MUSIC REVIEW : Music, Sculpture Blend Well in UCSD Premiere : Composer: There was an air of reverie as John Cage’s violin solo was performed while a bamboo and ice creation plopped pebbles into a pool.

LA JOLLA — There was no incense burning at Wednesday’s premiere of John Cage’s composition “One 6,” performed in the presence of Mineko Grimmer’s three-dimensional sound sculpture “Untitled.” However, considering the worshipful demeanor of the audience at UC San Diego’s Warren Studio A, incense would not have been out of place at this unique mixed-media meditation.

Asked before the performance if he thought this combination of music and sculpture might start a trend, Cage replied that it would more likely revive one. The event’s unmistakable element of ritual elucidated his remark. It also brought the technologically oriented university music community, whose new Warren Studios are crammed with the latest high-tech recording equipment, in touch with art’s more primal function.

Of course, some may have attended the premiere just to be in the same room with the composer, the unassuming 78-year-old apostle of avant-garde. But the assembly’s uncanny silence was ample evidence that the serene duet of violin and gently dropping pebbles commanded their complete attention.

Grimmer’s arresting, almost mesmerizing, roughly 10-foot-high sculpture pleased the eye with its graceful arrangement of shimmering bamboo rods suspended from a simple framework at each side of an informal stage at the front of the room.

The airy, sculptural instrument engaged the ear with its ingratiating percussion of randomly dropping pebbles, which fell from a melting pyramid-shaped block of ice suspended high above the layers of bamboo. The descending pebbles made a sharp crack when they struck the rods and a muted plop when they landed in a reflecting pool at the sculpture’s base. And when some pebbles hit two piano wires tightly strung and tuned to the interval of a perfect fourth across the reflecting pool, they caused a resonant twang like the sound of a grandfather clock striking the hour.

To this random ostinato, UCSD violinist Janos Negyesy intoned “One 6.” A succession of extremely long notes, occasionally overlapping but usually exactingly discrete, Cage’s violin solo floated eerily through the room. Negyesy employed a range of timbres, from sweetly focused to harsh and penetrating, to modulate the stark contours of the work. Throughout the 45-minute performance, Negyesy displayed the control and concentration of a skilled tightrope walker.

The symbiosis of the two works, aided by Alan Johnson’s subtly changing lighting, proved surprisingly strong and grew as the composition gently unfolded. To Grimmer’s emotionally charged sculpture, Cage’s composition brought a deeply centering focus. To Cage’s almost disembodied tones, the sculpture brought playful cascades of percussion. It is not likely that either piece alone would have engaged the full attention of its viewers or auditors for such an extended time.