ARTS NOTES : SYMPHONY TO PLAY FOR FREE IN PARK

The 85-member Garden Grove Symphony will begin its second season with a free outdoor “Summer Symphony in the Park” concert at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Village Green Park, Euclid and Main streets in Garden Grove.

The program will include music by Von Suppe, Liszt, Gliere and Tchaikovsky (the “1812 Overture”). Tenor Dennis Mills Heath will sing arias and songs by Puccini, Bizet, Sondheim and Porter.

“During our first year, literally every one of our concerts (in the 1,500-seat Don Wash Auditorium) was a sell-out,” conductor Edward Peterson said. “That really is unusual for the first year of an orchestra. And we finished the season in the black. All our bills are completely paid, and we’re starting to get money in the bank for the next season.”

(According to Barbara Ness, general manager of the organization, last year’s budget was $80,000. She is projecting a $105,000 budget for 1986-87.)

Peterson’s goal for the orchestra, which includes union, community and student musicians, is “to be thought of as a very serious regional orchestra. We’re very much a building and learning orchestra in the community,” the 40-year-old conductor said. “As the symphony is growing, we are also taking an audience along with us.”

Peterson’s strategy is to program music that “appeals to the widest range of people.”

“I really feel that there is no bad music and that everything can be done in fine taste at the concerts.”

However, he said, he is committed to staying within the orchestra’s financial resources.

“I want the orchestra to expand intelligently and gradually so that the income we can expect from the year is enough to carry the orchestra through the year,” he explained. “The last thing I would ever like to do with this group is to cancel a concert.

“I want the orchestra to grow as far as it possibly can. I don’t know what the limits are, and I wouldn’t want to set limits. I don’t even see the peak in sight at this point. But we’re trying to make sure that whatever we do is done with credibility so that people can rely on us and know that we’re going to be around for a long time.”

The season will continue at the Don Wash Auditorium, 11271 Stanford Ave. in Garden Grove:

--Oct. 25, 8 p.m. “Space Fantasy.” Music by Holst, Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, John Williams.

--Dec. 6, 8 p.m. “American Airlines Flight No. 48 to Europe.” Music by Gerswhin, Offenbach, Wagner, Grainger and others, with pop vocalist David Tal and violinist Shony Alex Braun.

--Jan. 24, 8 p.m. “Pictures in Music.” Music by Saint-Saens and Mussorgsky, with pianists Pinio Dovalis-Minor and David Michael Kennedy and narrator Thurl Ravenscroft.

--March 1, 7 p.m. “Mostly Chopin.” Pianist Mario Geninger.

--April 4, 8 p.m. “Symphonic Potpourri.” Music by Beethoven, Wagner, Barber and Hindemith.

--June 6, 8 p.m. Jazz program: Music by Gershwin, Bernstein, Joplin and Anderson, with pianist Milcho Leviev.

There also will be a Dec. 31 New Year’s Eve “Viennese Ball” program; time and place to be announced.

For further information, call (714) 534-7271.

Poet and critic Bill Berkson will give a reading entitled “Hot Links: After the Deluge, Surrealism and American Action Poets” tonight at 8 at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. Berkson’s reading is held in conjunction with the “Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism Into Abstract Expressionism” exhibit on display at the museum through Sept. 14.

Berkson, who teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute, will use slides during his lecture to track connections between surrealism and American paintings and poetry since 1950. Among the artists and poets he will discuss are Andre Breton, Giorgio deChirico, Jackson Pollack, Fernand Leger, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch and Willem deKooning.

Admission to Berkson’s lecture is $3. For further information, call (714) 759-1122.

Flutist Mary Palchak and pianist Katheryn Bailey will give a recital to benefit the Capistrano Valley Symphony at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Yamaha Music Education Center, 15455 Jeffrey Road in Irvine.

The two will perform an all-French program, including works by Debussy, Faure and Poulenc as well as music by such lesser-known French composers as Detilleux, Godard, Duvernoy and Hue.

Palchak is principal flutist with the orchestra. Bailey will be featured soloist in a performance of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto during an upcoming concert, according to Capistrano Valley Symphony conductor Donn Laurence Mills.

For further information, call (714) 559-5440 or (714) 493-7682.