More than most groups around, the California EAR Unit still believes in the idealistic and not unreasonable notion that high and low culture can meet on some middle ground and just get along.

That was the subplot of its kickoff concert in this season's residency series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wednesday. It was a program full of premieres—in the world and in L.A.—plugged and unplugged…

Kitty Brazelton's cheeky "Exposition, Development & Recapitulation of the Inner Ear" was perhaps the most structurally traditional work of the lot, but with plenty of irony attached. She thumbs her nose at musical analysis and projects a mock-serious air… the music is… exuberant… a solidly expressive vehicle for the full forces of the EAR Unit, rough and ready, and smart.