MUSICIAN’S WRY VIEW OF SYMPHONY

Violist Peter Chase is a trusting soul who believes management should take care of its end of the bargain. Chase just wants to play his music.

But this fall, because of the breakdown in labor talks, Chase and his fellow members of the San Diego Symphony are making more trips to the unemployment office than to Symphony Hall.

Chase is a man of many talents. Trained at Juilliard, he plays violin as well as viola, and is a cartoonist. Before coming to San Diego, he made an animated film for public television in Oregon.

Last year, he published an irreverent book of cartoons called “The Auditioner’s Handbook.” It gives a musician’s view of life in a symphony orchestra, and many of the cartoons seem to comment on the symphony’s current labor dispute.

This year, royalties from the book are helping Chase keep his head above water.

“With . . . the cartoon book coming around to rescue me, I’m not nearly as distressed as I might be otherwise,” Chase said before rushing off from his downtown loft for a rehearsal in Rancho Bernardo. An inveterate doodler, Chase, 31, found himself sketching even while he was sitting on audition committees, drawing caricatures of the auditioners.

Once an auditioning trombone player, who knew someone was drawing him, shouted for Chase to give him the cartoon or else stop drawing. Chase gave him the cartoon. The scene now appears in his book.

Chase claims that he is hardly getting rich from the book, which is available at some bookstores around San Diego for $8.50. He said it sells less to the public than to musicians because of the musical in-jokes. Although the book was published before the current labor strife, its references to the San Diego Symphony are covered by the thinnest of veils. One cartoon pictures the face of a pudgy man drawn in the body of a fish. It has a stunning resemblance to recently resigned symphony Executive Director Richard Bass.

In another cartoon an oafish type who is all smiles hides a cat-o’-nine-tales behind his back while assuring players that “management cares.”

Chase came to San Diego after meeting players from the symphony at a festival in Oregon, where he lived at the time. They encouraged him to consider moving to San Diego. Chase had been concertmaster for six years with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra. But San Diego offered him a chance to play with a major orchestra.

“I also wanted to play my viola,” he said. “I hadn’t played my viola in years. The symphony seemed to be burgeoning.”

Although the musicians he talked to pointed out that wages are low, they said they could almost guarantee that he soon would earn more than the minimum wage.

“I was one of a whole bunch of bugs that got into this web,” he said. “I also heard from players at the festival that there was an opera.”

By the time he got to San Diego, Chase said, it was clear that the opera and symphony management “were kind of at odds with each other and the egos were getting so involved that I couldn’t get into the opera. So I have yet to play in the opera orchestra, and I love opera.”

Chase admits he may have been naive. “I moved here and found I wouldn’t be reimbursed for my move. It was just a supposition on my part, but I had never seen an orchestra that wouldn’t pay for your move,” he said. “That was the first of a string of unpleasant surprises in that respect.”

Chase felt that he needed a better instrument, which he bought, and a new car because he did more driving in San Diego. He also found that the cost of living here is about twice what he was used to in Oregon. Although he is single, Chase has trouble paying his bills on his symphony wage, which reached $472 a week last year.

The San Diego Symphony management, struggling with mounting financial problems, has said it must draw the line on musicians’ salaries.

After musicians kept asking Chase for copies of his drawings, he decided to publish a book. Working off and on for four months, he produced a couple hundred cartoons that he photocopied, bound himself and sold last Christmas.

When it sold out, Chase took out a loan and had a more finished version printed. Today, with outlets in San Diego and Los Angeles, and interest coming from book sellers in other cities, the book is earning him “several hundred dollars” in sales every month.

But Chase’s main wish is to play music. To him, the symphony seems more concerned with growth than with improving life for its members.

“As soon as I got here (in 1984), I realized that players who already are in San Diego are taken for granted,” he said. “They’re looking for people like I was, somebody from out of town, who they can bring in.”

Despite what he calls unacceptable demands that the orchestra rehearse from 4:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., Chase still has faith that there will be an orchestra season this year.

“The orchestra is so good here, it makes me want to put out the effort to stay and see it heal,” he said. “On the other hand, unless we see a sustained improvement on the side of management and their respect for their orchestra players as an investment in the musical product, I’ll have to leave. . . .

“It’s too much stress for me, trying to meet my bills at the same time that I feel I don’t have the support of my employer as someone of worth.”