SAN DIEGO SUMMER POPS: MAD SCRAMBLE AND BIG GAMBLE : MUSICIANS BANKING ON BIG SUCCESS

Desperate for a regular paycheck, the musicians of the San Diego Symphony have committed themselves to playing and managing the entire Summer Pops concert series, which opens at 7:30 tonight at Hospitality Point on Mission Bay.

However, in order to be paid for the nine weeks of concerts, the players must sell more than $1 million in tickets and concession items, a task declined this year by the symphony management, which said there was not enough lead time.

The musicians announced their summer season of popular music only a month ago. Normally the symphony announces its summer season six months in advance.

“There’s so much to get accomplished and not enough hours in the day,” said Lee Ellen Hveem, the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Philharmonic operations manager who was hired by the musicians to manage the pops.

Hveem’s task is to ensure that everything associated with the pops is accomplished, from erecting the orchestra shell, to buying fireworks, to hiring a concessionaire for food and beverages, to buying print and radio advertising, to mailing out ticket flyers and buying sheet music.

For Hveem, a clarinetist-turned-manager, her San Diego job means 12-hour days, seven days a week. She rarely gets out of the office at the musicians’ union hall before 9 p.m.

Hveem and a cadre of four full-time staff members have been working overtime to squeeze six months of work into six weeks of available time.

“We’re dealing with the public, trying to do the season ticket subscriptions and single ticket (sales) all at the same time,” while also checking to see that the electricity and fences go up on schedule at the site, Hveem said.

At 31, Hveem (which rhymes with “them”) has been in orchestra management only a couple of years, but she has a sense of humor and an air of imperturbable calm that help defuse the inevitable crises attendant on such a last-minute operation.

It is 7 p.m. in the crowded office that serves as the pops’ nerve center. Hveem is suddenly faced with four musicians who have come to volunteer as phone solicitors. But the list of phone numbers they were to call has vanished.

“Is there any way to mail things . . . out or do anything?” the musicians ask at once?

“Yes,” Hveem says, “we have no bananas,” and gets some laughter from the volunteers. “There is a list, that we did have, that we could call, but . . . . “

In a few minutes Hveem finds the list which had been filed away in its proper folder after all.

She gives the callers concise, brief instructions: “You may get some hostility. People haven’t been dealt with the same way they were dealt with by the symphony.” She says they have been receiving about 12 angry calls a day.

Because of the time crunch, all pops ticket sales, except those for the day of the performance, are being sold through Ticketmaster. The symphony had offered more personal services for subscribers who wanted to change their seats. That service is not available this summer.

The musicians-managed Summer Pops season is a byproduct of the stalled contract talks that caused the cancellation of the symphony’s concert season.

After 11 months of negotiations, the musicians and the symphony reached an agreement in May that calls for a 32-week season beginning in the fall. In the meantime, the symphony is raising funds to pay off debts incurred through deficit budgeting.

The symphony steered clear of producing the pops this summer, however. Former symphony marketing director Melissa Smith had said a minimum of three months’ lead time was required to market such a season.

But the popular appeal of the Summer Pops and months of no pay encouraged the musicians to try their hand at managing. “We wanted the orchestra back to work,” said Gregory Berton, a spokesman for the musicians.

Besides marketing the weekly Wednesday-to-Saturday concerts and preparing the site for the opening week’s program of Cole Porter, Gershwin, Richard Strauss and Sousa, Hveem has whittled down a preliminary pops budget prepared by the San Diego Symphony.

“The budget is now $1.1 million,” Hveem said. “It’s been coming down steadily since I’ve got here (from $1.3 million) mostly because I’ve cut expenses. We’ve been going a little short-staffed from the beginning since the money’s coming out of the musicians’ pocket.”

One cost-cutting move was to rent a synthetic canvas orchestra shell instead of having a crew erect the old wooden one. It also avoided a clash with the city, which at the end of last season inspected the old shell and found it structurally unsafe for the breezes that at times whip across Mission Bay.

The biggest question, of course, is the bottom line. With such a limited amount of time to promote the outdoor concert series, can the musicians sell enough tickets to meet the expenses?

“As of last week (two weeks before opening night) we had sold just over 2,000 subscriptions,” Hveem said, far behind the symphony’s position last year at the same time. “People have not renewed the way they have in the past.”

As of Tuesday, a pops official said, only 30% of the opening night seats had been sold.

The symphony also relied heavily on “guarantors” to fill the 3,500-seat pops facility for the four weekly performances.

At least half of the concerts were sold to nonprofit groups, which used the concerts as fund-raisers, said Kathy McDonald, symphony box office manager. That meant a guaranteed minimum income of $22,500 for each of those concerts.

This year Hveem has not had time to set up arrangements for the guaranteed concerts nor to make early promotions to groups, which were also a major source of ticket sales in past years, according to McDonald.

Still, ticket sales are the key to success this year, Hveem said. Although the musicians received a $100,000 grant from Home Federal Savings and Loan for start-up costs and a few smaller donations, virtually all income must come from ticket and concession sales.

Hveem is relying on steadily increasing single-ticket sales, which she said historically has been a large part of the business.

Ever the practical manager, Hveem considered the possibility that they won’t sell enough tickets. “In the first couple of weeks, we’ll know whether it’s going to be successful,” she said.