Plucked from every genre

Elia Powers

The show is officially called Triple Play Concert: Guitars! It may as

well take the title Beth Nakao’s Experiment with Strings.

Nakao, the music director at Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist

Church in Costa Mesa, is in charge of selecting music for religious

services and booking artists for periodic concerts.

A self-described music historian, Nakao’s most recent project is

an exercise in collaboration and variation.

“I love introducing people to new elements,” she said. “The goal

is to show people the history of the guitar and where it is going.”

Nakao’s musical concept sounds like the hook to a new reality

show: What happens when three musicians from three different Southern

California cities, who have met only once and never played together,

perform on one stage?

An audience will find out the answer at 7 p.m. Saturday when

Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church hosts one of its Orange

Coast Concerts.

The three professional musicians met last week to discuss details

of the concert, a fusion of classical, blues and Middle Eastern

sounds.

“I racked my brain thinking of what we’d play,” said classical

guitarist Jon Minei. “To bring all three instruments together seemed

ridiculous.”

After the rehearsal, though, Minei said he had changed his mind.

The performers agreed on a suitable format: Each will play a

30-minute solo set, and all three plan to come together to play the

Simon and Garfunkel’s folk classic “Scarborough Fair / Canticle.”

Minei will join blues guitarist Peter Dobson, a Laguna Beach

resident, and veteran musician John Bilezikjian of Laguna Hills for

the show.

“It’s an adventure,” Bilezikjian said. “It’s a rather novel idea.

We are all professionals, so it should be a nice blend.”

Bilezikjian, who said he plays more than 50 instruments, is

bringing just one to Saturday’s performance. That is the oud, a

pear-shaped, Persian instrument that is heard in both folk and

classical music. It is not part of the guitar family, he notes.

He plays the instrument five nights a week, often at Greek

restaurants, and will be featured this June with the Boston Pops

Orchestra. Bilezikjian is a Hollywood regular, having played the oud

in dozens of movie scores, including “Mission: Impossible.”

He first heard sounds of the oud in Armenian music that his

parents played in their Los Angeles house. A first-generation

American, Bilezikjian proudly took possession of his grandfather’s

oud, which was made in 1928.

He listened to tapes and composed music based on what he heard.

Minei had a similar musical discovery.

While rummaging through a closet in his parents’ home, he found a

classical guitar left by his father’s friend in Japan.

“I thought I had invented classical guitar on my own,” Minei

remembers.

He played with music throughout his childhood and studied music at

UC Irvine and USC. Minei, who made his concert premiere in Austria at

age 19, is a music teacher and director of Opus Music in Torrance.

Minei said he is looking forward to hearing a fusion of sounds on

Saturday.

“It will certainly be an interesting night,” he said.

* ELIA POWERS is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

He may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or by e-mail at

[email protected].