‘We play music that is intrinsically good but that has instant appeal to an audience of people who are not regular symphony-goers’

When you consider that David Forester says he was a classmate of Benny Goodman in Chicago, played cornet professionally with David Rose at 14, and has worked in music all of his life, it’s not surprising that he put together an orchestra when he was at age at which many consider retiring.

That was in 1985, when the energetic musician was the discontented director of the Glendale Opera--”I was unhappy because the main focus in Glendale was the Glendale Symphony.” After a career that included playing in bands, running the Nevada Symphony and conducting more than 500 concerts around the country, he wanted to do something new.

He looked around and decided that although there were symphonies in the South Bay, none were in its biggest city. So he organized the Torrance Symphony Orchestra, financing the first few concerts himself, concentrating on a “pops” repertoire to attract an audience and wondering if it would work.

It did, he said, thanks in part to Albert Clarfield, a music-loving Torrance travel agent who went to several corporations in the city--among them Honda, Mobil Oil, Magnavox and Toyota--which have provided the financial support that allows Forester to play a five-concert season and pay most of his 50 musicians out of a budget which now stands at about $4,500 a concert.

Audiences, too, have responded, and Forester said most of the 1,000 seats in the Torrance High School Auditorium are filled when the orchestra plays. It helps that concerts are free.

“We play music that is intrinsically good but that has instant appeal to an audience of people who are not regular symphony-goers,” Forester said, likening the orchestra to the famed Boston Pops, which generally plays classical music during the first half of its programs and ends with popular and show tunes.

The orchestra’s next concert is Saturday at 8 p.m., when it will play a program ranging from patriotic music and Broadway show tunes to Viennese operetta and a suite from Bizet’s opera “Carmen.” The orchestra will be joined by the Torrance Civic Chorale and vocal soloists Gregg Busch, Patricia Prunty and Robert Crockett. There will be two more concerts this season.

Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert, who is on the orchestra’s advisory board, said she was skeptical when the symphony was started because an attempt to organize a symphony orchestra in Torrance many years ago had failed.

But as things turned out, she said, “the concerts are excellent and they get overflow crowds” in spite of “inadequate parking and acoustics that could be better” at the high school auditorium.

Tom Gregory, community relations manager for Mobil, said the corporation gave the orchestra $10,000 during its first year for a summer concert series and now gives enough to pay for one concert a year. “The orchestra is a cultural asset to Torrance,” he said, adding that he is a fan. “I’m not a music critic, but I think they’re good,” Gregory said.

Forester is the first to admit that his community orchestra--a combination of union professionals, graduate music students and people who just enjoy making music--is not a Los Angeles Philharmonic.

He calls it “one of the best community orchestras around,” and local newspaper reviews of past concerts have been favorable, speaking of pleased--even toe-tapping--audiences, vigorous playing and Forester’s dashing podium style, which he sometimes accentuates by donning a tuxedo with sequined lapels or a red cummerbund.

“I’m not wild or anything, but I’m free and very expressive,” Forester said of his conducting.

Walter Shields, who has been first trombone player with the orchestra from the start, said he played professionally in dance bands for years and got involved in the symphony because he wanted to play concert music. “My father was in the Boston Symphony, so I knew the repertoire well but had never played symphonic music,” he said. “I’m having a ball.”

Forester, who lives in North Hollywood, said his career has made him financially secure so he can devote full time to his orchestra, which pays him a token $1 a year.

And although he likes to talk of his group as still growing and building, it already has gone “on the road.”

Under the name the New “Pops” Symphony, the orchestra plays in Palm Springs, and under its own banner, it will play a Gershwin program April 17 at the University of Judaism Gindi Auditorium in Bel-Air. Tonight, the orchestra appears at the Torrance Marriott Hotel for a Miss America celebrity ball, which will be taped for ABC television. (The performance is not part of its symphony series.)

Forester said his decision to focus on the lighter side of concert music three years ago was deliberate: “I felt that if I had started playing straight symphonies, which I love, I would not get anywhere. I feel strongly that a good way to build an audience is to little by little sneak in some classical things.”

The orchestra has played Beethoven and Shostakovich symphonies, but for now, Forester said, “this audience wants pops.”