Still Must Earn $1 Million : Musicians Set to Pop This Summer

A quartet of musicians wearing tuxedos and playing trumpets and trombones serenaded Friday’s announcement at Hospitality Point that the 1987 Summer Pops season is a certainty: The nine-week season at Mission Bay will begin July 8 and will be sponsored by San Diego Symphony musicians.

The San Diego Philharmonic, the nonprofit group set up by the musicians when the San Diego Symphony canceled the 1986-87 winter season, announced that Home Federal Savings & Loan had contributed $100,000 as “start-up” money toward funding the Pops season.

Much more than that is needed, however. Lee Ellen Hveem, the Fort Wayne, Ind., Philharmonic official hired by the musicians to promote the Pops, said that the series’ total budget is $1.3 million--meaning that breaking even will require more than $1 million from ticket sales and concessions.

Hveem announced that Seaport Village had contributed $17,000 toward the Pops season and will present two free additional concerts there. She said a coalition of unionized musicians from around the country had contributed $9,000 toward the Pops.

Matthew Garbutt has been hired to conduct seven of the Mission Bay concerts, and guest conductors will be hired for the other two weeks. One of those guest conductors will be Ronald Ondrejka, conductor of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and a colleague of Hveem’s. Hveem said the other guest slot is still being negotiated.

“For a change, somebody gets to be the bearer of good news,” said Garbutt, who has conducted the Pops concerts in the past. “I think it’s appropriate that, to start off the season, we’ll play selections from ‘The Sound of Music.’ We’ve been missing the sound of music in San Diego, and it’s great to have it back.”

Garbutt said the Mission Bay program, wrapping up Sept. 6 at Hospitality Point, will include selections from “West Side Story” and “Star Wars” as well as songs that carry a note of irony in the context of the symphony’s recent blues: “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “We’re in the Money” and “The Impossible Dream.”

Hveem said this week’s announcement of a settlement with the symphony association had produced a “definite effect in terms of morale” among symphony musicians tuning up for the Pops.

“Many had been worried about their own fund being further depleted,” she said. “That’s the fund the musicians set up (after November’s lockout) to help make emergency payments for mortgages, bills, etc. These were payments for living, surviving.”

She said the 70 musicians hired for the Pops will be paid at the same rate that the 81-member orchestra will receive once the winter season begins in November--the newly negotiated base of $575 a week.

Hveem noted, however, that, if ticket money and concessions fall short of the nearly $1 million projected, the difference will have to come from musicians’ salaries. “But I don’t expect that to happen,” she said.

Hveem said Pops tickets will cost $6.50, $12 and $16 and be handled by Ticketmaster. She said many vendors have agreed to work on a “pay-as-you-go basis.” She said fireworks were purchased through Home Federal’s gift of $100,000.