Emerging Talents

One of the New West Symphony’s traditions has been to start the New Year with a generous bow to the emerging musical generation in the Discovery Artists concerts.

This year the selection is weighted heavily toward our county, a good sign for the area’s gift to the future of classical music.

Among the formative soloists gracing the stage this weekend in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks: Tiffany Chen, a 12-year-old pianist from Moorpark; 16-year-old cellist Andrew Janss of Thousand Oaks; 19-year-old soprano Sara Jean Ford of Thousand Oaks; and 20-year-old violinist Elise Goodman of Thousand Oaks, now studying at Juilliard and an alumna of earlier Discovery concerts.

The other young musician taking part in the concert is 12-year-old violinist Katrina Celeste Bobbs of Granada Hills.

In a sense, the boldest distinction this year is that the concert includes a pianist-composer, 20-year-old Justin Messina, presenting a world premiere of a one-movement piano concerto.

It’s the first time an original composition will be part of the Discovery Artists program.

This is not, however, the first time local audiences have had a chance to hear Messina’s compositional thinking.

While still in high school, Messina became involved in composer Miguel del Aguila’s “Voices” educational program for young composers.

Through the program, Messina had his music performed in such venues as the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.

This weekend, however, he’ll have his initial experience in hearing his own orchestral writing played by a professional ensemble.

Messina, a Ventura High School graduate now studying composition at Indiana University, visited Europe in December, consulting with noted composers George Benjamin in England and Henri Dutilleux in France.

Since then, he’s been home in Ventura to prepare for the premiere.

When he talked from his home this week, Messina was deeply immersed in the process of getting his own piano part under control.

“I’ve already spent so much time with this piece, because I’ve made parts and done the full score and entered it into the computer,” he said, laughing.

“I’ve spent hours and hours working on this piece and I feel like I already know this. How is it that my fingers don’t know it?”

After writing the piece, Messina was searching for a title when he came across a quote from a William Blake poem, “In Close Volution.”

“I stumbled on this quote and thought it was perfect,” Messina said.

“Volution is like revolution, the idea of two things orbiting one another. That’s a central concept of the piece, the idea of revolution and a full circle or a loop--not so much in the musical sense of the word loop, but the idea of continuous, circular motion.

“In my mind, I picture the piano and the orchestra in this close volution. But also, a central motive of the work is a slow whole-step trill that has this circular motion to it.”

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Messina’s route to composing was an instinctual one. He began playing piano at 4, he says, and “even when I was very young, I didn’t like to play what was on the page. Reading what was on a page was always less interesting than modifying what was there or playing something completely different.”

He recalls recently hearing a tape of a piece he wrote when he was 13.

“Sections of it were drawn directly from . . . romantic tradition, but another section might draw from ‘Perry Mason,’ jazz-type stuff,” he said.

“I guess I didn’t really know that those things didn’t mix so well. I thought it was great when I was writing it.”

In high school, Messina eagerly enrolled in “Voices,” which the Oxnard-based (and now part-time New Yorker) Del Aguila ran out of Oxnard High School.

“It was a great program,” Messina said. “There aren’t many opportunities for young composers in Ventura County, or any other places, for that matter.”

He has attended the Tanglewood summer program and is pursuing studies in Indiana.

At this stage in his musical life, Messina is eagerly gaining experience and searching for a personal voice.

“When I met with George Benjamin,” Messina said, “he said, ‘Try everything.’ He recommended that I compose every type of piece--compose something in C major and then a strict serial piece, every type of music you possibly can. He said, ‘Even if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll learn something from it and you can take that with you.’

“That’s what I’m doing right now, kind of wandering around and exploring the different possibilities.”

In a sense, Messina has landed in a contemporary music scene whose sense of transition, a certain anything-goes attitude, can impart a healthy open-mindedness.

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Where an earlier generation of composition students would have found an academic atmosphere focused on the abstract, atonal style known as serialism, the current status is much more eclectic.

And he recognizes his path is an esoteric one as a career choice.

“A lot of people say there aren’t many opportunities for composers,” he said.

“If you think about it, since the Baroque days, when every court had a court composer and every church had an organist who was also writing chorales every week, compared to that, there has never been a lot of opportunity for composers.

But there’s an upside too, he said.

“Right now is a great time, in a way, because you can write whatever you want. You can write pop music if you want, or strict serialism, and everything is acceptable. There are very few taboos at the moment.”

DETAILS

New West Discovery Artists Concert, today at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way in Oxnard, and Saturday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. 449-ARTS (449-2787). Both concerts start at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $8-19; 800-NEW-WEST.

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