New Music and an Improvising Spirit

Jeff Kaiser has been making a ruckus, publicly, in Ventura for at least a dozen years, creating and protecting music on the cultural fringe.

An adventure-minded trumpeter, electronic artist, composer and improviser, Kaiser has kept the experimental faith around town. Through his pfMentum record label and concert organization--along with producer Keith McMullen--Kaiser has given Ventura a spot on the international new music circuit.

So, on the occasion of Kaiser’s 40th birthday, why not a musical wingding?

For the occasion, the Ventura City Hall Atrium will buzz this weekend with the sound of the Jeff Kaiser Improvising Big Band, featuring many of the finest improvising musicians in Southern California. The band includes Vinnie Golia on several horns, vocalist Bonnie Barnett and percussionists Brad Dutz and Billy Mintz. Kaiser will be trumpeting and leading the band in the improvisation-oriented style of “conduction,” pioneered by Lawrence “Butch” Morris, and practiced regionally by Golia.

* The Jeff Kaiser Improvising Big Band, 8 p.m. Saturday, Ventura City Hall, 500 Poli St. $10, $5 with a birthday card. www.pfmentum.com.

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Revolutionary Drama: After the poignant self-reflection and reality check of Jenny Sullivan’s “J and J,” the Rubicon Theater Co.’s first show of the season, it’s turned toward smart, tart escapist fare. George Bernard Shaw’s “The Devil’s Disciple” is a Revolutionary War-era melodrama with its cliches wittily tied into knots.

Director William Keeler packs a concentrated punch into a small space and a modestly scaled cast, and the intimacy forces us to pay attention to the characters’ foibles. Rubicon co-director James O’Neill appears as Richard Dudgeon, a handsome, glib cynic who ends up in a nobly sacrificial position. Amy Ecklund dispenses lots of weepy distress over the plight of her pious husband, portrayed by Tom Tammi, and her own potentially wayward heart. Emmy Award-winning actor Joe Spano, of “Hill Street Blues” fame, offers third-act comic relief as a British officer and a voice of reason.

It all coheres into a lively, campy entertainment, lined with telling observations.

* “The Devil’s Disciple,” Rubicon Theatre Company at the Laurel, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 16. (805) 667-2900.

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Art About Artists: Portraiture has run pleasantly amok at the Upstairs Gallery of Natalie’s Fine Threads. Without paying close attention to the details of the exhibition check list, it’s difficult to know who’s portraying whom in the exhibition called “Reflections 5x5,” and there’s the rub.

In the show’s intriguing gambit, five local artists have taken it upon themselves to create portraits of one another along with a self-portrait. We can trace their distinctive styles not only through their individual techniques and media, but also through the perspectives of their portraits. It becomes a happy game of cross-referencing.

Virginia Ashby Valdez works in three dimensions with papier-mache figures appearing as quirky angelic characters, arms outstretched as if in appeal to the heavens or the muse. Katherine McGuire’s five watercolor pieces are the most reliably realistic of the lot, and include a portrait of the aforementioned Valdez, with dog and Dia de Los Muertos artifacts in the background. In McGuire’s own self-portrait, one of her own trademark, clean and lean architectural studies hangs on the wall. In her self-portrait, however, Linda Taylor veers left of traditional by depicting herself as a giddy skeleton. Next is Alis Morris Soto’s almost magical realist portrait of Taylor, as a mystical stick-gatherer in a dream-state orchard. Lynne Okun, meanwhile, is the resident collagist, whose portrait of Valdez is a maze of floral patches, and a semi-Cubist perspective, in a multitude of angles on the subject.

That very multiple-perspective idea, in the end, is the gist of the exhibition.

* “Reflections 5x5,” Natalie’s Fine Threads, Upstairs Gallery, 596 E. Main St., Ventura. Ends Dec. 30. Gallery hours: 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, noon-4 p.m., Sunday; (805) 643-8854.

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Seasonal Treat: The Los Robles Master Chorale is getting into the spirit with a program called “Amahl and the Night Visitors and Other Seasonal Sounds.” Giancarlo Menotti’s classic will feature soloists from Ventura County including parents Karen Winner Huff and David P. Huff and son Matthew.

* Los Robles Master Chorale, “Amahl and the Night Visitors and Other Seasonal Sounds,” Moorpark College Performing Arts Center, Moorpark. 8 p.m. Saturday,, 4 p.m. Sunday. $18 general, $12 students and seniors citizens, $6 children 12 and younger; (805) 378-1485.