Intimate Charms

Tickets went on sale this week for the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary with concerts around Ventura from April 29 through May 9. The festival has become one of the keynote features of Ventura’s cultural calendar in the past few years, bringing world-class music to town and offering the kind of focused attention that festivals bring, while championing the intimate charms of chamber music.

This year’s highlights include: appearances by the Romero Guitar Duo, featuring two of the younger members of the grand family of classical guitar; the noted a cappella group Chanticleer; the Muir and Shanghai quartets; and a residency by the dazzling young violinist Cory Cerovsek, who wowed listeners in last year’s festival. Among other things, Cerovsek will offer the world premiere of a new chamber orchestra work by Miguel del Aguila.

There will also be a performance, in the Community Presbyterian Church, of Olivier Messiaen’s landmark work, “Quartet for the End of Time,” written while he was a prisoner in a World War II camp.

All in all, the festival looks to be another well-rounded musical roster. For a free festival brochure, call 648-3146.

THE FINNISH ARE COMING: Speaking of looking forward to annual festivals, the Ojai Festival has announced its program for this year’s model, and the accent is on things Finnish. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s coveted music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, is the architect behind the Ojai Fest this year, and he has taken the opportunity to focus on music from his native Finland.

The composer-in-residence will be Salonen’s peer, Magnus Lindberg. The Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen will appear, as will the irreverent Finnish group the Toimii Ensemble. From the extra-Finnish corner, renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw will give a recital. Salonen himself will appear both as music director and composer, with a world premiere of his “Sappho Fragments.”

The internationally noted festival expands from a weekend-long event to a five-day program this year, from June 2 through 6. Mark those calendars now.

CAMPY MUSICAL AUDACITY: No one would dare expect poker-faced sobriety from a group called Elvis Schoenberg’s Orchestre Surreal. And, sure enough, this raucous and smart Los Angeles-based group is out to tweak musical genres and wreak some cultural havoc. They’ll no doubt succeed in that task when they arrive at SOhOin Santa Barbara on Sunday.

Their recent CD, “Air Surreal” (on the AllegroNonTroppo label), is a wild, cheeky, but musically fortified trip, with renditions of “Purple Haze,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Satisfaction” and with plenty of clever quotations from jazz and classical repertoires. Snippets of Ravel and Rossini are roped into intricate and witty arrangements for live musicians--with no sampling or sequencing, according to the liner notes.

True to their name--Elvis Presley hybridized with 12-tone pioneer Arnold Schoenberg--the band mixes sophistication and sarcastic rock effects in elaborate arrangements of moldy oldies with touches of Frank Zappa’s wit and Spike Jones’ humor.

DETAILS

Elvis Schoenberg’s Orchestre Surreal, Sunday at 8 p.m. at SOhO, 1221 State St. in Santa Barbara; 962-7776.

* Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.