Singing Out

Roger Wagner was clearly one of the heroes of the choral music cause in the 20th century, who, along with Robert Shaw, helped make the form a notable ingredient in the American musical mix.

He can be considered a West Coast legend as well, having created his popular touring and recording group, the Roger Wagner Chorale, in 1947, and later having founded the highly respected Los Angeles Master Chorale.

There is poetic justice, too, in the presence of the Roger Wagner Chorale as the headliner of the second annual Moorpark Choral Festival, set for Saturday at Moorpark College. Since 1992, the 50-voice chorale has been led by Wagner’s daughter Jeannine. The chorale continues to tour, record and promote the fine art of choral music culture.

Wagner lived in Ventura County in the last years of his life and made cameo appearances with the Moorpark Master Chorale, renamed the Los Robles Master Chorale a few years ago. It hosts this compact, fledgling festival.

Also on Saturday’s program, we’ll hear the Los Robles Chamber Singers, led by James Stemen, and the group known as One Voice, directed by Terry Siegel.

DETAILS

Moorpark Choral Festival, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Moorpark College Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $18 adults, $14 seniors and $10 students and children; 496-7997.

*

Jazz Notes: To hear a compact dose of name-brand jazz players, check out the Newport Jazz Millennium Celebration tonight at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall. This is one of those traveling jazz circuses of a high cultural order and a fine opportunity to hear several key players at one time.

Names on the roster include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Randy Brecker, saxophonist Red Holloway, pianist Cedar Walton (a longtime Angeleno who recently immigrated to New York) and guitarist Howard Alden (the commanding soloist for the Woody Allen film “Sweet and Lowdown.”)

Rallied around the theme “Saluting the Masters of Jazz,” the main group will spin off musical material by bygone jazz masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.

The show will also include a set by Payton’s own Quintet, which has been gaining attention and artistic momentum in the last year. Their new release, Nick@Night, is an impressive post-hard-bop session. The sound may come as a surprise to those who know Payton’s work as a trumpeter with early jazz proclivities--Payton was logically cast in Kansas City and played alongside the late veteran trumpeter Doc Cheatham.

The new album comprises mostly Payton originals, as well as a cool, undulant version of the old Earth, Wind and Fire tune “Sun Goddess.” A tacit message of the album, as well as of touring acts like this Newport package, is that the great, century-old tradition of jazz is a fluid entity, shifting in historical perspective without blinking or apologizing.

DETAILS

Newport Jazz Millennium Celebration, 8 p.m. tonight at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall. Tickets are $14-32; 893-3535.

*

Chamber Music, Then and Now: The 10th anniversary season of the Camerata Pacifica continues this weekend with two performances of a program neatly divided between old and new music. The group’s charismatic and fearless leader, flutist Adrian Spence, will perform Bach’s “Partita in A Minor for Solo Flute,” followed by a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s moving chamber music masterpiece, the “Quartet for the End of Time.”

Written while Messiaen was in a prison camp during WWII, the work brims with despair and hope, in varying measures. On a local note, it was one of the highlights of last year’s Ventura Chamber Music Festival.

DETAILS

Camerata Pacifica at 8 p.m. Saturday at Meister Hall, Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road in Ventura; and 8 p.m. Sunday at the Scherr Forum, Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. Tickets are $25; 961-0571.