Pasadena Pops With Effervescence : Response Is ‘Overwhelming’ at Orchestra’s First Concert

The house lights dimmed. Maestro Victor Vener raised his baton. And with the downbeat to a Mozart overture, the mounting tension suddenly snapped and Pasadena had a new orchestra.

It was a real-life musical drama, say the relieved innovators of the Pasadena Pops Orchestra.

“I felt like a proud father,” said Bert James, general manager of the Pasadena Hilton Hotel, who donated a ballroom for the orchestra’s first concert April 17. “Those of us who were in on the very beginning felt 10-feet tall,” he said.

“I tell you, we were so nervous,” said Peter Strong, president of Foothill Friends of Music, a nonprofit corporation hastily formed last fall to support an orchestra that didn’t yet exist. “But people weren’t just giving standing ovations--they were whistling and stamping their feet, like a rock concert.”

Overwhelming Response

Principal trumpeter Malcolm McNab said: “It sort of surprised me, the response was so overwhelming.”

McNab, twice winner of top national honors from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and first trumpeter for the Glendale Symphony and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, says he is typical of the 40 to 50 musicians in the Pasadena Pops Orchestra.

“This is our orchestra,” he said. “Almost all of us are from this area, which is neat, and a lot of us know each other. We’re in on the programming, and the heads of the instrument sections get to choose who we want to play with.”

That, essentially, is why and how Vener formed Foothill Friends of Music, the parent organization for the pop orchestra, which will give its second concert Sunday. It is also the parent group for the Chamber Orchestra of Pasadena, which is scheduled to stage its first concert June 25, and for various small ensembles, made up of some of the same musicians, that will perform in the future.

A native Pasadenan and a French horn player who has taught, conducted and performed throughout North America and Europe, Vener said the Pasadena-La

Canada-Glendale area is home to at least 150 of Southern California’s top musicians.

They are a rich resource, and so is Pasadena, which is becoming a center for the arts, Vener said.

But while the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra has grown in popularity in recent years and the Ambassador Auditorium draws some of the nation’s top musical artists, Vener said, “the same people have been going (to all the concerts). I could see we need to attract larger and younger audiences.

“I’m on this missionary kick to try to give more people an opportunity to learn about music, all sorts of music,” he said. “So many people feel intimidated by Beethoven, but they think the Boston Pops is great.

“I don’t have a special ax to grind except that live music is where it’s at, and I’d like to think of people seeing music as a feast and they’re allowed to take a little bit of everything.”

‘Light Flashed’

Last year, when he discussed with friends the idea of a new orchestra to be centered in Pasadena, Vener said, “as the word ‘pops’ got kicked around, a light flashed in everybody’s eyes. The way to get the largest audience, to do the missionary work we want, would be this way, we figured.

“The pops thing just seemed to go crazy,” since there are no other pop orchestras in the Los Angeles area, he said.

Without money to pay for salaries and a hall, Vener simply asked for what was needed. He got financial backing and volunteers from the Pasadena Rotary Club and some other organizations. He got the Hilton ballroom from James, and he got “top-flight musicians who command big salaries who agreed to play for peanuts,” Vener said.

Besides McNab, they include Raynor Carroll, percussionist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; Phillip Ayling, oboist with the Philharmonic; John Walz, principal cellist for the Glendale Symphony and Master Chorale, and several other principals and professionals who play at the major film studios.

At this Sunday’s concert, the concert master will be Daniel Shindaryov, who was concert master for the Bolshoi Ballet for 25 years before coming to the United States.

“Everybody gets the same fee,” said Vener, who would not say what the fee is. “If we paid a person like John Walz what he’s worth, in one evening his salary would take up a quarter of what we’ve already raised.”

‘Mecca for Musicians’

Walz said he is playing in the pop orchestra because “I was born and raised in Pasadena, and it intrigued me that in the past few years this has become such a mecca for musicians.”

At the first concert, he said: “I think everyone was quite surprised” at the size and enthusiasm of the audience.

That concert, one of three events scheduled for this season, drew an unexpectedly large audience of 400, although it had little advance advertising. People sat at tables where they could eat and drink, in the style made popular by the Boston Pops Orchestra, and heard the overture to Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” followed by Rossini’s “William Tell” overture, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and music by the Beatles.

Sunday’s concert will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Scottish Rite Auditorium, 150 N. Madison Ave. Tickets, at $16.50 each, are on sale at the Hilton Hotel and will be sold at the door. There will be conventional theater seating for about 600. Vener promises “music from Vienna, Broadway and Hollywood,” including a tribute to Irving Berlin, who celebrated his 100th birthday last week.

The Chamber Orchestra of Pasadena also will play at the Scottish Rite Auditorium on June 25.

Volunteer Workers

Preparations, ushering and most other work will be done by volunteers, Strong said.

Foothill Friends of Music was formed last October, Strong said, and now has about 90 members. As with other orchestra support groups, a year’s membership is available to anyone at prices ranging from $15 for students and seniors to $1,000 for major benefactors.

“Anything that comes in goes to the musicians,” James said, “and they have been just as generous as anybody else, donating much of their time. They want to see it succeed as much as we do.

“Of course,” James ventured, “this is like being in favor of Santa Claus. Everyone wants to see it succeed.”