California EAR Unit Gets Pals Together for a Party

Twenty years in the new music trenches is no small feat, and the California EAR Unit--which celebrated its 20th birthday Wednesday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art--has not only aged gracefully, it’s also helped create the mold for serious yet fun-loving new music chamber ensembles internationally.

As noted in the program, the group has left the acronym intentionally open to interpretation. This night’s efforts might suggest the “Elegant Aural Rebel Unit” or “Emphatic Antics Research Unit” or ... your suggestion here.

For a group this innately eclectic, one EAR Unit concert in a given season is never enough to get a grasp of its range and could be misleading. Wednesday’s concert, for one, leaned too heavily on Minimalist, generally rock-influenced eighth-note parades, without the usual programmatic depth or balance. But the group may have been in party mode, a forgivable sin under the circumstances.

This concert was also notably lacking in that EAR Unit staple--premieres--instead focusing on a nostalgic selection of past works.

That included James Sellars’ “Go” (1997), a rock-ish piece with an incessant momentum, in which characters of rhythm and tonality never quite settle. Hints of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” percolate throughout.

A similar effect marks Frederic Rzewski’s 1971 work “Coming Together,” with its pulsating, motoric lines blending in with a fragmented spoken text (read by clarinetist Marty Walker) from a particularly moving letter by a prisoner killed in the Attica uprising.

Julia Wolfe’s “Girlfriend,” premiered by the EAR Unit two years ago, remains a fascinating enigma, a mixture of screeching tire samples and long tones in a melancholic, color-shifting sound fabric.

After intermission, the Unit let the games begin, playing a quirky dirge on kazoos and marching spasmodically down the aisle and across a stage adorned with twinkling lights. As a Cage-ian afterthought, the noted pianist (and former EAR Unit member) Gloria Cheng literally swept up after them, as Vicki Ray and former member James Rohrig vocalized text by Kurt Schwitters. Closing the program was John Bergamo’s brief, punchy “Foreign Objects,” a vaguely Zappa-esque chamber rock affair. As a bonus, longtime and now ex-Unit member Art Jarvinen offered a cameo--a giddy lounge lizard-ish tribute to the group’s longevity. It was reverent and worthy of a toast.