MINIATURES BY INDEPENDENTS

In the course of a serious festival of new music, an entire program of miniatures might seem a painless diversion, as well as a respite from heaviness.

And, indeed, the offering of 19 short pieces by 19 Southern California music-makers, presented Tuesday night in Japan America Theatre by the Independent Composers Assn. as part of the New Music L.A. 1987 Festival, turned out to be entertaining and breezy.

But wasn’t it also mostly pointless?

True, the event, performed with professional solidity by the 18 members of the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble, conducted by Donald Crockett, gave new glimpses at the ongoing careers of familiar names in the local pantheon: David Ocker, Stephen Taylor, Ricky, Michael Jon Fink, Crockett himself and Rodney Oakes.

And it introduced unfamiliar but talented writers: Esther Alejandro, Eric Valinsky, Kraig Grady and Harry Gilbert, among others.

But hearing even the most intriguing of short works on an anthology program ultimately proves frustrating. If, in one sense, there’s not enough time to find any single piece reviling, there is also not enough to savor the attractive ones.

Most attractive on Tuesday were Leon Milo’s energetic but serendipitous “Hei-Kyo-Ku,” in which soprano Daisietta Kim was the effective soloist; Alejandro’s delicate, insistent “Sanseis”; Valinsky’s funny “Requiem for an Onion Roll”; Grady’s sardonic “Commercial for a Western,” Gilbert’s slick “a good message”; Crockett’s “The Melting Voice,” a work of night sounds and earnest density, and Ocker’s post-jazzy “Death of the Nonsense Master.”