Adding a Light Touch : Chamber Group Seeks to Shed Staid Image With Lasers

“I’m tired of performing chamber music as if we were still in the 18th Century,” said harpist Marian Rian Hays.

This was no idle lament for Hays and her colleagues of Artist Chamber Ensemble. Tonight, these musicians will prove their willingness to subject their beloved Haydn, Mozart and Ravel to the high-tech embellishments of the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater.

Perched on the edge of the balcony in the theater’s slightly eerie darkness, the harpist listened intently for her cue from the on-stage string players, while the moons of Jupiter sailed above her head.

As the musicians rehearsed their program, John Young, the theater’s special-effects director, timed his celestial movements projected on the domed screen to follow the music’s ebb and flow. Only the dim glow of the stand lights, covered with amber gels to avoid washing out the projections, outlined the players.

Rehearsing for this evening’s program was a new experience for both the theater crew and the players. Though the crew is accustomed to working with recorded music--mainly rock--it needed to accommodate the needs of live musicians. And the musicians had to get used to playing in the dark with whirling projections unsettling their peripheral vision.

The merging of these forces, conceived as a benefit for the space theater’s educational program, may provide Artist Chamber Ensemble with a vehicle it can take to the other 40 space theaters around the country.

“It’s foolish for classical music to shy away from special effects,” Hays said. “We need to provide chamber music with another dimension if we expect to expand our audience.”

Among the special effects in the theater’s arsenal, Brian Opitz’s laser projections supply the most vivid and colorful accents to the music. The program’s finale, a section of Philip Glass’ score for the motion picture “Mishima” titled “Poetry Written in a Splash of Blood,” called forth Opitz’s most inventive designing. The insistent pulsing of the laser patterns mirror the iterations of Glass’ urgent minimalist score.

Acquiring the music from “Mishima” turned Hays into a musicological detective because the score had never been published. When Hays finally tracked the composer down, he averred that he had not even written a harp part, although Hays was positive she discerned a harp sounding on the recording. She was vindicated when a friend of Glass, to whom the composer had given the original score as a Christmas present, sent her a copy of the original manuscript.

Announcer Dan Erwine of KPBS-FM selected the music and devised the narration for the program.

The opening half traces a 24-hour day over San Diego, starting with a movement from Haydn’s “Sunrise Quartet.” An afternoon storm is set to Carlos Salzedo’s “Whirlwind,” with harp glissandos punctuating the lightening flashes on the screen. Not only will the audience hear falling rain on a sound track, but the theater’s rain-making machine will spray a fine mist over the room.

The descent of night is brought on by Schoenberg’s early tone poem “Transfigured Night” in its original sextet version, while the moon rises over the city skyline to the muted strains of Gershwin’s “Lullaby.”

In addition to putting gels on the stand lights, Hays had to devise hoods to fit over the tops of the music stands.

“We discovered after our first rehearsal that the ambient light would wash out the screen,” she explained. “The white pages of music reflected a surprising amount of light. We momentarily considered playing from negative images of the scores--white notes on black pages--but we were afraid that we couldn’t get used to such a radical change before the concert.”