From Mozart to Martinu

The San Buenaventura Mission’s Serra Hall has been a premier venue lately for the local chamber music scene.

Last weekend it was the “Musics Alive!” series, which perpetuated what has become one of Ventura’s proudest cultural moments of the season. In its ninth annual incarnation, the focus was primarily on Indonesia and that region’s effect on certain western composers, including the famed Lou Harrison, who showed up for the occasion, as he has in the past. Harrison’s grand Piano Concerto was performed Saturday by the New West Symphony.

Here was chamber music of an offbeat sort, reaching happily across cultures and opening our ears.

And following a more traditional repertoire, Serra Hall continues in the spotlight. On Saturday, Camerata Pacifica will present its penultimate program of the 2000-01 season, with a typically diverse menu of music.

Its solid traditional core is represented by Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F, performed by Joanne Pearce Martin. After intermission, Beethoven’s Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat, Opus 16, an early period work of Mozart proportions, will be unleashed.

But opening up the concert will be lesser-known pieces: Neoclassical French composer Jean Francaix’s “L’Heure du Berger” and Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s 1932 “Sextet” will give due, and accessible, representation to music of the 20th century.

No one can accuse this wonderful chamber music organization of tipping too far into a conventional or esoteric direction. Over the course of a season, the group that flutist Adrian Spence built covers a wide swath of music, without much stylistic prejudice, but plenty of affection.

DETAILS

Camerata Pacifica, tonight at Santa Barbara City College, 721 Cliff Drive, in Santa Barbara; Saturday, San Buenaventura Mission’s Serra Hall, 211 E. Main St. in Ventura. All performances are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25; (800) 557-BACH. https://www.cameratapacifica.org.

*

Celtic Tendencies: During the 1998 Ventura Chamber Music Festival--to cite another important and perennial spring music event in town--one of the notable visiting ensembles was a group that slid across its own series of cultural borders.

The Ensemble Galilei makes no special case for its repertoire, which runs from Baroque music to folk traditions from Ireland, Wales and Cape Breton. It all flows naturally from a will to make a lively noise.

The all-female group is giving a concert Saturday at Church of Religious Science as part of the “Performances to Grow On” concert series. The group includes fiddler Liz Knowles, who performed with the touring company of “Riverdance,” and the instrumentation includes viola da gamba, oboe, penny whistle, bowed psaltery, Celtic harp, pipes and percussion.

DETAILS

Ensemble Galilei, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Church of Religious Science, 101 S. Laurel St. in Ventura. Tickets are $20 in advance, $23 at the door; 650-9688, or 646-8907.

*

Choral Confab: The choral music muse lives fairly happily in Ventura County, which boasts two fine Master Chorales: the Ventura County and the Los Robles.

And, in the past few years, the county has also had a choral festival to call its own, presented by the Los Robles group at Moorpark College.

This weekend represents the third annual festival and will feature the Los Angeles-based vocal group Zephyr: Voices Unbound today. On Saturday, several assorted choirs will gather, from Cal Lutheran and elsewhere, for a Community Choir concert, also at Moorpark.

DETAILS

Choral Festival, today and Saturday at Moorpark College, 7075 Campus Road in Moorpark. Zephyr: Voices Unbound, at 8 tonight; Community Choir Concert on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults, $14 for seniors, $10 for students and $6 for children 12 and under; 497-0386.

*

New West Notes: The New West Symphony, which has always performed its regular season at both the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, recently has been granted status as resident symphony orchestra of the Civic Arts Plaza. New West had held “honorary resident” status since 1994.