Its music ranges from soft jazz through classical influences and into folk and rock. The members play, with gentle complexity, "an acoustic/electric blend of listening music for the silent majority, those patrons who do not ordinarily frequent the bars." Says guitarist Pat Noonan: "We are trying to counteract an apathy in people: where the stimulation is no longer there, but an ability and willingness to listen and enjoy still lingers. We play rule-breaking, category-denying music which is trying to be more, not less, popular."

Chimes in fellow guitarist John Houshmand, "Popular music today sounds as though we were having an orgy five years ago, and now we're throwing a party in memory of it. Why not just have another orgy?"

Says Houshmand, "The consort idea was born from a desire to expand the music, to enliven it and aim for heights by blending people and musical ideas, to see if we could incorporate it all. It's also a sure way to endure, it provides optimum flexibility."

The Consort has endured since 1973 when Noonan, Houshmand and Levi played open jams with up to ten other people of the Old Campus at Yale where all three were enrolled. "It was very poetic," as Houshmand remembers it, "but only three people stuck it out." Those three recorded an album in 1975 which carried them through a self-promoted tour of Colorado. The album is still played on some of those stations where Houshmand, Noonan and Levi called, visited, and gave interviews to push their music. Only recently have they sold out the first pressing, forcing them to consider another. The second album, Laurasia, has just been released. On it are combined the efforts of nine consorters.

For most of their New Haven dates they've been performing as a four-man unit. Houshmand and Noonan weave a middle with their two guitars, twelve string and six or electric or pedal steel, respectively. The guitars interlace, creating a ground on top of which Paul Lieberman's sax or flute embellishes, and under which Jim Lyden's electric bass percolates. They range from all-American flat-picking to Brazilian samba, with stops for meditative jazz and sea-shanty reggae in between. An average set might include the Paul Siebel country ballad, "Louise," done up in jug band with what Houshmand describes as "just the right amount of sleaze," a witty, satirical send-up of the Guggenheim Museum, the Ralph Towner/Paul Winter Consort theme song "Icarus," and "Twilight Barking," an extended Eastern-influenced piece with sax and guitar playing double lead a la the Allman Brothers.

Lieberman comes from a classical background through soul bands, Lyden comes from soul bands and is currently studying classical playing. Noonan listens to rock and is learning to synthesize sounds on his six-string and pedal steel. Houshmand is self-taught, with Towner a powerful influence, but lately had been paying more attention to multi-tonal and polyrhythmic forms. One of his compositions, "How Monks go Blind," is based on Balinese gamelan music.

Their first album, East River by Noonan, Levi & Houshmand (or vice versa, as they like to think of it), is rough in places and in recording quality, but distinct, satisfying, and rich acoustic forays shine through. On stage, they sustain extended low-key improvisation, of a reflective nature, with sophisticated calypso, reggae and samba pieces. Or, as Houshmand explains it, "up there, it's like we're operating on the audience; first we'll put 'em in an ethereal cereal, then we'll give them an up-number."

Laurasia, their second album, produced by the group for their own label, wends its way further down the stream. The cover photo, an aerial shot by John Houshmand of water flowing through the Bosporus Straits, time-honored meeting place of East and West, underlines the theme stated in the music within. The guitars and wind instruments cascade Eastern melodies against Western progressions, while compositions and vocals by two female Consort members, lend high, cool Rocky Mountain breeze to the proceedings.

Each musician possesses satisfactory skill, but none imposes it on the audience. Playing together and playing-for become paramount concerns. They do show tunes, like "Summertime," from the musical Porgy and Bess ("what's a 'musical Porgy'? asks Houshmand) in sparse and clear clarinet tones, or "My Favorite Things," a musical comedy number which was a favorite of John Coltrane's. They do popular music, sometimes folk, like Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi." And they do a lot of soft jazz, like Pat Metheny's "Unity Village," a guitar strategy for clear steel and nimble nylon strings. Each piece is performed, polished and presented, with intelligence and self-awareness.

Although they play to entertain, and subscribe to no easy musical context, East River Consort is serious about their music. The Consort concept, explains Noonan, is both "a curse and a blessing. There is an element of subversion with members coming and going, but each change allows us to rework arrangements, focusing on specific aspects. The addition of a singer means three and four part harmonies, that of a tabla player requires concentrating on rhythmic subtleties. What we've created is a kind of band and conservatory at the same time. We end up learning a lot."

"Look," interrupts Houshmand, "how can we say, 'hey, you're in a band, you can't go to England,' when that experience will undoubtedly enrich that person? The commitment we ask is a kind of two-way street, you're free to come and go. We use different people for different ideas, gigs, records, but it's all one band. It's sort of post-facto commitment."

Houshmand is the most intense of the group, on-stage at least. It is he who dives into long introspective excursions, and he who adventures out to the limits of Western and Eastern music, blending the two. Says he, "we still operate according to 18th century rules of tonality in the West. But we can accept those rules and still break them. Western rhythm just can't be properly taught, the music's greatest achievement is its harmonies. I still prefer ethnic rhythmic structures." Houshmand's constructs make some strange jumps and strange combinations, but always manage to work. Chides Noonan, "when John comes up with a song he's really proud of, that song is usually really weird." To Houshmand, "what's there is infinite, so any slice is, by nature, myopic."

Maintaining a catholic selection of myopic slices, stuck together with commitment and hope, changing and refining, yielding and refusing to yield to compromise, East River Consort's music flows ever on, subscribing to the old Zen saying, "You can never step in the same river twice."