An Up Beat

On the regional music front, the new year began with a literal bang Sunday afternoon.

Call it a witty clangor: Just before intermission, the string players exited stage left and right, leaving only a quartet of percussionists armed with tuned mallet instruments.

There were also some less common noisemakers in the mix, i.e. a balloon, the vocal-sounding guica, a thunder sheet and slide whistle. The percussive occasion was Brazilian composer Ney Rosauro’s Mitos Brasileiros for Percussion Quartet. Three movements were played by a group including the orchestra’s principal timpanist, Kathryn Dayak, with the kind of rhythmic charge so richly entrenched in the Brazilian musical spirit, and no small measure of comic glee.

Rosauro’s work was the refreshing wild card in an unusually diverse program from the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra.

Kicking off the second half of its 20th season, the ensemble was led with the usual flair and ease by maestro Heiichiro Ohyama, opening with the orderly sonorities of Elgar’s Serenade in E Minor, Opus 20, with poignancy of character and a muted gleam in the string texture.

The second half of the concert belonged to what was ostensibly the concert’s centerpiece, Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade for Violin, Harp and Percussion, a vehicle for the accomplished violinist Cho-Liang Lin.

Like much of Bernstein’s music, this piece--written for Isaac Stern in 1954--manages to be a mixed blessing, more satisfying in parts than as a whole.

Lin’s technically adroit reading brought out the inherent blend of the urbane and mellifluous, without making sense of it. Ideas fling about, unchecked and aimless, in this music.

A languid grace of the slow movement suddenly bumps into a touch of jazzy swagger in the finale, with blue notes anticipating the language of “West Side Story.” It manages to be engaging and perplexing at the same time.

Between the Elgar and the Bernstein came Handel’s Concerto for Harp in B-flat, a showcase for Marcia Dickstein, the ever-adept harpist of choice in Southern California, and the Rosauro percussion opus--which stole the show, or at least commanded attention by virtue of its delicious nonconformity. In all, the program served as a fine example of better living through musical eclecticism.

Camerata in Progress: Speaking of diverse programs at midseason, the Camerata Pacifica continues its most vigorous season yet with a nicely varied set of music for next week’s round of concerts in the area. This chamber group offers some of the finest music-making around, and the next program promises to be both challenging and soothing to the ear.

From the archives, we’ll hear Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K. 251 and Michael Haydn’s Romance in A-flat for Horn and String Quartet. From this century comes Copland’s Clarinet Sonata and Schoenberg/Webern’s Chamber Symphony, a rousing display of modernist thinking without the cerebral aftertaste.

Local/Global Musical Thought: Since he joined the UC Santa Barbara music department faculty a few years ago, composer-pianist Joel Feigin has brought intrigue and musical substance to the campus. Many a concert at the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall has been brightened, and deepened, by his music.

On Tuesday, Feigin’s music will be featured in a different venue and for a broader audience than the campus-based performances at Lotte Lehmann tend to attract. The Chamber Orchestra Kremlin’s performance at Campbell Hall, part of the Arts and Lectures series, will include on its program Feigin’s “Mosaic in Two Panels,” along with music by Joseph Haydn, Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

Feigin’s music will have further public hearings in the next month, when the Santa Barbara Symphony performs his “Elegy, In Memoriam Otto Leuning,” Jan. 23 and 24. And then, on Feb. 11, back in the comforts of the Lotte Lehmann, pianist Paul Berkowitz will give the Santa Barbara premiere of Feigin’s “Meditation IV from Dogen.”

Details: Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Tuesday, 8 p.m., at UCSB’s Campbell Hall. Tickets are $12-$16; 893-3535.

Camerata Pacifica, Thursday at Music Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Road in Santa Barbara; Jan. 15 at Santa Barbara City College’s Fe Bland Forum, 721 Cliff Drive; Jan. 16 at Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road in Ventura; and Jan. 17 at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza Forum Theater, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. All shows start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25; (800) 557-BACH.

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