LONG BEACH SYMPHONY : BRAVE NEW SEASON FOR ORCHESTRA

“We need a lot of courage as we start this new season,” says Murry Sidlin, continuing music director of the revived Long Beach Symphony, adding, “We haven’t played together for a year.”

Indeed. After one artistically successful concert, opening its 1984-85 season, the Long Beach ensemble closed up shop last November. In the following six months, its financial troubles were duly chronicled by the media and analyzed by a mayor-appointed “Blue Ribbon” committee.

Two months ago, its debts now consolidated--and on the way to being paid off--the restructured Long Beach Symphony announced a brave, new, short season.

Sidlin, the Connecticut-based conductor who has served as music director of the Long Beach group since 1980, talked to The Times on a recent weekend visit to California during which he was finalizing plans for the reduced, seven-concert season the orchestra begins Nov. 23 in Terrace Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center.

He was taking care of other symphony business too.

“At 10 this morning, I met with the superintendent of schools, to discuss our continuing commitment to education. Then, an important lunch with two members of our board. At 2, a committee meeting here (at the new, low-rent offices of the symphony).”

In the 10 months since the orchestra stopped playing, fund-raising events have occupied the symphony’s supporters. The latest such event takes place Saturday at Blair Field, a baseball arena in Recreation Park.

It is a Sousa concert to be conducted by Sousa-impersonator Keith Brion; at this event, members of the orchestra will be joined by the 6th Pennsylvania Regimental Band and a number of local bands.

Sponsored by the Unocal Foundation, the event, according to Mary Newkirk, general manager of the orchestra, “could bring in as much as $75,000.” Tickets are priced from $65 down to $1.

As the new regime takes over, Newkirk reports, “We start, for the first time in a long time, with cash reserves at the beginning of the season. Our debt position is this: We have reached full settlement, or at least a repayment schedule, with 95% of our creditors.” In July, Newkirk told The Times that the accumulated debt had reached $609,000.

Sidlin describes the mood among Long Beach Symphony patrons as “Revving up. We are excited by the opportunity to come back. We know we can rebuild the orchestra we had. But, at the same time, we realize we have to proceed cautiously.”

Except for the principal clarinetist, all first-desk players have been retained, Sidlin reports, naming the players one by one. “It’s very important to keep the same players, and I’m happy to see that’s been done. Their loyalty is one of the things that accounts for the quality we were able to achieve.”

But now is the time to re-evaluate the orchestra’s role in the community, he says.

“We know there is an audience out there--but we never had the chance to find out much about them.

“For instance: We gave a Wagner concert (in March, 1982) which seemed to be artistically successful, though the audiences were small. The problem was, we couldn’t afford to advertise, so we never found out if the audience was there to support such a concert.”

The frustrations of operating on a limited promotional budget are just part of what Sidlin calls “Our constant search for an identity. Some people tell me there are not enough music lovers in the Long Beach area to support our orchestra. That may or may not be true, but we haven’t been able to document it.”

As the orchestra enters a new period, at least some of the mistakes made in the past will not be repeated, Sidlin promises.

“We have to test the waters. And we have to do it right. And intelligently. If we feel an impulse to put together an all-Kuhnau program, or an all-Schoenberg night, we have to suppress those feelings--they could be disastrous.”