A musical bridge over cultural divides

“I need very simple, very quiet. It is deep in the bamboo forest. You understand?”

In the music room of a Mar Vista ranch house, Chinese wind instrumentalist Qi-Chao Liu is explaining to a handful of percussionists -- from the U.S., Bali, India and Myanmar -- how he envisions the accompaniment for his composition for hulusi, a gourd-and-bamboo flute.

“Can I listen to your colors?” he asks I Dewa Putu Berata, co-founder of the Balinese performance group Gamelan Cudamani. Seated on the floor, Berata flashes a smile of comprehension and, using sticks, strikes the knobby tops of various bronze gongs.

For a few weeks at least, Liu, Berata and their fellow musicians have come together as the APPEX Ensemble -- the initials stand for Asia Pacific Performance Exchange -- and the music they are improvising is destined to be part of one of the country’s largest multicultural performance events. The World Festival of Sacred Music -- with more than 1,000 performers in 43 vocal, instrumental, dance and ceremonial presentations -- runs from today through Oct. 2 in various L.A. locations.

Artists and groups will perform both alone and as collaborators, overcoming language barriers to mesh disparate musical traditions into something shared and new.

And that, says festival director Judy Mitoma, is the intent in a nutshell: to encourage performers and audiences alike to bridge cultural divides through the language of music.

“We need to think about our collective identity,” not differences, Mitoma says in her small, airy office at the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, where she is the director.

This year marks the third incarnation of the L.A.-based festival, previously held in 1999 and 2002. More streamlined, with fewer components, it still reflects its grass-roots, noncorporate creation as a response to a vision expressed by the Dalai Lama for peace in the new millennium. Mitoma -- an L.A. impresario, dance ethnologist and founder of UCLA’s department of world arts and cultures -- is the primary architect of that response.

A soft-spoken, attractive 50-something, Mitoma is a serene presence, belying the force of will required to galvanize the ambitious festival into being. But suggest that some might define it as New Age touchy-feely or multicultural flag-waving, and the quiet voice reveals muscle.

“People will say, ‘Oh, this is an ethnic festival.’ I say this is L.A. This is who we are,” she contends. “When people use words like ‘ethnic,’ it’s dismissing who we are.

“And I’m very sensitive when people dis quote-unquote New Age work,” she adds. “I guess part of my agenda in putting all this together is to get people to stop feeling it’s them or us, whether it’s a musical taste or class, culture or race. We just need to let go of that.”

Indeed, “sacred” refers to spiritual philosophies as much as music, and today’s launch, a “Sacred World Benefit Concert,” was designed to set the tone. A celebration of the harvest moon by singers, musicians, dancers and theater artists from around the globe, it will open with a Native American blessing.

Among those drawn to Mitoma’s vision was U.S. flutist Bill Shozan Schultz.

At Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts on Sept. 30, Schultz will pair with Qi-Chao Liu for “Bamboo and Silk,” a concert of ancient Chinese and Japanese music. “People might wander in and hear some music that they wouldn’t ordinarily hear. Maybe they’ll chat and maybe they’ll find out they’re not so different,” he says.

“What the festival does every three years is what [we do] every day,” says Yuval Ron, the Israeli-born leader of the L.A.-based Yuval Ron Ensemble, which will appear Wednesday at USC’s Alfred Newman Recital Hall. “Bring communities together through music to promote peace.”

Organizing the festival for the third time has been remarkably smooth, Mitoma says. In 2002, she says, there were “lots of headaches because it was after 9/11 and there were visa and Homeland Security issues. That was a nightmare.”

Sheer size -- 85 events in nine days -- was the challenge three years earlier, the first time around. “We couldn’t say no. We hadn’t refined the idea, and we thought we were only doing it once. It was sleepless nights and wringing our hands, but we came out unscathed and even a little ahead in terms of the money.”

The previous budgets were $500,000 for the first and $1 million for the second. This year, with fewer events, volunteer staff and other cost-cutting, the final budget, administered under the nonprofit Foundation for World Arts, will come in around $300,000, says Mitoma. The center and the nonprofit advisory EarthWays Foundation serve as the Foundation for World Art’s producing partners.

Printing and mailing the festival brochure will wind up being the single largest expense, Mitoma says.

The foundation is producing two individual events: tonight’s and the finale Oct. 2, which will feature roughly 300 artists making ceremonial offerings on Santa Monica Beach.

Organizers and producers of other festival events have made their own arrangements, in partnerships between artists and religious, community and arts organizations.

“Our philosophy is: Do more with less,” Mitoma says. “There’s no point in raising more money than you need. The whole model of the festival is about people stepping forward and offering what they can.”

Mitoma’s contribution extends to opening her home to visiting artists. It is her Mar Vista home where the APPEX musicians are rehearsing.

But what to see, when many events overlap? Mitoma refuses to recommend one artist over another.

“Close your eyes, open the brochure to any page, and put your finger anywhere, and when you open your eyes, you will have something remarkable.”

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World Festival of Sacred Music

Where: Sacred World Benefit Concert, UCLA Sunset Canyon Recreation Center, Outdoor Amphitheatre, 111 De Neve Drive, L.A. (Parking Lot 11)

When: 5 p.m. today

Price: $35; discounts for groups of 10 or more, students, seniors and children; under age 5, free

Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.festivalofsacredmusic.org

Also

Where: Festival continues; venues vary

When: Sundays and Tuesdays through Oct. 2

Price: Free and $5 to $75

Contact: (310) 825-0507 or www.festivalofsacredmusic.org