It’s grandly hip, so make it a hub

Very late in the game, CalArts wormed its way into the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Once it had become clear that construction would begin after many years of delay and desperate fundraising, the school tossed in a mere $5 million -- less than 2% of the concert hall’s budget -- and got a high-profile piece of a spectacular pie. CalArts, which was founded by Walt’s brother, Roy, seemed to be trading on the Disney name in buying for a song a possibly inappropriate downtown showcase for its students and faculty.

I was a doubter until I saw the black box space and how it was equipped with a fabulous high-end sound system, along with really great projection and lighting equipment. I figured CalArts must be serious when it hired away Mark Murphy from the highly regarded Seattle alternative space On the Boards. I was encouraged by acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota’s clever use of reversible walls. One side is wood to reflect natural sound for acoustic music; the other is absorptive material ideal for the loudspeakers.

Stiffing Patina from the bar/lounge was another excellent move. Inviting Dutton’s to hand-select books to sell proved pure inspiration (and the mini-bookstore is still in operation despite the closing of the Brentwood institution). A gallery? But of course. REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) turned out to be a very cool cat.

For its opening five years ago, CalArts commissioned a work, “Voyage,” from a Japanese new-media dance and theater troupe called dumb type. Out of pitch blackness came peculiar figures doing peculiar things. Six women and one guy came out as identically dressed office girls. A diminutive female astronaut lip-synced a bass rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” I knew then that REDCAT would keep the fat cats in the big hall upstairs from getting complacent.

REDCAT initially promised that the ratio of professional productions to CalArts presentations would be about 3 to 1, and it has kept that promise. The school has imported a wealth of major work we would not likely have otherwise seen, and let us see it in ideal conditions. Peter Sellars’ staging of Antonin Artaud’s “For an End to the Judgment of God” as an attack on the Iraq war was something no one else in America was daring to do in 2004.

New forms of music theater that also employ dance and multimedia have been a specialty. Early on, the director Chen Shi-Zheng and songwriter Stephin Merritt created a 21st century multi-culti musical, “Peach Blossom Fan.” The longtime avant-garde theater artist Richard Foreman made one of his rare forays into opera, if you want to call it that, when he made “What to Wear” with Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon. Just last month, the multitalented Meredith Monk presented her latest transcendental collaboration with visual artist Ann Hamilton, “Songs of Ascension,” at REDCAT.

Acoustically, REDCAT is heaven on earth for singers. No smoky club would have done Thomas Quasthoff’s rare jazz recital equal justice. The theater allowed Italian sopranos Amelia Cuni (performing John Cage, Indian style) and Cristina Zavalloni (performing Luciano Berio, flamboyant style) to present the voice and the body as one.

Instead of exploiting CalArts, REDCAT has enticed CalArtists who tend to salt themselves away in the hills of Santa Clarita to come out from the warm. Travis Preston directed a one-man “Macbeth” with Stephen Dillane in 2004 that I suspect will remain with me as my most soaring experience with Shakespeare’s play.

If the facility has revealed anything, it is that David Rosenboom, who heads CalArts School of Music, is one of America’s most underappreciated composers. That couldn’t have been clearer earlier this month when he revived 90 minutes’ worth of his obscure 1969 epic, “How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims,” for Indian tabla and sarode, deep winds, Balinese gamelan instruments, keyboards and a Javanese dancer. Minimalism, jazz improvisation and a variety of world music traditions met and had a blast.

I visit REDCAT often if only to browse the books and get a cappuccino, and I could go on about what I love about it. Instead, like a true fan, I’ll complain.

REDCAT is not yet a downtown hub, not yet a place where artists and audiences congregate more than occasionally. Here are my suggestions: Keep later, and more consistent, lounge hours (and bring back those lovely salads and sandwiches). Take advantage of film and video looking gorgeous and sounding amazing; begin a late-night film series on the weekends. Bring the Metropolitan Opera’s HD broadcasts on Saturday mornings. Help subsidize parking.

Theater and dance cost a bundle to present, so let there be more music. A lot more. Clubs, where audiences can check out ever-present new sounds when that interests them and mill around the bar and talk when they lose interest, are what have made Amsterdam the hip music city it is. New York has been following suit. We have not.

A baby step has been taken in that direction with a Tuesday early evening music scene for young audiences so new it has yet to show up on the website. But REDCAT, you have paws for a reason. Now is the time for bigger and bolder leaps.

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mark.swed@latimes.com