POPS TO GET NEW FORMAT

San Diego Symphony music director David Atherton will make his San Diego Pops debut this coming season, conducting both the gala opening concerts on June 25-28 and an all-Tchaikovsky extravaganza in August.

In a press conference held in the foyer of Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Atherton outlined the 12-week 1986 summer season, prefacing his remarks with sobering reference to the orchestra’s current fiscal problems.

“As all of you know, we need every penny we can get--in both earned and in contributed income--and the pops is integral to that end,” Atherton stated.

Although no successor to former resident pops conductor Matthew Garbutt has been appointed, ultimate responsibility for pops programming has been assumed by Atherton. He stressed that neither he nor the pops board wants to significantly alter the financially successful pops formula--12 weeks of outdoor concerts at Hospitality Point, Mission Bay, with weekly fireworks and food and drink service in cabaret seating.

But the type of programming used over the last three seasons--the San Diego Pops Orchestra made its debut in the summer of 1983--has come under fire from both winter subscribers and the city’s music critics.

“With some 8,000 people attending weekly pops concerts, we didn’t want to lose those folks, but we do want to attract as wide a variety of people as we can,” Atherton said. This summer, the seemingly obligatory all-Gershwin programs are gone, and three of the programs will be devoted to individual mainstream classical composers: Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

“The format for most of the programs will follow the Boston Pops format, slightly modified in San Diego terms,” Atherton said. This format includes two intermissions, dividing the program into a more classically oriented opening section, a middle section with a guest soloist, and a lighter finale.

Most of the guest conductors will be familiar faces to San Diego audiences. Concertmaster Andres Cardenes will conduct an all-Mozart program--”An Evening With ‘Amadeus’ “--on July 9-12, in which he will play the solo in Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto.

Assistant conductor David Commanday will conduct the season finale Sept. 10-13, an all-Beethoven evening with “Wellington’s Victory,” a cannon and fireworks spectacle that will replace the traditional Tchaikovsky “1812 Overture” display.

For audiences already nostalgic for Garbutt’s unique brand of podium humor, the erstwhile tuba virtuoso will appear in a single program, July 16-19, called “By Popular Demand.” The all-Tchaikovsky night will feature British pianist John Lill in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, a program that Atherton and the pops will repeat at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles Aug. 22 and 23.

“An Evening With the Glenn Miller Orchestra” conducted by saxophonist Dick Gerhart Aug. 20-23, and the appearance of English jazz luminary John Dankworth (Aug. 13-16) are designed to appeal to jazz aficionados, although Atherton stressed that orchestral fare will round out both programs.

Conductors Richard Hayman and Newton Wayland, both former arrangers with Arthur Fiedler’s Boston Pops, will return to the San Diego Pops podium with their customary lightweight fare.

Individual ticket prices will remain the same as last season, from $16 for VIP cabaret seating to $6.50 for gallery seating in the bleachers. Season tickets for new subscribers will go on sale March 25.