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In chamber music, the options are myriad and the choices highly personal. Southern California presenters in the genre run a gamut from the new and hip--the California EAR Unit at the L.A. County Museum of Art, for instance--to the traditional, tasteful and surprisingly admission-free concerts put on by the Fullerton Friends of Music. Serving audiences of different sophistications and tastes, our local series specialize in presenting international touring ensembles or offer strictly resident groups; they concentrate on new or recent repertory or mix their priorities.

But virtually all of them have one thing in common: They bring solid, often excellent, professionalism to their listeners.

Given all the variety, how does a chamber music lover make choices? Personally, what draws me most compellingly are those series that specialize in the unexpected. And do it--this is crucial-- in rooms appropriate in size and acoustics to the endeavor.

Since high quality of performance can be taken for granted all over town, choosing favorites is perhaps foolhardy. Nevertheless, here is a small sampling of mine:

Simply the Best

Amid all the local competition, the series that is simply the best--in venues, in consistent quality of performance, in the power to rejuvenate the listener as only live musical events can--is Chamber Music in Historic Sites, presented by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College.

MaryAnn Bonino, who founded the series in 1973, is the mastermind. She invented, in 1980, the format of matching venue to ensemble to repertory, which has yielded many memorable programs over the past 610 concerts. Consider the combination of the Dolores del Rio-Gibbons House in Santa Monica Canyon, in January 1984, with music from the 1920s and ‘30s by Milhaud, Ravel, Arthur Benjamin and Martinu. All that chic Gallic sensibility mixed with white walls, black linoleum floors, geometric windows and high-gloss modernity.

This season, beginning Oct. 24, this series has a lineup of 26 concerts--not counting 90 outreach and young people’s programs. Watch for the New England Spiritual Ensemble inside the newly restored First A.M.E Zion Church (Feb. 27); the Magellan String Quartet, playing Tan Dun, in the Harvey Aluminum House, designed by L.A.’s modernist master John Lautner (April 16) and the Vienna-based Altenberg Trio, in its West Coast debut, playing Beethoven and Schumann in the vaulted ballroom in the Canfield-Moreno estate overlooking Silver Lake (Jan. 30).

Bonino’s track record as a talent scout is superlative--the young musicians you hear on her programs up close and personal will no doubt be performing at larger venues, and at higher fees, soon. So pay particular attention to the many debuts on the schedule.

“With each new season,” Bonino says, “we try to top ourselves.” She usually delivers. (310) 954-4300.

Better and Better

Now 12 years after founding it, co-directors Jeff von der Schmidt and Jan Karlin keep improving Southwest Chamber Music. In the 1999-2000 season, Southwest will give 26 public performances and more than 50 in-school concerts and related events. With its core of local players supplemented with guest performers, the series emphasizes, as usual, 20th century and living composers and little-heard works from composers of the past. Whatever the music, the musicians of Southwest often ignite the spark in each item on its programs.

Where you might expect to hear Southwest at its best this season: Elliott Carter’s Quintet for Piano and Winds (Carter’s music is one of Southwest’s specialties) in February; and CalArts professor and jazz trumpeter Leo Wadada Smith’s First String Quartet in May, as well as Mexican composer Carlos Chavez’s “La Hija de Colquide” on the same program.

A particular highlight: the spring program of the late Mel Powell’s complete vocal works, as sung by resident soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, in March. Powell’s important vocal oeuvre, totaling only about 90 minutes, will be heard chronologically.

This season, Southwest will give its concerts in three venues: the intimate and attractive Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, the large but acoustically welcoming Pasadena Presbyterian Church and the elegant, smallish Zipper Hall at the Colburn School, in downtown Los Angeles.

One more reason to admire Southwest: its penchant for mounting repeat performances of new works. Says Schmidt, “I’m not insistent about giving first performances; I think it’s more important if one can do second, third or even fourth performances. Too many works languish after a premiere.” (800) 726-7147.

Recognizing Living Composers

One of the reasons to patronize Pacific Serenades is discoveries. The signature of the series, founded by composer-flutist Mark Carslon in 1986, is the commissioning of brand-new works by American composers, with the premieres then played in the context of standard repertory. The combination can be bracing and, in my experience, is usually effective.

