Orchestra to Restore Order

The New West Symphony season begins this weekend in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard, and not a moment too soon. Last month’s gala preseason concert with Van Cliburn was canceled, a ripple effect of Sept. 11 and attendant worries about travel.

The concerts will feature a program of Debussy, Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, and Saint-Sans’ Piano Concerto No. 5, “Egyptian,” with the solo part played by guest pianist Lorin Hollander. Hollander, who has shared the stage with Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Slatkin, Seiji Ozawa and many other prominent conductors, is making his New West debut.

There’s something restorative and orderly about a good orchestra, a term that certainly defines the New West. For all their fragility in the current cultural marketplace, orchestras can be inspiring reminders of civilization prevailing amid threats of chaos and crassness.* New West Symphony, Friday, Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way; Saturday, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd.; both performances at 8 p.m. $8 to $64. (805) 449-2787.

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Vocal Tapestry: The voice is very much the thing with two forthcoming concerts in the “Performances to Grow On” series. Both SoVoSo and Kitika hail from the Bay Area, also home to vocal wonder Bobby McFerrin--in whose group, Voicestra, some of SoVoSo’s singers have performed. Hmm, is it something in the air, or the water, or the NoCal cultural ether?

This Friday at Ojai’s Oak Grove School Pavilion, the group on hand will be the gifted a cappella group SoVoSo (a name derived from the phrase “from the soul to the voice to the song”). As heard on the fine new CD “Bridges” (on Primarily A Cappella Records), the six-piece group gamely mixes R&B;, jazz, gospel and African sonorities, among other things, in elaborate and soulful blends.

Kitika’s acclaimed Eastern European flavors will be heard in Ventura on Oct. 20.

* SoVoSo, Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Oak Grove School Pavilion, 220 W. Lomita, Ojai. $18 in advance, $20 at the door; (805) 646-8907.

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Nature’s Way: Technically, Sukey Bryan’s paintings portray “The Sea Anew,” the title she’s given her current show at Ventura College’s Gallery 2. In her canvases, she depicts stormy seas, choppy waters viewed with a close-up intensity and lack of contextual framing that unsettles us even as the art itself unshackles itself from any conventional “seascape” painting tradition.

Bryan imparts friendly tension between the reality of the subject and a subtle aura of abstraction. Whether in the enveloping, large “Sea Wash” or the compact yet intense “Tidal Wave 16,” we get lost in the blue-green palette and the avid brushwork. Peaceful rhythmic details within the whole are deceptive, given the sense of unrest and potential destruction from tidal waves. At root, the art is all about forces--of nature and of painting.

Over in the college’s New Media gallery, quite a different agenda is addressed in the extended photography of Cara Jaye. The female nude archetype is her point of departure, and “departure” is the operative word here: She serves as both mixed-media artist and model, even extending the self-portrait theme to the extent that she smears her own blood on the surfaces of the art.

Aspects of femininity and social cliches enter into her thinking, as do art history and mythology. Some pieces are printed on flour-sack cloth; elsewhere, a pseudo-scientific cataloguing of body parts is overlaid with images of different insects, from blood and embroidery. In one photograph, a scrolled image of the goddess Nike is held in front of her nude frame, while she depicts herself losing control of gravity (and emotional bearings?) in a series called “Illusion Sister of Icarus.”

All told, Jaye’s work is wonderfully strange, with a sense of theater and grim humor tucked into her socio-sexual art.

* Sukey Bryan, “A Sea Anew” and Cara Jaye, photographs, through Oct. 19, Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road. Call for hours; (805) 648-8974.

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Art About Town: This weekend is that time of the year when roving art-seekers wend their way through Ojai, eyes peeled for telltale flags. The Ojai Studio Tour, now in its 17th year, offers outsiders access to the inner sanctum of artists’ studios. Thickening the plot in the last few years, the “fringe” tour known as the Art Detour has popped up as a bit of friendly competition, expanding the options of art appreciation in town this weekend.

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* Ojai Studio Artists Tour, Saturday and Sunday. $20; $25 on the day of the tour; available through the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce, (805) 646-8126.