Youthful Tradition

In what has become an admirable tradition, January is the month of the young musician in Ventura County, thanks to the New West Symphony’s Discovery Artist series.

Later this month, the symphony will present its annual Discovery Artist program, in which a group of carefully selected young musicians from Southern California will take the stage as soloists, with the New West as the orchestral backup group.

The concerts, in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, will cap off a program of classical music in area schools.

Generally, it’s the season for bringing classical music within earshot of youths, a mission that grows ever more important in an age when such music is hard to come by.

As a preamble, this Sunday afternoon in the acoustically friendly Forum Theater of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, we’ll get a chance to check in on a past Discovery Artist.

Violist Victor de Almeida, among the 1998 performers, will give a recital of viola and piano music, with Ronna Binn, in an intriguingly diverse program that includes music by Hindemith, Paganini and the noted African-American composer William Grant Still.

Almeida, born in Australia in 1979, grew up in Southern California and was a violinist--including in his Discovery Artist appearance--until taking up the viola, still one of those instruments deserving of wider recognition.

He studied at the Music Academy of the West with Donald McInnis--whom locals know through his work with the Camerata Pacifica--and is currently at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

DETAILS

Victor Almeida and Ronna Binn, in recital at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza’s Scherr Forum Theater. Tickets are $18 for preferred seating, $12 for general admission and $6 for students and seniors. For more information, call 449-2787.

Bartok on a Budget: This week’s musical highlight in the region has several virtues attached: the Takacs Quartet, the Hungarian emigre group that has become a prime contender in the string quartet field, will hunker down at the Lobero Theater for two nights, Wednesday and Thursday. There, they’ll perform the cherished and challenging quartets of their Bartok, the 20th century Hungarian master.

The cost to the curious? Free of charge, courtesy of the Esperia Foundation’s continuing series of free concerts. Get there early.

Now that the 20th century is history, we necessarily have to call Bartok an icon of a bygone era, but his music--an inspired blend of folk-influenced ideas and a highly personal notion of modernism--will no doubt continue to increase in artistic value as time goes on.

His string quartets, in particular, are among the strongest works in his canon. Needless to say, next week’s concerts will be worth vastly more than the price of admission.

DETAILS

Takacs Quartet, performing the string quartets of Bartok, on Jan. 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. at the Lobero Theater, 33 W. Canon Perdido in Santa Barbara. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and seating is not reserved. Free admission (presented by the Esperia Foundation). For more information, call 969-3340.

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