The series begins its 14th season in February, introducing a new work by Carlson, who founded Pacific Serenades as an outlet for his double talents. Later in the lineup, two premieres will come from composers returning to the series, John Steinmetz (Feb. 5, 6 and 8) and Ian Krouse (March 11, 12 and 21). First-time commissionee Kathryn Mishell (May 20, 21, 30) is writing a string quartet for the ensemble. The concerts are given in different private homes and at the intimate, welcoming Neighborhood Church in Pasadena and at the Faculty Center at UCLA in Westwood.

The individual and ensemble virtuosity of these locally based players--who include clarinetist Gary Gray, cellist David Speltz, oboist Allan Vogel and violinist (and L.A. Philharmonic principal concertmaster) Martin Chalifour--often results in splendid performances.

Carlson counts as a “point of pride” the diverse audience, which numbers around 140 listeners and has remained loyal over this decade and a half. (323) 660-7742.

Worth the Drive

Highly visible only recently as a chamber-music venue, the Orange County Performing Arts Center presents most of its small-ensemble performances in its 258-seat theater, Founders Hall. But the concerts put on by impresario Aaron Egigian, senior director of music programming at OCPAC, bode well for building an audience to OCPAC’s new medium-size auditorium, planned to open during 2004-05.

What makes this operation one to watch is the quality it shares with Chamber Music in Historic Sites--the astuteness and good taste of the impresario in charge.

Among the highlights this season are appearances by the Borromeo String Quartet (Dec. 2), the American String Quartet with violist Brian Dembow (Jan. 15) and the Emerson String Quartet (April 14). Also on the series is Trevor Pinnock and his English Concert, who will perform on the series, but in Segerstrom Hall (March 16).

This is a heady and prestigious lineup for such a small room. I asked the center’s chief operating officer, Jerry Mandel, about the economics of presenting big-name classical artists--such as pianist Peter Serkin, who last season gave a recital in Founders Hall just a week after playing solo in the 3,000-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“Classical music loses money anyway,” he answered frankly, “[But] it all evens out in the big picture. The goal is great art.” (714) 740-7878.

Also for Your Consideration

Chamber Music Palisades: Delores Stevens and Susan Greenberg’s invention, Chamber Music Palisades is elegant in every way, including its handsome and acoustically pleasing location, the sanctuary at St. Matthew’s Church in Pacific Palisades. The new, four-concert season begins Oct. 27 with a program including a new work by Maria Newman--of the multi-branched Los Angeles family of composers--and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet. (310) 454-4024, (310) 459-2070.

South Bay Chamber Music Society: Previously just another admission-free series supported by Musicians Union Trust Funds, South Bay has in recent seasons upgraded the artistic level of its ensembles and has added a second, Sunday afternoon repeat concert. Its next set of concerts, at Harbor College and Pacific Unitarian Church in Rancho Palos Verde offers the Calico Winds playing Bach, Mahler and Schifrin, among others, in mid-November. (310) 374-2141.

Camerata Pacifica: Adrian Spence’s Santa Barbara-based Camerata Pacifica series began its 10th season in September at the Music Academy of the West. The jaunty flutist from Ireland has gathered around himself a core of a dozen players, including top-drawer Southland musicians such as violist Donald McInnes, pianist Joanne Pearce-Martin, violinist Roger Wilkie and cellist John Walz. Says Spence: “A concert should be friends playing for friends--and in a space appropriate to chamber music.” (805) 961-0570.

Laguna Chamber Music Society: Still admirable and still a favorite after all this time, this series, founded in 1959, was for years the most prestigious chamber-music presenter in Orange County and the equal of big-city colleagues such as Coleman Concerts and Music Guild. It still is. Since moving its operations to the Irvine Barclay Theatre in 1991, the society’s reputation for good taste in choosing ensembles and repertory has remained untarnished. For its 40th anniversary season, the series opens with the celebrated Guarneri String Quartet, Oct. 18 at the Barclay theater. (949) 249-2404.