MURRY SIDLIN: PLANTING THE SEED IN LONG BEACH

Long Beach Symphony Music Director Murry Sidlin labels the orchestra’s 1985-86 season “somewhat conservative.” But in light of the fiscal crisis the orchestra has faced since last fall, he says conservative programming “is necessary right now.

“We must proceed with caution,” Sidlin explains. “We are, after all, trying both to please our loyal subscribers and to attract new ones.”

The Long Beach orchestra, which is reeling from a financial crisis in which it reportedly accumulated a debt of $609,000, has not given a performance since November, 1984. In the 1985-86 season, it will play seven concerts. Meantime, a new administration is working to continue to reduce the debt.

For the opening concert of the reconstituted season Nov. 23, Sidlin has chosen “an all-orchestral program starting with Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms,’ the text of which begins, ‘Make a joyful noise.’

“Then, for the 85th birthday of Aaron Copland, his ‘Appalachian Spring.’ Finally, Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations, because, when we thought we were giving our last concert, we played the “Nimrod’ Variation. Now to put an end to sadness, the whole work.”

For the Feb. 20 event, to be played by a chamber-size Long Beach Symphony, Sidlin promises “an ‘Amadeus’ concert with works by both Mozart and Salieri--the Symphony No. 36 and the ‘Sinfonia Veneziana.’ Then Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act, two-scene opera, ‘Mozart and Salieri,’ which gives Pushkin’s version of Mozart’s death.

“The program for April 3 is not definite, but will probably include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto (with Symphony principals Kathleen Lenski and John Walz and a pianist to be announced) and a big Romantic symphony, like Sibelius’ Second.”

Sidlin will conduct all seven concerts himself, including the two scheduled pop concerts Feb. 2 and May 10, and two performances of Handel’s “Messiah” in First Congregational Church of Long Beach, Dec. 20 and 21.

Asked for his reaction to the reduced season, the 45-year old conductor says he is “very emotional” that the season is going to take place at all. “When we cut our 50th anniversary season short last November, it was very painful,” he says. “There were times when we wondered if we could ever rally the community around this orchestra.”

Sidlin says he takes the cutbacks philosophically: “Maybe this is what we needed to do all along--to give the minimum in order to stabilize. To plant the seed.”

For Sidlin, the major unanswered question of the coming season is, “How many of our orchestra players will return to us?

“Under normal circumstances, I think you would have seen most of our players flying the coop before now. But that isn’t the case,” he says. “I hear the majority of them are now waiting to be recalled. It is going to be a pleasure to reassemble our orchestral family. One of the measures of the orchestra’s artistic success is that the players like each other. We all like each other.”

AT THE BOWL: Christopher Hogwood and Henry Mancini, veteran Hollywood Bowl conductors of different stripes, return to Cahuenga Pass and the summer podium of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for this third week in the 64th Bowl season.

Tuesday night, the British conductor, with American pianist Russell Sherman as his soloist, will lead a pops program consisting of Rossini’s “Barbiere di Siviglia” Overture, the Piano Concerto of Edvard Grieg and “Aurora’s Wedding” from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

Thursday, with the assistance of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and vocal soloists Daisietta Kim, Claudine Carlson, Jerry Hadley and Herbert Perry, Hogwood leads a four-part, Mozart and Handel program. That agenda consists of the Mass in C, K. 317 (“Coronation”), plus two Coronation Anthems (“Zadok the Priest” and “The King Shall Rejoice”) and a Concerto in D for orchestra.

Mancini’s soloist, at the Friday and Saturday evening Philharmonic concerts, is Irish flutist James Galway. In fact, these two Bowl concerts inaugurate a 10-city, United States tour by Mancini and Galway, which includes stops in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Meadowlands (New Jersey), Virginia (Wolf Trap Festival) and Detroit.

Their program lists some of the expected Mancini-composed repertory (music from “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Charade,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Pink Panther”), plus excerpts from more recent Mancini scores (“The Thorn Birds”), and two new pieces: “Cameo for Flute . . . for James,” written for Galway, and the “Overture to a Pops Concert,” composed by Mancini for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Pops.

In addition, Mancini will conduct songs by Hoagy Carmichael, a tribute to Victor Young and an excerpt from Miklos Rozsa’s score for “Ben-Hur.”

Next Sunday night, the Philharmonic Institute Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, continues its twilight series with a concert performance of Puccini’s “La Boheme.” In the singing cast will be Roberta Alexander, Karen Huffstodt, Jerry Hadley, Dale Duesing, Peter Derick, Willard White and Michael Gallup; the Pacific Chorale will assist.

GRANTS: Pacific Northwest Ballet has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant is to be used for commissioning new choreographic work, including fresh adaptations of existing pieces, but the uses of grant funds are limited to choreographic fees and the cost of rehearsal time; all other production expenses will have to be subsidized by other sources. Kent Stowell and Francis Russell are the artistic directors of the Seattle-based company. . . . In fulfilling the terms of its National Endowment for the Arts challenge grant, the Cabrillo Music Festival has surpassed its goal of $32,500 by 87%. Due to this response, the NEA has now issued a new challenge to Cabrillo: If the Northern California festival can raise an additional $14,250 by Sept. 1, NEA will disburse the entire $82,500 grant at once (instead of releasing that amount over a three-year period). According to Executive Director Laurie MacDougal, the income from the grant will be used in part to fund an expansion that will double the festival’s current seating capacity; by the terms of a three-year plan recently submitted to the NEA, festival performances will be moved in 1986 to a tent capable of seating 1,000 people. Location of the tent has yet to be determined. . . . Among the 24 Dance/Film/Video grants recently announced by the National Endowment for the Arts, and totaling $301,980 for fiscal 1985, five went to West Coast producers. Those recipients were: Intersection (San Francisco), $10,000; Los Angeles Area Dance Alliance, $10,000; New Performance Gallery (San Francisco), $5,000; On the Boards (Seattle), $3,500, and Rudy Perez Dance Theatre (Los Angeles), $15,000.