IN COMPOSER'S WAKE, FRIENDS PRODUCE A FLOOD OF PRAISE.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

BEFORE HIS DEATH in 1996, Toru Takemitsu created kaleidoscopic works for the concert hall and cinema that were sometimes meditative, other times epic. And no two pieces were ever alike.

So say his friends and admirers, who will be taking part in tonight's tribute to the late, great composer from postwar Japan during a concert at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Esa-Pekka Salonen directs the Los Angeles Philharmonic through the Takemitsu retrospective, which features works such as ``riverrun,'' a piano concerto-like piece commissioned and premiered by the orchestra in the '80s but then never again played.

``There's a kind of culture in orchestras where everybody is focused on new pieces and you can sometimes forget that there's an obligation to take care of these children once they're born; get them into the repertoire,'' Steven Stucky, consulting composer of new music for the L.A. Philharmonic, says.

The piece ``riverrun'' is just part of tonight's program. Also featured are the works of his closest composer colleagues - Oliver Messiaen (``Un sourire'') and Oliver Knussen (``Flourish With Fireworks'') - as well as a sampling of Takemitsu's orchestral music (``Twill by Twilight,'' ``Rain, Tree, Sketch II,'' ``Les Yeux Clos I'') and film scores (``Music of Training and Rest'' from ``Jose Torees,'' ``Funeral Music'' from ``Black Rain'' and ``Waltz'' from ``Face of Another'') accompanied by clips.

Much admired

What makes Takemitsu worthy of such a tribute involves more than just his music, says Stucky. It involves his spirit.

``Anybody who knew him loved him instantly,'' Stucky says. Although he never met Takemitsu himself, he offers, ``People just can't get enough of remembering him, I think, because of those personal connections.''

Takemitsu was revered for his warmth, humor and genius as a self-taught composer drawn to the French greats such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Messiaen.

``They were important models for him,'' Stucky says. ``So we asked ourselves: If Toru was here, who would he like to be on stage with? And we thought Olie was certainly one of those people.''

Messiaen was both Takemitsu's contemporary and musical hero, according to Stucky.

``His music is very much in the same kind of sound world, and so there's a place where you can see a context between France and Japan that helps you understand where to fit Takemitsu into world music,'' he says.

While Takemitsu's recognition is most noticeable in the concert hall, where his modern works are still played by great orchestras, his film scores are rarely, if ever, heard.

``This was a huge part of his career, but it's music that people don't get to hear very much or even see because a lot of the films aren't available,'' Stucky says. ``We did a lot of research looking for movie scores to be played, and you kind of had to take those few which were available.''

Cinema fan

Takemitsu loved movies. He wrote scores for 93 Japanese films. Probably his best-known among American audiences was ``Ran,'' Akira Kurosawa's 1985 epic based on the Shakespeare play ``King Lear.''

The score from ``Ran'' is a favorite of Peter Grilli, president of the Japanese Society of Boston and well-known specialist on Japanese history and culture. He was also Takemitsu's friend.

Grilli says that he and Takemitsu were moviegoing buddies in Japan. The two met through Grilli's father, who had moved his family to Japan following the war to work with the occupation government and then decided to stay on indefinitely.

``My father became a music critic for one of Japan's main newspapers and often helped young Japanese musicians get fellowships to study in the United States at such institutions as the Juilliard School,'' Grilli says. ``Although my father wasn't crazy about contemporary music, it was through my father that I inherited Takemitsu. Because he was passionate about movies and I loved movies, he and I became much closer friends than he and my father ever did.''

Years later, while running a film and performing-arts program at the Japan Society of New York, Grilli built a film series around the scores of his famous friend.

Takemitsu flew in from Japan to help Grilli select 25 films for the tribute, which further tightened the bonds of their friendship.

With his friend now gone, Grilli says that it's up to him to give people a sense of the man who became the unofficial cultural ambassador for Japan. He plans to give a 40-minute preconcert talk Wednesday complete with excerpts from the documentary ``Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu,'' which he produced two years before Takemitsu's death.

A TRIBUTE TO TORU TAKEMITSU

Who: Featuring the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen

Where: UCLA's Royce Hall, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood.

When: 8 tonight.

Tickets: $35 to $60. Call [phone] or www.ticketmaster.com

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Musicians will salute the late Toru Takemitsu tonight at UCLA. The prolific artist wrote music for the orchestra hall and the multiplex.