Extreme Guitar

The Orange County Performing Artscenter is recruiting up to 100 electric guitar players of all ages and styles to perform a one-hour piece of experimental music on March 29.

Photos by Ralph Palumbo Click here for more photos and bios on some of the extreme guitar recruits. The Extreme Guitar Orchestra is recruiting for this month’s performance. Visit www.johnkingmusic.com for information and e-mail ashleyeckenweiler@hotmail.com to apply.

suspect that somewhere, Pacific Symphony Orchestra maestro Carl St.Clair’s ears are ringing. I know mine are.

In two neat rows of plastic chairs, almost 20 electric guitar players ages 12-60 from all over Southern California, are assembled in the Boeing Education Lab, a high-ceilinged, multi-purpose space on the third floor of the Orange County Performing Artscenter’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.

We’re in the midst of a protracted glissando, a rapid sliding between notes. I’m worried the din might crack the building’s Cesar Pelli-designed glass facade.

With a wave of his guitar’s neck, composer John King brings the racket to a stop. Everyone – including King – looks a little unsure about the sonic pandemoneum that just happened.

“This is called experimental music,” King reassures everyone. With reading glasses perched atop his spiked silver hair and a red and white scarf around his neck, he has the laconic cool of an aging rocker. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Nobody does, really. But here’s the plan: 100 guitar players of all different ages and styles recruited from the community – myself included – will assemble on March 29 in OCPAC’s outdoor Community Plaza to perform a one-hour piece of original experimental music composed by King.

This Extreme Guitar Orchestra Festival, which is free to the public, is part of OCPAC’s new Off Center program, a series of contemporary theater, music and dance performances debuting this month.

It is part of what OCPAC President Terry Dwyer calls an ongoing effort to “refine the face we are presenting to this community.” It starts with the center’s name. That’s right, the Orange County Performing Arts Center is now the Orange County Performing Artscenter. (See it? No space between “arts” and “center.”) “It’s sending a little bit of a signal that we are refining our personality,” says Dwyer. “This is obviously one part of a very large puzzle.”

Another big chunk is to attract a wider audience. Like most larger cultural centers, OCPAC’s crowd skews older – 50-plus, according to its 2004-5 audience survey. “An Extreme Guitar Orchestra will probably tend to attract more younger people,” says Dwyer. “I think it will also attract people who are adventurous and willing to take a chance.”

OCPAC is hoping acts like Canada’s Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Chicago-based performance art ensemble 500 Clown, indie rockers Cold War Kids, and composers like King – all part of Off Center – will make that happen.

Raised in Minneapolis, King, 54, spent his teen years in blues rock bands until a music composition class introduced him to early avant-garde composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives. “It was just really exciting and new,” says King. “Rock music kind of held less and less interest to me.”

King graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia with a degree in music composition and electronic music. In 1976 he moved to New York’s East Village, a hub of the experimental music scene associated with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham (with whom King later collaborated). King has composed pieces for everything from string quartets and chamber ensembles to samplers and, of course, electric guitars.

He wrote his first guitar orchestra piece for 20 teenaged players who toured Europe in the summer of 1999. In 2006, the concept was reprised in Portland, Ore., using a diverse group of guitar players recruited from the community. The same is being done for the OCPAC show. Two days of open auditions in January attracted nearly two-dozen players, from teenaged rockers to graying jazzmen; full-time students and a second-grade teacher; professional musicians and even a “one-man-folk-roots-blues-band” calling himself “Rizorkestra.”

The electric guitar orchestra isn’t King’s invention. Composer Glenn Branca has been assembling “guitar armies” since the late 1970s, including a 2006 performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles that drew about 90 players. (A Los Angeles Times reviewer likened it to “the sound of an army of Humvees relentlessly closing in, the noise dangerously boring into ear canals.” And that was a positive review.)

King insists his approach to the mass guitar orchestra is different. “For me, those were kind of like blown-up rock bands – rock bands with a lot of guitar players,” he says of Branca, whose orchestras typically include bass players and a drummer. King takes a more classical approach. “My historical model would be a string orchestra,” he continues. “But doing experimental things with that idea.”

Back in OCPAC’s Boeing Education Lab, the first Extreme Guitar Orchestra rehearsal is wrapping up. King is leading his motley crew of guitar players through a battery of musical blocks he uses to build his pieces: classical music conventions, like glissandos and contrapuntal rhythms; swampy, blues-based chord progressions; and spontaneous bursts of ear-splitting noise.

We’ve just finished a series of randomly selected harmonics, or bell-like tones, filling the room with a surprisingly beautiful constellation of sound. There’s one more thing. “I heard a sound in my head on my way over here,” King tells everyone. “I want to try to make it.”

After a brief demonstration, he taps his black boot four times on the hardwood floor. Everyone launches into a thundering tremolo, a rapid strumming that produces a trembling tone. After what seems like several minutes but is actually about 15 seconds, King swipes his guitar neck the way a conductor would a baton. The deafening cacophony trickles to a stop. Stepping back from the rows of guitar players before him, King’s pale face breaks into a smile. “That was beautiful,” he says in all sincerity.

We’re not sure Pacific Symphony maestro Carl St.Claire would agree. And maybe that’s the point.

Interested in joining the sprawl of sound? The Extreme Guitar Orchestra is recruiting for this month’s performance. Visit www.johnkingmusic.com for information and e-mail ashleyeckenweiler@hotmail.com to apply. John King’s Extreme Guitar Orchestra Festival takes place Saturday, March 29 at 5 p.m. Admission is free. For details, visit www.ocpac.org.

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