Noise Is Music to Her Ears

The best music sometimes comes from the most unexpected and overlooked objects, says percussionist and composer Amy Knoles. Look around your house, she suggests. Music can be found in simple noises like the boing of a doorstop, the whirl of a drill or the hypnotic hum of a vacuum cleaner.

“Any sound can be music. When you really begin to listen to what’s happening around you, you start to hear things in a different way. You can really use anything for music,” says Knoles, who mixes high-tech electronics with everyday noises to compose her brand of new music.

“I record sounds from the real world and manipulate them to create a completely new sound,” she explains. Using her collection of synthesizers, computers, monitors and amps, she’s able to stretch and twist the ordinary tones of drills, hammers and vacuum cleaners to make them sound otherworldly. “It really is recycled music,” she sums up.

Introducing Children

to Joys of Live Music

Knoles will bring her eclectic vision of music to the UCLA/Fowler Museum of Cultural History on Saturday as the kickoff concert of the Children’s Concerts in Historic Sites series sponsored by the Da Camera Society.

Known for its Chamber Music in Historic Sites series that matches up chamber and other musical groups with architectural locales, the society has been offering children’s concerts for seven years as a way of introducing younger audiences to the joys of live music.

Usually held in museums, the performances are thematically matched with a current exhibition. The Fowler concert will take place in the courtyard of the museum, which is exhibiting two programs about recycled and found art, “Recycled, Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap” and “Muffler Men, Munecos and Other Welded Wonders.”

Concert-goers will be seated near exhibits that feature bottle-cap figurines, purses made from plastic bread wrappers, telephone wire baskets and sandals carved from discarded tires.

“Kids love junk,” says Mary Ann Bonino, director of the Da Camera Society. “The concert will introduce kids to how ordinary things can be extraordinary, and that the power of human imagination is limitless, especially when it comes to art and music.”

Developing the format for the children’s series required a different kind of creativity, confesses Bonino, who said that staging performances for kids always presents a challenge. “We quickly learned that we had to keep the kids engaged, and so we developed a format that is a mix of music with activities,” she says.

To keep chair-squirming time to a minimum for the young audience, the concerts are carefully crafted and short, about 45 minutes. “A lot is packed into that time,” Bonino says, “the music, the environment, the stories, activities. Also, everyone leaves the concert with an edible treat and a souvenir that is related to the event.”

In addition to musical performances, storytellers add a literary dimension to the concerts. Storyteller Karen Golden, who will accompany Knoles at the Fowler event, has participated in past children’s concerts. She says that kids are “eager to be in the world of make-believe.”

Kids Hear Stories

“on Such Deeper Levels”

“Kids hear stories on such deeper levels than adults,” Golden says. “I match stories to complement the event. This concert, for example: I have stories about recycling and an old story which I tell in a new way.”

Golden and Knoles will each build from the other’s performance to give the audience a unique multimedia concert experience. The two will present a special piece composed just for this concert about recycling and found art, aptly titled “How the Vacuum Cleaner Got Its Groove.”

“It’s a fun piece with an interesting story and use of sound,” Golden said. “It gives the listener the idea that even mundane things can be seen as something different and very special.”

BE THERE

The Children’s Concerts in Historic Sites series will kick off the 1999-2000 season Saturday at the UCLA/Fowler Museum of Cultural History on the UCLA campus in Westwood. Performances are at 1:30 and 3 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults, $12 for children. Family packages are available. The concerts are recommended for youngsters older than 4. Younger children will be required to sit in adults’ laps.

Subsequent concerts in the series:

* Jan. 29: Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, San Marino. In conjunction with a Gold Rush exhibit, Sonora County’s Black Irish Band and storyteller Peter Kors will re-create the events of early California.

* Feb. 26: California African-American Museum, Los Angeles. Performances by jazz artist Tootie Heath, his trio and storyteller Sybil Desta will introduce audiences to the world of jazz as part of the museum’s “The Heritage of African Music” exhibition.

* April 15: Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena. Set in an authentic Chinese garden among Asian artifacts, this concert will feature traditional and new Asian music by the Magellan String Quartet. Storyteller Denise Iketani will tell tales of heroes and dragons.

For more information and to order tickets, call (310) 954-4300.