Well Composed

Taken as a whole, the current season of the Camerata Pacifica, which continues in its usual locales in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties for four concerts next week, is a good case study in musical diversity.

Expanded in ambition and frequency over last year’s season, the ensemble that flutist Adrian Spence built spans the historical and stylistic poles of this thing called classical music. In deference to the group’s roots as the Bach Camerata, there is even a sub-series of specifically Baroque concerts.

Next week’s model, though, dips into some relative esoterica, the best-known composers on the program being Ravel, via his gypsy-esque violin showpiece “Tzigane,” and Cesar Franck, whose Sonata in A for Violin and Piano will be played.

Also on the menu, on what could be called a multicultural program, are works by the American Arthur Foote, the Swiss-born Ernest Bloch--both in their primes early in the 20th century--and the 19th century French composer Francois Devienne.

Not to worry: It’s a user-friendly program, nothing too ear-tweaking. Spence specializes in creating programs that delight and surprise, without upsetting audiences made up of both newcomers and aficionados.

LOCAL HERO: Emma Lou Diemer has contributed to the musical lifeblood of the area for many years. She has been active as a composer, teacher and an organist in the field: Catch her in performance at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara.

Her music has been heard around the world, as well as in these parts, through the years, performed by groups in Ventura and Santa Barbara. Two recent recordings of Diemer’s music document the continuing saga of a veteran who, it has to be mentioned, has fared well as a woman in the still male-dominated world of composing.

Diemer’s organist pedigree, as both composer and player, is the subject of a newly released recording, “Psalms II: I lift my eyes to the hills,” on the RBW label.

On this fine organ album, performed by Joan DeVee Dixon and the Emmanuel Brass, organ repertoire by such composers as John Blow (a contemporary of Henry Purcell), Monteverdi, Buxtehude and Charles-Marie Widor frame the central, contemporary event--Diemer’s “Psalm for Organ.”

Here, Diemer’s embrace of the organ literature of the past comes to bear--in music that is tonal in character--reflective writing taking advantage of the organ’s textural range and its long history.

Still, we’re aware, through nuances and harmonic choices, that this is also music of our day. In a few segments, the organ is joined by parts for brass and bass trombone, in an unusual symbiosis.

“MMX New Century, Vol. X,” on the MMC Recordings label, is a collection of four works by contemporary composers, closing with Diemer’s dramatic Concerto in One Movement for Piano, featuring fellow UC Santa Barbara faculty member Betty Oberacker as soloist and the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Originally written in 1991 for the Santa Barbara Symphony under the late conductor Varujan Kojian’s tenure, the piece went on to earn the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music in 1992.

Oberacker gets, and seamlessly navigates, a technical workout with the piece. Over its 28-minute course, the Concerto ebbs and flows with energy, from insistent, eighth-note pulses--reminiscent of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”--to airy, lyrical passages that look over the shoulder to the 19th century.

The piano part, in tight accord with the orchestra, ranges from syncopated accents to vigorous dashes over the keyboard to tender moments, all woven into an intriguing one-movement essay.

It’s a work, urged on by a restless neo-romantic heart, that manages to be both accessible to the ear and charged with a modern spirit.

DETAILS

Camerata Pacifica, Thursday at Music Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Road in Santa Barbara; Friday at Santa Barbara City College, 721 Cliff Drive; Saturday at Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road in Ventura; and Sunday at Civic Arts Plaza Forum Theater, 2000 Thousand Oaks Blvd. in Thousand Oaks. All performances are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $23; (800) 557-BACH.