Improvisational Vocals and ‘Hums’ Headed for City Hall : Bonnie Barnett’s style has been called avant garde and unorthodox. So what’s she doing at Ventura’s seat of government?

When Bonnie Barnett opens her mouth to sing, as she will at the Ventura City Hall on Saturday night, you’re never quite sure what’s liable to come out.

She tends to push her voice into sonic corners most of us only dream of. She creates abstract tapestries of sound, deals in multi-phonic rumbles, squeals and makes other unusual noises that, for two decades, have linked her with both the avant garde and world music traditions. The Los Angeles-based vocalist is a brave, accomplished soul working in the unorthodox realm of “extended vocal” techniques.

But to hear her tell it, the term unorthodox may be a misnomer.

“You can see, all over the world, people are doing all kinds of extended vocal things. It’s not really exotic, in a certain sense. It’s very human to make all these strange sounds. It’s just that we’re conditioned by our culture to think that there’s a narrow bandwidth of approved expression.”

No doubt, when the Barnett Band comes to City Hall, norms will be left out in the cold. For one thing, there will be no music stands in the house. For Barnett, improvisational music has been her primary focus for several years now.

Barnett’s Ventura appearance will also serve as a local representation of the Los Angeles new music scene, which is enjoying good health of late.

Some of the key players will be on stage with Barnett, who says she feels fortunate to have them. “With the band that will be up in Ventura, for me, it feels very star-studded,” she said. Reed player Vinnie Golia, a longtime pillar of the jazz that is left in Los Angeles, runs the Nine Winds label, on which Barnett’s debut CD, “Delay in Gravity,” was recently released.

Guitarist Nels Cline, also a frequent and sympathetic collaborator with Barnett, has been hosting New Music Mondays at the Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica. The Monday series serves as a kind of reliable, regular oasis for new music in the city.

Also on hand will be wind player Richard Wood, bassist Steuart Liebig, and drummer Billy Mintz. Mahacuisinart, Ventura’s own band of mad merry makers, will open the show.

Certainly, Barnett herself is one of the stars of the West Coast new music scene, and on more than one front. Primarily, her work is divided between improvisatory settings, with a constellation of musicians in Los Angeles, New York and Europe--including the Swiss group The Zone--and the unique Barnettian phenomena called “hums.”

She began staging hums in 1981 and, to date, has realized 54 separate such “public participatory events.” In them, large groups of people are instructed to hum, sing and otherwise drone together, creating an undulant cloud of droning, interacting sound which can be very hypnotic. Her hums have sometimes involved live radio and satellite links, “where singers in more than one city were mixed live via satellite.” One such event took place in 1992, when she used videophone technology to link up audiences in Santa Monica and Paris.

“Now I’m working toward three millennium hums, in 1999, 2000, and 2001. There’s always a big controversy over when the actual millennium really is, so I decided to solve that by having one each year for three years.

“Meanwhile, the improvisational work is something that I adore. When I was in graduate school studying 20th-Century music, I was really into scored vocal and choral music. Now, the stuff that really interests me is the improvised interaction between players.”

After studying 20th-Century music at the University of Illinois and at UC San Diego, where she got her master’s degree in 1972, Barnett found herself increasingly attracted to music without paper.

“It came down to a question of self discovery and then finding ethnic sources that are alive and healthy around the world. By doing your own thing, because you’re a human being, you are joining the big sea of vocal tradition.

“Back then, I felt quite isolated. But there was Meredith Monk and Joan La Barbara, who were inspirations. Yoko Ono was a total inspiration. If you listen to her double album, ‘The Fly,’ now, it could be put out as a brand new album. People have no idea that this stuff was being done in the ‘60s.”

Barnett’s new CD may help in spreading the gospel of her adventures.

Details

* WHAT: The Barnett Band, with Mahacuisinart.

* WHERE: Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St.

* WHEN: Saturday at 8 p.m.

* COST: $5.

* ETC: Call 643-5701.