Showcase Series

Wednesday’s installment in a series of free Wednesday evening concerts at CalArts brings an accessible approach to contemporary chamber music.

The goal of the 11-concert “Chamber Music Wednesdays” series is to showcase faculty and advanced students in the New Century Players ensemble while surveying mostly new music.

Series organizer Mark Menzies, a faculty member and noted violinist, was recently appointed leader of the New York-based group Ensemble Sospeso. Last fall in Manhattan, the group performed music by Dutch Euro-minimalist Louis Andriessen as well as a piece by Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to general critical acclaim.

Back in Valencia, Menzies will perform Wednesday on a key piece, Lou Harrison’s “Varied Trio,” along with familiar L. A. new music champions, pianist Vicki Ray and percussionist David Johnson. Harrison is a veteran composer known for his distinctive adaptation of Indonesian influences, whose reputation as a true American original increases with the years. Recently, his music made its Los Angeles Philharmonic debut.

Harrison’s gently rippling, rhythmically impelling “Varied Trio” was written in 1986 for the Bay Area-based Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and can be heard on the CD “La Koro Sutro” on the New Albion label. Its evocative harmonies and rhythmic qualities, like much of Harrison’s work, echo the sonorities of gamelan music, but with a Harrison-like twist.

That critical link to Indonesian culture and world music in general makes perfect sense for the California Institute of the Arts music department. Curricula freely cross over conventional borders separating Western and non-Western traditions, including a strong gamelan program. “World music has become a very politically popular thing to do in universities simply because it’s recognized that not everyone who graduates with a music degree will necessarily play in a symphony orchestra or teach at a university,” Menzies said. “But the only problem with that is, like a lot of other consumption culture, it can be very superficial.”

At CalArts, students often start their recitals with so-called serious music and then move into an ensemble approach, playing music such as Balinese gamelan, he said. “There’s a wonderful sense of this individual being important, not only as an individual, but as a part of a whole,” Menzies said.

BE THERE

“Americana” chamber music concert Wednesday, 8 p.m., Roy O. Disney Hall, CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia. Free. (661) 253-7832.