A Place Where Culture Remains Alive and Well

It may smack of provincial boosterism, but Ventura County’s cultural pulse is strong enough to suggest the county may be a secret jewel in the Golden State. Come year’s end, a considered glance at what has passed through in the arts confirms the area’s dedication to keeping culture alive. Perhaps humble by comparison to our urban neighbor to the south, the cultural fabric here is bound by sturdy stitching.

For one, we have a bold orchestra in the New West Symphony, a contender in the rich ranks of Southern California’s orchestral scene. This year, maestro Boris Brott led the charges in a stirring all-Beethoven program, and--in one of the year’s musical highlights--nobly ushered the ensemble in its first performance of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. This fall, Brott’s take on Beethoven’s “Eroica” had a special poignancy, coming, as it did, shortly after the Sept. 11 disaster. The symphony’s contemporary-minded “Music’s Alive” series brought the important American composer Lou Harrison to town, a welcome returnee.

In jazz, local fans were saddened by news of the recent demise of 66 California, for years the epicenter of the local jazz scene. The downtown restaurant and club, run by Frank Parong for the past 15 years, has been one of the longer-lasting jazz venues in the region, but the building’s owner is selling the property. Local interest in the music prevails, though. An ad-hoc concert venue, the “Ventura Vanguard,” kicked off a series of periodic shows in the accommodating basement space of the Laurel Theater.

On another level entirely, Diana Krall showed up at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza last month, on the heels of her finest album ever. “The Look of Love,” a collaboration with the great arranger Claus Ogerman, shows that Krall’s uncommonly high degree of popularity (for a jazz artist) hasn’t spoiled her sense of artistic development.

Ventura is also still a veritable hot spot in the left-of-center scene where jazz culture melts into contemporary and experimental music. New music performers on the international circuit stopped here, courtesy of the hosting pfMentum organization, including saxophonist John Butcher and double-bowing cellist Frances-Marie Uitti.

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Mention festivals within the county limits, and the venerable Ojai Festival leaps naturally and inevitably to mind. This year’s festival was a stellar affair featuring the return of internationally respected conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and his Los Angeles Philharmonic, who performed Olivier Messiaen’s stirring epic “Des Canyons aux etoiles” (From the Canyons to the Stars), under the stars, and a righteous blast of music by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. Soprano Dawn Upshaw gave an American-oriented recital, and we were also wowed by Cuarteto Latinoamericano. This year’s event brought various chamber-sized musical treats to town, including Edward Murray’s harpsichord reading of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” at City Hall and the Rosetti String Quartet with guitarist Pepe Romero at the Serra Hall.

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Other musical avenues were well-represented this year, as well. There was the Bowlful of Blues, now happily relocated from Libbey Bowl to its idyllic lakeside spot at Casitas Lake and featuring Ojai’s own guitar hero, Robben Ford. Rock has a steady home in the Ventura Theater, and the Vans Warped tour stopped at Seaside Park this summer. Country stars Brad Paisley, Wynonna and Glen Campbell kicked up dust at the summer county fair.

Opera surfaced in town, in resourceful, if not grandly operatic, ways. Opera Unplugged kept up its performance schedule, gearing toward ever loftier goals. The Ventura College Opera Workshop marshaled the effort to present the charming, community-minded production of Benjamin Britten’s children’s opera “Noyes Fludde” (Noah’s Flood), and soon enough after the terrorists attacks that the work’s communal message seemed heaven-sent.

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The regional theater scene included a gala world premiere of Jenny Sullivan’s autobiographical “J for J” from Rubicon Theater in the fall. The Ojai Shakespeare Festival centerpiece production, “Falstaff: the Apprenticeship of Good Prince Hal,” adapted from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, proved to be an engaging bit of midsummer theater.

Film festival activity in the county has picked up, as well, and the list includes the small but earnest Channel Islands Indie Film Festival.

The Ojai Film Festival, which focuses on efforts and ideals outside mainstream Hollywood, held its second annual event.

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In art, 2001 marks the year that the Art City gallery, long a significant forum for art in town, closed its doors, hopefully to return in a new location. But John Nichols, Santa Paula’s seasoned gallery-keeper, curator and photographer, opened two galleries in Ventura. In October, the 18th annual Ojai Studio Artist’s Tour--and its stowaway “fringe” entity, the Art Detour--brought scores of art-watchers.The Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard remains a stalwart exhibition space and kicked off the year with a solid exhibition by Ojai-based painter Michael Dvortcsak. Other art worth seeing passed through local spaces, including the Buenaventura Gallery, the Upstairs Gallery at Natalie’s Fine Threads, the Childress Gallery in Ojai, the Ojai Center for the Arts, and Ventura College--one of the best-kept semi-secrets in a town, which has its own cultural cachet that shows no signs of letting up.