CLASSICAL MUSIC : A Case of Have Baton, Will Travel

No one ever warned David Amos that the widely touted San Diego climate was not particularly favorable to orchestra conductors. Over the past two years, both the music director and the resident conductor of the San Diego Symphony decamped unceremoniously, and a pair of young, aspiring conductors watched their chamber orchestras drown in a sea of red ink.

Amos, who is conductor and music director of the Jewish Community Center Orchestra, has not only defied the odds and kept his 65-member community orchestra afloat, he has become a globe-trotting guest conductor. His travels with baton commenced after Meir Rimon, first horn player with the Israel Philharmonic, played a guest solo with the JCC Orchestra.

“After the performance, we started wild dreams of doing recordings together. Then, one spring morning in 1980, Rimon called and said, ‘I have the Israel Philharmonic reserved one week before (Leonard) Bernstein and a week after (Zubin) Mehta.’ ”

Since that initial session, Amos has returned to that orchestra half a dozen times for more recordings, and has recorded with the Jerusalem Symphony and the English Chamber Orchestra.

Next month, he flies to England to record a piece of music by American composer Alan Hovhaness with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Crystal Records. He will record “And God Created Great Whales,” the composer’s popular piece for large orchestra and taped whale sounds. Amos noted that it has been about 20 years since Andre Kostelanetz first recorded the “Whales.”

Since Amos’ position with the JCC Orchestra is an unpaid one, he has continued his business career of running the family import firm in Tijuana and San Diego. His connections south of the border have been helpful in building an audience for his orchestra, which is the only local musical organization that regularly performs in Tijuana. But being a businessman is sometimes a stigma when it comes to a new recording project.

“In a recording session,” Amos explained, “you have to gain the orchestra’s respect in the first five minutes. Two years ago, when I made my first recording with the Jerusalem Symphony, I had lunch with one of the violists in the orchestra. He confessed to me, ‘David, when we heard that a businessman from California was coming to record with us, we were upset and very apprehensive. But, frankly speaking, we haven’t had this much fun in three years, and haven’t played this well in a long time.’ ”

Keeping one foot in music and one foot in the family business is not daunting to Amos.

“It gives me the energy and enthusiasm to pursue each project to the hilt. When I get home at 6 p.m., the second half of my workday begins.”

Amos and his wife, Lee, founded the JCC Orchestra in 1974, shortly after Amos returned from graduate studies in conducting at Indiana University. For the orchestra’s first 10 years, Lee served as its concertmaster.

In both his recordings and programming for his orchestra, Amos champions contemporary composers. Last year he created a nonprofit foundation, the International Musicians’ Recording Fund, to further the recording of new music.

“We owe it to young composers of today to give them exposure, especially through community orchestras. We can’t play the old war horses only.”

For Sunday’s JCC Orchestra concert at the Horace Mann Auditorium in East San Diego, Amos has programmed Daniel Robbins’ “In Memoriam--Robert F. Kennedy.” Robbins, a 35-year-old Los Angeles-based composer, has written a number of orchestral and ballet scores.

“June 12 is almost to the day the 20th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination,” Amos noted.

Other 20th-Century composers on the program are Hugo Alfven, William Walton and Richard Strauss. The program will be repeated at the Tijuana Cultural Center on June 18 at 8:30 p.m.