Lou Harrison

Because the adventurous CalArts New Twentieth Century Players have joined the more conservative Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group under "The Green Umbrella," there's not much of a paradox in a program labeled "California Iconoclasts." But when the concert is dominated by elder masters--John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and Lou Harrison--as it was Monday at the Japan America Theatre, one worries about the health of the apprentice iconoclasts. Can it be that the terrain already has been covered?

Lou Harrison, California's musical patriarch and one of the most infectious composers of the century, turned 80 last year and was honored near and far. Still, his music, so full of sunrises and rainbows, so jubilantly eclectic, so sweetly melodic, is still scantily represented on CD. Here, though, is a small treasure chest.

Lou Harrison is one of those rare composers with a mind and ears open to all the music around him, in a truly global sense. At the same time, he is not just an eclectically inspired American exotic, but a creator of highly personal stamp as well. Harrison, who will be 70 on May 14, has been a longtime resident of California. Saturday evening, he attended a celebratory concert of his music at CalArts, which he introduced with brief, pertinent, good-humored remarks.

Lou HARRISON was a domestic man, a hospitable man. In his music, he invites you to share in his delight. And you would be hard-pressed to find music of the second half of the 20th century more warmly beguiling. He was a melodist second to none, his melodies like gifts. They also are like toys, something to play around with. Music is play; we play it. And Harrison, prolific and eclectic, loved to say, "I spread my toys out on a large acreage."

Beginning Friday, the Pacific Symphony will devote its sixth American Composers Festival to the beloved iconoclast Lou Harrison, who died at 85 in 2003. Filmmaker, arts presenter and dancer Eva Soltes, a longtime friend of Harrison, is now completing a documentary about him. Here she shares some of her memories. * LOU HARRISON wore cheap rubber shoes, spent a lot of money buying beautifully bound books and had a deep belly laugh like Santa's -- which I sorely miss.

COMPOSERS quite often pull frayed scores out of their desk drawers, but for Lou Harrison, tinkering with his opera "Young Caesar" was a four-decade journey that continued even after he died.

A Lou Harrison craze has appeared frustratingly just around the corner ever since this poster boy for gorgeous nonconformist California music died in 2003. Friday night Jacaranda, Santa Monica's new music series, opened its new season with a half-Harrison program featuring his music for Western instruments and Javanese gamelan. In two weeks' time, the Los Angeles Master Chorale will present another half-Harrison program when it performs "La Koro Sutro" at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Composer Lou Harrison returns to Ventura County this weekend as guest of honor in the "Indonesia Alive!" program. There's a difference, though. In May 1997, Harrison turned 80 and was the recipient of the attendant hoopla when a well-known living composer--that rare breed in our culture--chalks up another decade. Toasts and tribute concerts took place around the world. Since then, Harrison has moved up a few notches more in the ranks of acclaim and name recognition.

Given the twin focus on contemporary classical and world music in the "Musics Alive!" series, it was perhaps inevitable that Lou Harrison would make his way to town as a featured guest. The time has come. Harrison, who is just shy of 80 and busier than ever, is a great American composer who has successfully bridged different musical cultures, especially through melding Western classical and Indonesian music.

"This is the story of Gaius Julius Caesar," a narrator tells us at the start of Lou Harrison's opera "Young Caesar," which premiered in a revised version Friday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, four years after the composer's death. But the story, the narrator is quick to note, is not of the Caesar we are likely to know -- the general who conquered Gaul, the great orator, the lover of Cleopatra, the Roman statesman, the flawed Shakespearean ruler stabbed on the steps of the Forum.