Chamber music with open doors

Mark Carlson, founder and artistic director of the West Coast chamber ensemble Pacific Serenades, likes to challenge the status quo. When he set out to commission a new work for chamber orchestra, he went to an unexpected source: veteran jazz recording artist and composer Leslie Drayton.

Drayton -- former Earth, Wind & Fire trumpeter, arranger for Marvin Gaye, big-band musician with Cab Calloway and jazz teacher at Santa Monica College -- had never composed for classical musicians, but he was intrigued enough to agree.

As a result, Pacific Serenades will premiere Drayton’s four-movement work for clarinet and string quartet, “Visions and Reflections,” on Saturday in a Pacific Serenades concert at a private home in Pasadena; on Sunday at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena; and June 6 at the UCLA Faculty Center in Westwood.

Drayton will be in lofty company. Also on the program: Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Opus 115, and Haydn’s String Quartet in C major, Opus 33, No. 3, “The Bird.”

It will be “a nice cross-cultural mix, I’m thinking,” Carlson said. That’s the point of Border Crossings, a two-year project undertaken by the chamber ensemble to explore new compositions that transcend musical boundaries, and to challenge both composers and classical musicians with alternative musical influences.

“I had had an idea for several years to seek out composers who were primarily jazz composers but had the chops to write for classical music players,” he said. Drayton, with his rich musical background and a master’s degree in composition, was a natural, although he had to explore some terra incognita to get started.

“Most of my experience has been in the jazz and pop arena,” Drayton said. “For a chamber piece, there were a couple of things I had to consider. One, there was no rhythm section, which means no piano, bass and drums; with a chamber piece the rhythm has to keep moving around the instruments, so that was a challenge.

“And this wasn’t a jazz composition, so I had to understand that there was no improvisation involved.”

Still, audiences may pick up on some jazz flavor. Drayton’s first movement is a reflection on the “other world” he comes from, and here and there the piece will have a hint of swing.

-- Lynne Heffley