For the finale of their residency concert series at the L.A. County Museum of Art on Wednesday, the California EAR Unit came onstage in a state of fashion anarchy, each player decidedly uncoordinated with the next. Yet, somehow, the polychromatic array meshed into a happy, irreverent whole.
Ditto the evening's music, which included ideas from several different stylistic and attitudinal camps. Chugging rock energy propels Cathie Travers' "Bent Funk," which opened the concert with a riff-fueled blast (though not played with quite enough mechanistic precision for maximal effect).
Closing on a conceptual note, Joshua Fried's strangely fascinating "Headset Sextet" found the musicians strapped into headphones and fed unscripted sounds, which they then attempted to imitate. The result: a wild sonic ride, of approximate if passionate execution.
Thoughtful tubaist-composer Bill Roper, a too rarely heard local wonder, joined cellist Erica Duke-Kirkpatrick and Arthur Jarvinen on guitarron for Roper's improvisation-heavy, vaguely melancholic "My Mother's Mother."
