It was entirely fitting that the culminating concert of the 14th Ventura Music Festival spotlighted young talent with a very bright future.

Ventura-born soprano Nicole Cabell and Mexican tenor David Lomeli followed in the wake of artists who were significantly skilled, with age no barrier. While there were plenty of 40-somethings on the festival's stages, there seemed to be even more 20- and 30-somethings.

For audiences, there were many revelations in style and focus among the eclectic group of soloists and ensembles. But most of all, there was the realization that the singular combination of talent, intelligence and hard work can cause careers to blossom early and hold significant promise for the future.

That there was lots of gray hair among the festival audiences, but very little among festival performers, says a lot about the adventurous outlook of artistic director Nuvi Mehta and festival planners, and even more about those in the seats who are open to new and exciting experiences.

There was very old music — Concord Ensemble's Baroque experts — and very new music — Turtle Island Quartet's classical crossover mix of string skills and jazz sensibilities — featured during the nine-day festival, which ended over the weekend, and lots in between.

The biggest audiences came to the biggest "venues," including outdoors on the Ventura College campus where the multilingual pizzazz of Pink Martini engaged a crowd of 3,000, and the Ventura High School auditorium, where nearly 1,000 rounded off the celebration as the honey-voiced Cabell, 30, and the 20-something Lomeli stirred the assembled to shout bravos (and bravas) with the duo's fresh voices, hers luminous and entrancingly nuanced, his powered by unfettered enthusiasm.

Both are recent award winners, with Cabell topping the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and Lomeli taking both opera and zarzuela prizes in Placido Domigo's 2006 Operalia. 

Other standouts among the prodigiously talented younger performers were Italian pianist Giuseppe Albanese in a powerhouse program, violinist Leila Josefowicz and the specifically dubbed Rising Stars, pianist Sara Daneshpour and guitarist Gonzalo Arias Contreras.

Festival notes

n Looking like a sylph but playing like a goddess, Josefowicz attacked her program of gnarly works with the assurance earned in a career that began early and is going full bore at 30.

Josefowicz made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, but east county residents with long memories may recall her performing before that in the Westlake Village area where she lived as a teen. Since then she has built a career of impressive concert appearances with orchestras from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

At the Ventura festival on May 6 — performing in the Community Presbyterian Church — she was joined by pianist John Novacek, a distinguished soloist in his own right who previously has been featured locally.

A very empathetic team, the two moved with ease through an evening of high contrast and quick changes, in works that found special points of interest among the repertoire of some of the world's most fascinating composers, including Brahms, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

Contemporary Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur was represented by the clever minimalist "Conversio" for piano and violin in which Josefowicz and Novacek "spoke" in synchronized bursts of sound that implied gamesmanship as well as synchronism.

Schubert's Rondo Brilliant in B Minor finished the program with exuberance and fire.

Switching gears entirely for a brief encore, Josefowicz and Novacek returned for a wistful jazz take on Charlie Chaplin's "Smile."

n With its purity of tone and harmony, Concord Ensemble took its audience on Thursday night in Mission San Buenaventura back to Baroque. Six singers, joining in the "Appassionata" festival theme with its program of works by a parade of 16th- and 17th-century Italian composers, provided the music that allowed the ensemble to demonstrate its finesse and wide-ranging command of mood and sound. 

Singers and players alike captured the variegated expressions of the period and filled the not-quite-as-antique mission with heavenly sounds.

n Skipping forward more than three centuries and many time zones, the next night's edgy jazz as played by the astonishing Turtle Island Quartet continued to cater to the festival's contrasting enthusiasms.

The string quartet, whose world-class players can transform their classical instruments into groovy tools, honored the originality of the late jazz saxophonist John Coltrane while putting on a display of what dedicated experts can eke out of traditionally staid classical instruments.

A little amplification of founding member Mark Summer's cello, plus his remarkable ability to make his instrument simultaneously sound like cello, bass and drums, gave the quartet a sound like no other.

The remarkable program took place Friday night in Ventura Missionary Church

n Closing the festival on Saturday night, Cabell and Lomeli, with The Festival Orchestra led by Mehta, did vocal justice to some of the most popular arias and duets from opera literature; the two cusp-of-career singers moved easily from tragedy to comedy in works by Gounod ("Romeo et Juliette," "Faust"), Massenet ("Le Cid"), Bizet ("Carmen"), Donizetti ("Don Pasquale," "L'elisir d'amore") and Puccini ("La Boheme").

Called back by the audience for encores, Cabell sang Puccini's moving "O Mio Babbino Caro" and Lomeli chose the robust "Granada," delivering it with panache.

Mehta himself was so engrossed in the opening notes of "Granada" that his baton flew out of his hand and nearly into the lap of concertmaster Elizabeth Pitcairn, before all was back in place for the soaring rendition.

What's next

The 15th Ventura Music Festival in 2009 will take a Russian-Jewish turn, with artists scheduled to include the Jerusalem String Quartet, pianist Alexander Ghindin, David Krakauer and Klezmer Madness and Burning River Brass with its Russian Carnival program.

Paquito d'Rivera will bring his group Funk Tango for a pre-event on Valentine's Day and Mark O'Connor and his Appalachian Waltz Trio will provide an early calling card with a Nov. 1 concert.

Details will be available at http://www.venturaarts.org.