CALARTS SEARCHES SOUL TO FIND IMPROVEMENTS

Now that Robert Fitzpatrick has left CalArts, the search is on for a new president. So officials at the Valencia school figure now’s as good a time as any for a little soul-searching.

“We’ve been operating for 20 years,” says interim president Nicholas England. “And 13 of those have been with Bob as president.

“Well, now we’re supposed to be adults, you could say. So it’s time for examining what we’ve accomplished--time for a moment of introspection. A group of us, in fact, are going to a retreat where we can discuss these things among ourselves.

“I see this as a time of togetherness, a time for reacquainting ourselves with each other. I really don’t look for much difference in our goals for the future. We’re just tightening them up a bit.”

While the immediate goal involves finding a successor to Fitzpatrick, who has been named head of Euro-Disneyland, England and other CalArts officials are continuing plans for the school’s growth.

Actually, England contends, growth may be too strong a term. “Given the physical plant that we have, we will always have to limit attendance to 1,000, in order to give all our students individual attention.” Currently, around 850 attend.

Thus, don’t look for the perpetual construction that has become a way of life at UCLA and other upwardly mobile campuses. “There are plans for a larger performance hall,” England says, “but that’s in the future somewhere.”

Not that growth doesn’t figure in the school’s plans. All that emptiness surrounding the grounds is destined to be swallowed up not by CalArts but by the rapidly growing Santa Clarita Valley populace. Good news or bad?

“Amazingly, the type of person that’s moved out here in the last seven years is younger and quite interested in what we’re doing. We’re not just talking suburbanites. They’ve become a loyal audience. And that’s what Walt and Roy (Disney) had in mind when they dreamed up the concept for the school.”

As interim president, England says he plans a hard look at each of the departments while continuing the endless search for new staff and new students, ones that he describes as “top drawer, people on the cutting edge. We have established an emphasis on recent contemporary, but of course we continue to respect the art of the past.”

And what of Fitzpatrick’s successor? “The search is very hot right now,” England says. “I imagine we’ll name a new president by the end of the next academic year.”

Is the veteran ethnomusicologist (and CalArts faculty member for 18 years) a candidate? He laughs at the thought. “I’m getting on in years. I’m 63, and I think the school is looking for someone who’ll stay a while.

“I think the new president will need great energy, sensitivity and an aesthetic turn of mind. One thing’s for certain: There is no point in trying to find another Robert Fiztpatrick. He is one of a kind. The new president will have to be completely different from Bob.”

PERLMAN WEEK: Itzhak Perlman will once again make the most of his Southern California visit this week. As he has in six of the last seven years, the celebrated violinist will serve as soloist at two Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts at Hollywood Bowl and appear in recital.

On Tuesday, with Lawrence Foster conducting, Perlman will play Saint-Saens’ Third Concerto (music by Rossini and Prokofiev completes the agenda). On Thursday, his vehicles are two Romantic favorites: the “Poeme” of Chausson and Wieniawski’s Second Concerto (a Weber overture and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 are also scheduled).

For his Wednesday night recital in Cahuenga Pass, the violinist and pianist Janet Guggenheim will play a sonata by Pergolesi, Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata and the ever-popular “selections to be announced from the stage.”

If that weren’t exposure enough, on Thursday the tireless violinist will also appear at the Music Plus record store at 1st Street and Fairfax Avenue for an autograph session at 1 p.m.

Next Sunday, the Philharmonic Institute ends its summer season led by Andre Previn, Lukas Foss and a conducting fellow to be named. Previn and Foss will also share keyboard duties in Mozart’s Double Concerto. Previn will conduct Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.

FESTIVAL FREE-FOR-ALL: Attention amateur musicians--start practicing. On Sept. 5, as part of the week-long John Cage celebration at the Los Angeles Festival, dozens of “non-professional acoustic musicians” will take part in “Musicircus.” Beginning at 2 p.m. that day, and continuing until 5, the ad-hoc orchestra will gather at Fletcher Bowron Square (by the Children’s Museum downtown), assemble on various stages and, well, do its thing.

Cage has stated his intention that the work have “as many unrelated musics as obtainable and practical in a given time and space.” That will, no doubt, be easily accomplished--unless everyone chooses to sing “Louie, Louie.”

For information on participating, contact Michele Rudnick at (213) 689-8800.

BOLSHOI OPENING: As of press time, the casting for the first week of the Bolshoi Ballet (see article on Page 64) engagement at the Music Center lists three different pairings of Rita and Boris for the opening production of “The Golden Age”: Alla Mikhalchenko and Irek Mukhamedov (Tuesday), Ludmilla Semenyaka and Andris Liepa (Wednesday) and Mikhalchenko and Yuri Vasyuchenko (Thursday). Early in the tour, Natalia Bessmertnova had canceled or cut back appearances in New York and Washington due to injury. Her scheduled appearances here, for the first week at least, are limited to the role of Phrygia in “Spartacus” and possibly an excerpt from “Les Sylphides,” both in the highlights programs scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

The three highlights programs offer “Romeo and Juliet” Act I, a group of four or five divertissements and Act II of “Spartacus.”