By Ted AYALA

The local festivities for composer Tigran Mansurian’s 75th birthday, which Dilijan Chamber Series kicked off earlier this month, continues this Sunday at UCLA.

Beginning at 2 p.m. at the school’s Schoenberg Hall, the Lark Music School Choir of Glendale will be joined by the VEM String Quartet and other performers in a program devoted to the work of one of today’s great composers.

The intense and austerely beautiful choral work “Ars Poetica” serves as the program’s centerpiece, which also includes a pair of pieces by two Armenian composers from the generations preceding Mansurian, Alexander Spendiaryan and Edvard Mirzoyan.

Dilijan artistic director Movses Pogossian expressed the hope earlier this month that the concert will become the foundation for an Armenian music studies program at UCLA. A course in Armenian music taught by Vatsche Barsoumian, executive director and founder of both Dilijan and the Lark Musical Society in Glendale, a competition for Armenian art song singers, a scholarship for the study of Armenian music, and more are among the activities set to be offered by the school beginning in the next few months.

General admission tickets are $14; $11 for UCLA students, faculty, and staff. For tickets and more information, call (818) 500-9997, visit www.music.ucla.edu or email the Lark Music Society at info@larkmusicalsociety.com. To read Ted’s full interview, visit www.cvweekly.com/LEISURE.

  Ted Ayala