Up there on the air

Hey, the California Pops Orchestra is doing a radio-style show. Perfect for the entire family -- since it's a radio format, you don't have to look up, so the kids can text the whole time!

Just kidding, Kim.

Anyway, lots of radio going around. First the L.A. Theatre Works troupe at Stanford on Jan. 27 with a radio play about Robert Kennedy and the civil-rights movement. I had an interesting interview with the producing director, who was a student finishing a paper on Kennedy and watching him on TV that fateful night in L.A. The play will have an element that typical theater doesn't: a sound-effects guy on stage with a table of equipment. When the script calls for a cocktail, sound-effects Nick drinks a drink. Loudly, one presumes.

Then, the California Pops Orchestra, under the baton of Palo Alto's Kim Venaas, presents its "Big Broadcast Show of 2010" on Feb. 21 in Los Gatos. This will be a musical variety show, 1930s radio style. Performers include the Pops' Zucchini Gulch Xylophone Trio (say that five times fast) and Bumblebee Buglers. Ann Gibson will sing and South Bay impersonator Matt Helm will pretend to be Dean Martin, Sean Connery and Jimmy Stewart. He better bring his eyebrows. I've seen them online and they're impressive.

So much rhythm

The four musicians walked on stage one by one, striking pieces of wood with mallets. Each built upon the last, starting with a single bright "tong!" sound and then layering his own pitter-pats of rhythm on top.

I felt like the sounds took me in all directions at once. Kids in the audience weren't sure what to do. Were they supposed to be quiet? Was this music? My head was bobbing a la "Spring Awakening," but not at the same time as my foot tapping. Yet we all ended up in the same place. When the So Percussion members hit the last note at once, leaving a silence as satisfying as everything that came before, we all thought: "Damn. These guys are good." (Except for the kids, who thought, "Darn.")

The place was CSMA, the performance was free, and the composition was "Music for Pieces of Wood." That Steve Reich doesn't mince words. CSMA has this great arrangement with Stanford Lively Arts, wherein many artists set to give concerts at Lively Arts stop by CSMA a few days earlier to give a free, more informal show. Children welcome.

So Percussion played the school last night, and by the end, kids in the front row were bouncing up and down with the music, and running back and forth from their seats to the edge of the stage. This is high praise from a six-year-old.

Meanwhile, I was feeling better that I can't attend the group's Lively Arts show this Saturday. "Music for Pieces of Wood," a 1973 Reich-ism, is on the bill, and here I was getting a preview. From the third row. It was fascinating to get a close view of the musicians working together: a nod before a tempo changed, a sidelong glance, eyes squeezed shut. When rhythms are offset, you have to focus on what you're doing -- while listening to the guys on either side of you. "The goal is to do both," So's Jason Treuting said at the end of the evening.

We also got a preview of Reich's "Clapping Music" (1972). In this canon-rich piece, the musicians clap in one flamenco-inspired rhythm -- 3-2-1-2 -- and offset it against each other. "There's 12 different ways you can put these rhythms together," Treuting said. As a listener, you follow one thread, then another.

Then we all got to try it. The guys split the audience up into two parts: One, "the rock," plays the rhythm the same way repeatedly. The other group slowly changes it up. Music immersion, sinuous and meditative. Sometimes it's easier to keep the rhythm when you close your eyes.

For several lucky kids, the highlight was probably getting to go up on stage and play in other pieces, on African drum and vibraphone and bell. There was much bouncing and swaying and grinning. Outside, after the show, I saw a father and child clapping 3-2-1-2, over and over. Yes, this was definitely music.

So Percussion plays an all-Reich program, including a U.S. premiere of "Mallet Quartet," this Saturday at 8 p.m. in Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford. Pictured: The So boys whoop it up with a typewriter, photographed by Janette Beckman.