FOR MUSICIANS, BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES

As hundreds of local musicians gear up for Sunday’s 16th annual Orange County Musicians’ Festival at the Irvine Marriott Hotel, the job outlook for professional singers and instrumentalists in the county is either great or bleak.

In the area of fine arts, largely because of the opening of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the county is in a period of rapid growth. But for rock and jazz musicians, who are battling club closings and the heavy use of recorded music and disc jockeys at Top 40 clubs, the picture “is sketchy as hell,” said Doug Sawtelle, president of the Orange County Musicians Assn., Local 7, in Santa Ana.

The festival Sunday, however, is designed as a celebration and will feature equal amounts of classical, jazz, pop, big band and lounge music. Performances begin at noon and will continue for 10 hours on five stages throughout the hotel. Known to participants as “Bash ‘86,” the festival is sponsored each year by the Orange County Musicians’ Club, an affiliate group of the union.

“We’re seeing a great expansion of entertainment and the arts in Orange County,” Sawtelle said. “The opportunities are glaringly apparent, and as a result we are attracting a very high talent level--the highest I’ve ever seen here.”

In addition to giving opportunities to local musicians from the Pacific Symphony, Pacific Chorale, Master Chorale of Orange County and other ensembles, the Center will utilize county musicians to support touring musicals, ballet productions, opera and other visiting groups that require an orchestra, Sawtelle said.

Because the union has collective bargaining contracts with “all the major performing arts groups in the county,” Sawtelle said local musicians are eagerly anticipating the Center’s opening on Monday.

Beside the Performing Arts Center, Sawtelle said, “a lot more hotels and restaurants are starting to book classical or semi-classical” musical groups.

In the pop arena, however, he was less optimistic: “Clubs don’t know whether they want to go back to the ‘60s or ahead to the ‘90s. It’s very unstable.”

In general, though, Sawtelle said, “We’re as healthy as we can be. It hasn’t always been that way, but it is now. So if I sound enthusiastic, I am.”

The annual musicians festival serves both as a one-day, single-location showcase for the range of Orange County musical talent--more than 300 musicians will perform at this year’s festival--and as a benefit for the Musicians Club’s scholarship and emergency relief funds.

Band leader and trumpeter Ray Anthony is this year’s grand marshal and will perform with Ansell Hill’s big band at 6 p.m. (A complete performance schedule will be included in free programs available at the hotel.)

Sawtelle said last year’s “Bash ‘85” raised nearly $10,000 for the two funds that are distributed to needy musicians--either students who want to maintain private lessons or financially strapped professionals who need assistance to continue working.

“Last year we helped send one student to Juilliard (music school in New York), paid for his transportation and gave him a per-diem payment,” Sawtelle said.

The emergency relief fund is tapped “when somebody’s horn is stolen (so) he can get a replacement, or if his phone is turned off, we get it turned back on again. It’s really for anything that enables the musician to keep working. And it’s not just for union members--it’s available to any musician in the community.”

In the 16 years since the first musicians festival in 1971, opportunities for women also have improved substantially, said publicity chairwoman Sandi Beneke, who is married to veteran band leader Tex Beneke.

“It used to be that even symphony orchestras didn’t want women musicians. But things have opened up tremendously for women,” she said. “If a woman is qualified, can do the job and is available, I don’t think people give it a second thought any more.”

“And more women are starting to see music as a career, not just as music teachers,” Beneke said. “I think rock bands have helped a lot because they’ve included a lot of women in the last few years.”

SAFARI SAM’S UPDATE: Owners of Safari Sam’s nightclub in Huntington Beach received formal notice this week that their application for a new entertainment permit has been denied by the city administrator.

“I have decided to uphold the action of the police chief,” City Administrator Charles W. Thompson said Wednesday. “The grounds are that there is an obvious technical violation of the ordinance and there is no way around it, as far as any administrative action. They do not have an entertainment permit.”

Safari Sam’s attorney Gene E. Dorney said he is filing an appeal to the City Council and will ask that “for economic reasons that the issue be placed on the council’s Oct. 6 agenda.”

“Now we know the issues we are faced with, and we will have to address those issues one by one and present our side. Hopefully this can be resolved at the city level,” Dorney said.

In the meantime, club owners Sam Lanni and Gil Fuhrer have scheduled another benefit concert tonight to help defray legal costs in the battle to resume live entertainment at the club. The show will be in the Embassy Room at Fender’s Ballroom in Long Beach and begins at 8. On the lineup are National People’s Gang, the Bell Jar, Hard as Nails Cheap as Dirt and the Tories. Tickets are $7.

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for two Pacific Amphitheatre shows: Emerson, Lake and Powell on Oct. 31 and Neil Young on Nov. 15. . . . The Adolescents will play Night Moves in Huntington Beach on Oct. 3. . . . Jimmy Cliff will perform at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Sunday. Hunters and Collectors will be at the Coach House on Oct. 16.