “Zones of Influence,” performed by its composer, festival director and head of the CalArts music department David Rosenboom, with percussionists William Winant and Trichy Sankaran, combined violin, piano and various percussion instruments with computer-processed sound. Fascinating from an aural point of view--particularly in the timbres generated by Rosenboom’s violin--it was most effective as a performance when Sankaran had the opportunity to play his mridangam drum in interactive fashion with the computerized sound.

Lewis’ Improvisers Ensemble of UC San Diego, making its first concert appearance, was reminiscent of some of the free jazz ensembles of the ‘60s. Lewis led by spontaneously directing the 16-piece group through a series of precomposed musical fragments alternating and blending with individual soloing. Here, too, however, the most convincing moments came with an emphasis on rhythm, when Lewis triggered a surging blues, topping it with his own roaring, plunger-muted trombone choruses.

Smith, with his ensemble N’Da Kulture and several guest artists, presented segments from his “Noh; Heart Reflections; The Sea Battle at Dannoura,” based on a 13th century Japanese work. Its dramatic qualities--best represented in readings by William Roper (who also played tuba) and Harumi Makino Smith--never quite came to full fruition in this staging. And, in what by now seemed to be a pattern, Smith’s program wound up with a rhythmic piece, “Taslim,” tailored to the jazz skills of the fine improvisers in his ensemble.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Spring Music Festival will return to the high visibility in the contemporary music world it possessed in the mid-’80s. The appearance of composers Alvin Lucier and Robert Ashley on Monday and Tuesday should generate some attention beyond the CalArts campus. But for this program, at least, the festival remained a parochial event, with an audience largely populated with students--many of whom departed from the lengthy concert prior to the final set by Smith.

* CalArts Spring Music Festival continues through March 21, CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valenica (and other venues). Admission varies. (818) 362-2315.