Levy’s Photo Show a Color-Rich Escape

Jerry Levy’s photography show, now at the Ojai Center for the Arts, is shamelessly steeped in color and light, to the extent that its good cheer seems to verge on caloric overkill, visually speaking. But there’s a deeper, more original quality here, too, and images that lure us in more through form than content.

Many of the photographs are close-ups of color-rich subjects taken out of context, as details of street scenes snatched on the fly. In effect, they’re given a new context through the selective, subjective eye of the shuttersmith.

These images are snatched from the everyday, but in discriminating visual doses. A ceramic man’s manically grinning face, captured in North Beach, becomes an emblem of dizzy glee in “Man Oh Man Alive.” A truck painted with a trompe l’oeil landscape on its side melts eerily into the surroundings in “We’re Moving to--.” The power is in the ocular editing.

Unfortunately, words sometimes get in the way in this show, where the visual charms would be ample on their own. Levy’s breezy texts accompanying the images do little to enhance our understanding of what’s obvious, and some of the titles are best left unread, such as “Wishful Thinking in Manhattan,” which turns an otherwise lovely, abstracted composition of a “Park” sign into a Hallmark card punch line.

Another elegant and slightly disarming image is a study in color, specifically the warming saffron of Buddhist monk robes, but it groans under the silly title “Monk, Monk, Monk, Monk.”

One of the simple, almost startling, examples of economical grace is the image called “The Good Luck Corner.” Though nothing more exotic than a cryptic, tightly cropped view of the ornate red corner of a Chinese roof, set against a blue sky, the vivid simplicity is both bracing and dreamy. That’s a good recipe for art that does its job.

* “A Festival of Light,” photography of Jerry Levy, Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 S. Montgomery St. Ends Dec. 30. Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (805) 646-0117.

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Baroque Manners: It’s a well-established fact of classical music life in these parts by now that the Camerata Pacifica is a strong source of inspiration, particularly when it comes to chamber music. Founder Adrian Spence has done an admirable job in mixing up standard repertoire and unusual treats in a given season.

But a more recent development harks back to the organization’s roots as the Bach Camerata, with a new focus on Baroque music, courtesy of harpsichordist and early music specialist Corey Jamason. In October, Jamason presided over a fascinating program of music by Frescobaldi and little-known composer Bartolome de Selma Y Salaverde. This week, the Baroque sub-series under the Camerata Pacifica umbrella continues with the Baroque master, in a program called “Bach the Master: Baroque and Beyond.”

In this all-Bach program of sacred vocal music, soprano Catherine Webster and bass Sumner Thompson will be joined by Jamason on harpsichord and Elizabeth Reed on bass viol and Baroque cello.

* “Bach the Master: Baroque and Beyond,” Camerata Pacifica, Friday, Santa Barbara City College, 721 Cliff Drive; Saturday, Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road, Ventura; Sunday, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza Forum Theater, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. All performances, 8 p.m. $25. (800) 557-BACH.

Mission Statement: Speaking of music with a Christmas resonance, the Ventura Master Chorale’s annual holiday program comes to the San Buenaventura Mission on Friday and Sunday afternoon. It’s one of those local holiday traditions, in a suitably venerable venue and generally presented with lofty and tuneful musical goals, worth rubber-stamping on one’s calendar.

This year’s holiday program includes French carols, Renaissance pieces and a new arrangement of the classic “Silent Night,” by the Chorale’s tenor, Kenneth Helms.

* Ventura Master Chorale, 8 p.m., Friday, and 5 p.m. Sunday, San Buenaventura Mission, 211 Main St., downtown Ventura. $20 for reserved row seating, $18 for open seating. (805) 653-7282.