Mixing Up the Culture With Hospitality at Ventura Festival

In Ventura, they know how to take things seriously without leaving congeniality in the dust. The Ventura Chamber Music Festival opened its fifth annual event with a down-home flavor, a literal sampler of fanfares and some serious Brahms.

Before Friday night’s official opening concert by the Muir Quartet, festivities included Thursday’s “Appalachian Spring Fling” at the historic Olivas Adobe. Barbecue dinners complemented a musical menu featuring Mariachi Colima and the versatile, Americana-minded Rincon Ramblers, with nary a morsel of Copland.

On Friday afternoon, this year’s “Tea and Trumpets,” a staple of the festival, lived up to its promise of mixing brass repertoire with high tea fixings. A trumpet trio--Stephen Billington, Marty Fenton Frear and Darren Mulder--offered pithy, well-played sets, including a series of fanfares by the 20th century likes of Erik Satie, Elliott Carter and Stravinsky. Tart modernism, in small doses, complemented the sweetness elsewhere.

This is not to suggest that this festival doesn’t have its cultural priorities straight, but the path is lined with hospitality, receptions and soirees. This may, in fact, be a model approach to the fragile business of staging a festival with growth potential and sophisticated appeal.

The idea is to support chamber music, in the grandest possible sense, while showcasing the hosting community. It would mean little if the music weren’t strong, and this year’s program, continuing this week to a concert Sunday night by Chanticleer, promises much.

The Muir Quartet fulfilled the musical mandate beautifully in the fine old San Buenaventura Mission. Performing Mozart’s Quartet in E flat, K. 428, and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, with the quietly commanding clarinetist Mitchell Lurie as soloist, the unit showed a lustrous, cohesive group sound.

Debussy’s Quartet in G minor, Opus 10 may have stolen the show, however, with its zesty blend of Impressionism and leaning-into-Modernism intensity, played with a special fervor. In the work’s more heated moments, potted plants on the makeshift stage began to literally shake, a good sign.

Also on the first weekend were the Romero Guitar Duo, and young Canadian violinist Corey Cerovsek, the featured soloist and conductor on Saturday night’s orchestra concert. Cerovsek, well-received at last year’s festival, returns in a duet with his pianist sister Katja on Thursday, and again Saturday for the “Festival Orchestra Gala,” which will also showcase a world premiere by Miguel del Aguila, the laureled Uruguayan-born, Oxnard-based composer.

Information: (805) 648-3146.