Going for baroque

Ventura County Reporter
1/14/10

The 100-plus seats of the historic chapel in Oxnard’s Heritage Square may be empty on this sunny Saturday afternoon in January, but the cozy hall is very much alive with the cheerful strains of Vivaldi. At the far end of the room, bathed in the hues of the stained glass above them, the six members of the Baroque Chamber Players work to perfect the upbeat challenge of Vivaldi’s Trio Sonata in G Minor— the title of which feels a bit like calling a milkshake “a cold mixture of ice cream, milk and sugar, blended smooth.” The simile is an apt one, for the Sonata, as rendered by the players, is like a milkshake for the ears, a pure and sweet delight that leaves one wanting more.

Music director and Oxnard resident Lou Pruneda’s latest effort in a lifetime love affair with music, is the Baroque Chamber Players, an eclectic group of music lovers, united in common purpose to share that love with the community. Among them the professional musicians are few, mixed also with such disparate professions as a piano tuner, mathematician, and auto body specialist — yet let the music begin, and such divisions as profession or heritage are banished in infectious musical joy.

The work on this sunny Saturday is in preparation for the upcoming “Ventura Baroque Presents the Baroque Chamber Players,” to be performed Saturday, Jan. 16, in this same chapel. The program will include two sonatas by Vivaldi, two by Handel and one by Telemann. A nonprofit endeavor, Ventura Baroque offers the evening for a suggested donation of $15, with the promise that no music lover will be turned away for the sake of the ticket price.

For those not acquainted with baroque music in general or chamber music in particular, the program might at first seem dead-dry, the product of the powdered wig generation, hailing from an age of stiff formality and groaning pretense. Yet such an impression could scarcely be more mistaken. Though it comes to us across a cultural chasm of nearly 300 years, the music evokes the identical delights of the beautiful world we inherited from those same powdered wigs, speaking to the joy of sunny days and spring rains, of birds in trees, young love and joie de vivre.

Pruneda describes the players, with a touch of humor and mischief, as they might have been found in some opulent parlor of post-Renaissance Europe: “If you imagine a group like ours from the Baroque era — they were all soloists, just showing off.” The ensemble is intimate, featuring only Pruneda’s flute, accompanied by James Gilmore’s oboe, Paul Schneider’s violin, Mark Holmstrom’s harpsichord, the cello of Dr. Janice Foy and the bassoon of Cavit Celayir-Monezis, which, on the Trio Sonata, skims like a skipped stone across a glassy lake, if one could skip a stone so adroitly. Asked about the intimacy of such an ensemble, Schneider quips, “We’re very … exposed. You can’t cover up, can’t blame that mistake on the next violin!” In such intimate company, the nature, character and personality of each instrument, and musician, are clearly and most pleasantly evident, offering a musical tapestry in which each thread shines with equal brilliance and distinction.

As with any nonprofit endeavor in the arts, Ventura Baroque can’t exist in a vacuum; in order to thrive it must connect with an engaged community — an ambitious initiative in this culture, to say the least. Pruneda points out that our opportunities on the Gold Coast to enjoy such music are too rare. “We have the music festival, and it’s wonderful, but it’s also expensive. Not everyone can afford a $50 ticket.”

With a labor of love such as Ventura Baroque offers, the question isn’t whether it’s an evening that anyone can afford, but rather, if we can truly afford — through lack of support — to let the effort pass us by. For without the strains of Vivaldi calling hearts and minds back to idyllic summer days, all of our days might be a bit darker, indeed.