Out & About / Ventura County : classical / jazz : Grace Notes : L.A. Philharmonic will play its first Civic Arts Plaza concert next week.

Orchestral music lovers in Ventura County might have taken slight umbrage in past years, considering the conspicuous absence of that towering Southern Californian entity, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The orchestra--which under the crack guidance and cutting-edge thinking of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has become an internationally respected unit--has held court in its usual home at the Music Center, and it’s also shown up in Santa Barbara, under the auspices of the Community Arts Music Assn.

But it seemed to pass over Ventura County.

This year, however, it’s as if the orchestra is making amends. In June, Salonen was artistic director of the Ojai Festival, in one of the most dazzling events in recent memory. On display were Salonen’s wryly rebellious Finnish roots and the splendor that is this orchestra, playing mostly modern fare.

Next Wednesday, Salonen brings the L.A. Phil northward for its Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza debut. The concert is being co-sponsored by the New West Symphony, which starts its own season next month.

The program will include orchestral transcriptions of Bach by those seminal 12-tone figures, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, which will be featured on the Philharmonic’s next CD.

After intermission, we’ll hear Salonen’s take on Mahler’s First Symphony. All in all, the concert promises to kick off the orchestral season in Ventura County with a bang, albeit a thoughtful one. The Thousand Oaks concert is part and parcel of a broader scheme to spread the Philharmonic gospel to areas just outside the normal demographic earshot.

That’s because of the orchestra’s recent travails, which include the sudden departure of its general manager and its ongoing struggle to nurture audiences--part of a general downturn in symphonic audiences across the country.

One answer: Take it to the streets, including the streets of Thousand Oaks.

This is one of several “Community Concerts,” which include performances in Pasadena and East Los Angeles.

Most intriguingly, next week’s whirlwind outreach tour of the greater Los Angeles area presages a project launched last January, taking performances of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” to the street.

Salonen, in collaboration with iconoclastic theater director Peter Sellars and artist Gronk, revised the Stravinsky classic, had Chicana poet Gloria Alvarez work up a new bilingual text and renamed it “The Story of the Soldier.”

It premiered at the Music Center in January, with the idea of performing it on a flatbed truck in the summer. It’s not exactly a flatbed, but the Hansen Dam Amphitheatre will be the venue when the Philharmonic presents the work Sept. 16, followed by performances at Hollenbeck Park on Sept. 17 and in MacArthur Park on Sept. 19.

It could be well worth a trip south to see how Stravinsky flies in the public sphere.

DETAILS

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wednesday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. Tickets are $9-$60; 497-5800.

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