ANGRY AIDE QUITS JOB AT SYMPHONY

Citing broken promises and personality conflicts, Pacific Symphony assistant conductor Edmundo Diaz del Campo resigned this week to become artistic administrator of the San Diego Symphony.

“I’m leaving because I see a better opportunity with the San Diego Symphony,” Diaz del Campo said Wednesday. “My career (at Pacific Symphony) was stagnating. There was no conducting at all. . . . I need to cool off. I’m still extremely upset at things.”

In responding Wednesday, Pacific Symphony conductor Keith Clark described as “totally inaccurate” Diaz del Campo’s statement that there was friction between them.

“I’m certainly thrilled if he’s going on to something fulfilling,” Clark said.

Diaz del Campo was appointed in June, 1985, as the Pacific Symphony’s first assistant conductor. In announcing the appointment, Clark said that among his duties Diaz del Campo would conduct several concerts during the 1985-86 season, supervise in-school and family-matinee concert programs and assist in setting up the Pacific Academy of Music, a proposed conservatory for young musicians to be held at the orchestra’s new headquarters in Santa Ana.

In fact, the 40-year-old conductor appeared just once at a public subscription concert, for which he garnered high praise from local music critics for leading one selection on a program otherwise conducted by Clark. Diaz del Campo also led several performances of “The Nutcracker” at Santa Ana High School in December 1985.

He conducted a handful of educational programs in the schools. The proposed academy never materialized because the building would have to undergo extensive renovation to bring it up to current building codes.

“Keith (also) told me I would conduct a SCR (South Coast Repertory) concert program, but I never heard anything further about it,” Diaz del Campo said.

Clark denied that Diaz del Campo was hired in part to conduct subscription concerts. “His charge was to assist the conductor and develop educational programs of a community outreach nature,” Clark said.

Diaz del Campo described Clark on Wednesday as a “mentor who encouraged me to leave a career in education and pursue a career in conducting” while he was a student at Cal State Fullerton, but he also chronicled a deterioration in the relationship with his former teacher and employer:

“After two years, adding drop by drop into the cup, there is a moment when this cup overflows. . . . Clark was very unpredictable. I would be instructed to do things, then when I was about to do them, I would be instructed not to proceed. It would become a constant puzzle: What does the man want?”

Diaz del Campo said he came to Pacific Symphony with the understanding that there was a budget for his activities but found that “I would have to do the fund raising for the projects I was supposed to start. And I didn’t have any fund-raising background.”

Among the projects reportedly promised to Diaz del Campo was the creation of a Hispanic committee for the arts and also a community orchestra. But after Diaz del Campo founded the community orchestra, he said Clark withdrew his support. “He asks me to start something for the community, then tells me he won’t support it,” Diaz said.

Clark, however, said the community orchestra was “conceived basically as an experiment for the summer” and its continuance would be determined at the end of the summer.

However, Clark said: “It is a program I totally support. It would not be here if I did not support it. I’m responsible for the artistic activities of this organization.”

The community orchestra, which met for the first time in June, has approximately 65 members and will perform Aug. 29 at the Pacific Symphony Center in Santa Ana. The group has also been invited to perform at the Tijuana Cultural Center, Diaz del Campo said.

When Diaz del Campo was appointed, part of his salary was underwritten by Santa Ana through a $15,000 artist-in-residence grant.

“When that ran out, I was put on the orchestra’s roster as a ‘volunteer until December.’ But I was still expected to work full time.”

He thought he would be reinstated in January, 1987, he said, but the only position made available to him was a part-time one. “I was (only) paid $6.75 an hour to work on Mondays and Tuesdays--that’s $54 daily--as a (music) librarian putting in bowings and other markings in scores.”

He said to help support himself and his wife, he began to teach Spanish part time in an Anaheim school.

Diaz del Campo’s new duties at the San Diego Symphony, to begin in October, will include giving pre-concert lectures, serving as music consultant to executive director Wesley Brustad and conducting one of a proposed three-concert International Festival series.

He is also scheduled in February to conduct three concerts by the Orquesta Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico, based in Toluca. Three programs with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Xalapa, based in Veracruz, will be given on dates to be announced later.