EAR Unit Has Fun at Its Season Finale

The California EAR Unit is just the kind of fun-loving serious ensemble whose members can get away with appearing onstage in T-shirts bearing their first names, a la the Mouseketeers, as they did Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Why? Because they have the necessary musical integrity.

The finale of the ensemble’s residency concerts this season at LACMA opened boldly, with Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s compelling “Zilver,” an eloquent riff maze in which the composer pushes minimalism to a new plane of personalized expression, acknowledging the idiom’s pop element as well as its extremism. It is keenly suited to the EAR Unit, for whom it was written, with the percussion and piano serving as an exoskeleton embracing the warmer sustaining instruments.

Unit cellist Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick ennobled Joan La Barbara’s “A Trail of Indeterminate Light,” an effectively ethereal solo piece for cello with voice. The music of Paul Dresher, such as the bittersweet trio piece “Double Ikat” heard here, often contains moments of interest and promising ideas while also seeming as if there’s no there there. “Ikat” is a pleasantly aimless nod to Lou Harrison’s nod to Indonesian music.

One clear highlight was a semi-world premiere, a revision of noted composer Alvin Curran’s choral piece “When My Feet Felt the Path That My Eyes Could Not See.” Stately in an odd, rustic way, it cast a spotlight on Arthur Jarvinen’s harmonica and Amy Knoles’ percussion coloration.

Befitting the T-shirt effect, the Unit closed on a rock-like, raucous note, with James Sellars’ aptly named “Go.” It did, with a fast and nervous propulsion.

Wednesday’s musical bonus, laced with sadness, was the addition two brief “overnight pieces” by Mel Powell, the influential composer, new music champion and CalArts dean and professor who recently died.

As heard in a piece written for flutist Dorothy Stone and “Amy Ability,” for the nimble Knoles, Powell harnessed the power of compacted energy, investing intrigue, vitality and all-important detail into his rich, jazz-inflected post-serialist language. His music lives.