Perfect harmony

SDSU’s Javanese Gamelan Ensemble performs Dec. 6.

No one familiar with the nonprofit world would argue with that statement—so it’s a bit surprising to hear that the Center for World Music is faring remarkably well amid the worst economic downslide since the Great Depression.

The organization’s operating budget has increased by a third during the past three years and, this year, the National Endowment for the Arts gave it a $50,000 grant— twice as much as last year. Programming has “exploded,” Gabriel says:

The organization now offers more destinations for its study-abroad programs and works with more schools in music workshops than ever before.

On the other hand, the School of Music and Dance at San Diego State University—another prominent champion of world music in San Diego—hasn’t been so fortunate. Responding to the CSU system’s huge budget cuts last summer, the school had to let go of some part-time instructors and cut a class on African drumming and dance.

“We just kind of had to trim down everything,” Donna Conaty, the department’s director, says.

Now, these two enduring world-music institutions are teaming up to co-produce a fall concert series featuring SDSU instructors and San Diego artists performing everything from Appalachian folk tunes to Javanese gamelan.

For more than 20 years, Conaty says, the School of Music and Dance has hosted this concert series as part of the school’s world-music course material. “These classes don’t have textbooks with them. They have live performances, instead,” she says.

This year, the series’ 10 shows will be open to the public, which will help offset costs and offer non-students a look at music that’s as entertaining as it is educational.

The series spans almost every continent. It began on Sept. 20 with a performance by dornob, a local collective that brings a jazzy twist to Persian classical music played on instruments like the oud, a Middle eastern sister to the lute. It ends on Dec. 6 with a performance by SDSU’s Javanese gamelan ensemble, a gong orchestra headed by Djoko Walujo, an SDSU instructor and renowned expert in this regal, mystical Indonesian institution.

A performance on Monday, Sept. 27, by Sene Africa, a local band with members from the West African country of Senegal, will offer a lesson in how West African pop music mines ancient tradition. Over Ibrahima Ba’s gentle guitar and soaring vocals, Amadou Fall plucks out marvelous swirls on the kora,a West African harp used for centuries by griots, wandering poets who are repositories of the region’s oral history.

Conaty says she’s thankful for the partnership, but Gabriel doesn’t think of it as a bailout.

“It’s our common mission to promote world music,” Gabriel says.

“It’s a perfect match.”

Sene Africa will performs at SDSU’s J. Dayton Smith Recital Hall on Monday, Sept. 27. For the rest of the program, go to centerforworldmusic.org. Tickets: $12 to $15.

More Music

Non-dead composers: Mention the term “classical music” and long-dead composers like Beethoven and Vivaldi come to mind. But classical doesn’t just belong to the entombed, as the Carlsbad Music Festival, happening at various venues Friday, Sept. 24, through Sunday, Sept. 26, demonstrates. Not only are artists like Eric Huebner, the Calder Quartet and ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) alive and well; they’re also fiercely innovative. Huebner is a world-class pianist, ACME performs works by Philip Glass and Charles Ives and the Calder Quartet has collaborated with everyone from modern composer Terry Riley to party animal Andrew W.K. $15-$75. carlsbadmusicfestival.org

Complex patterns: The late Morton Feldman, one of America’s greatest avant-garde composers, was a master of nuance: He wrote quiet, effervescent epics that eschewed standard musical conventions. In a 2004 recording of Patterns in a Chromatic Field, a challenging piece Feldman wrote in 1981, pianist Aleck Karis and cellist Charles Curtis (both UCSD faculty) capture a soundscape that’s meditative but unpredictable. At UCSD’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 6, they’ll take on the challenge on stage, performing Patterns as part of the music department’s Wednesdays@7 concert series. $15. music.ucsd.edu

Rock ’n’ roll serenade: The Hutchins Consort, a southern California-based string octet, uses special violins—ranging from a small soprano violin to a giant contrabass violin—specially designed by Dr. Carleen Hutchins to have greater range than standard orchestral string instruments. All of which should lend a certain robustness to the Consort’s performances at the Neurosciences Institute (10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive in La Jolla) on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 16 and 17, during which they’ll play Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C along with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Beatles tunes. $15-$50. hutchinsconsort.org

Experimental reeds: Macbooks are taking experimental music to new levels, but let’s not forget about the instruments you literally have to play. This fall’s Fresh Sound Series, curated by Henceforth Records head Bonnie Wright and held at Sushi Performance & Visual Art (390 11th Ave., East Village), celebrates reedinstrument players’ contributions to the avant-garde with four concerts themed around “Roots and Reeds.” Musicians will start out by talking about their instruments and then proceed to blow your mind. Don’t miss Sqwonk, an adventurous bass clarinet duo, on Friday, Oct. 22. $15. sushiart.org