Many Make Best of It : Batiquitos Hits Sour Note With Students

When 21-year-old Carlann Telzerow stepped off the plane at Lindbergh Field, she saw her name in big letters on a poster. Greeters from the Batiquitos Music Festival Institute had come to meet the student from Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio.

The poster, however, was a misleading sign that belied the rampant disorganization plaguing the festival. The real reason it was there was that Telzerow and her mother had called ahead to ensure that a volunteer from the festival would be at the airport when her flight arrived.

The true state of affairs at the Batiquitos Festival, which is both a student musician training program and a series of public concerts, began to reveal itself when Telzerow arrived at the Residence Inn in La Jolla and met a festival representative “with a pile of papers” listing the names of the expected students. Telzerow’s was not among them.

“I asked him, ‘What do I do? Do I wait on a van to come pick me up?’ ” she said. “He couldn’t tell me anything.”

It soon became apparent that the festival institute, whose operations are spread throughout much of the county, was in almost complete disarray.

Students are housed near San Diego State University but rehearse at UC San Diego and perform in Carlsbad. They pay from $100 to $250 in tuition each week. Many of them said that, although they were promised free transportation and housing, it never materialized.

Michael Roberson, a scholarship bassoonist from the New England Conservatory of Music, said the free housing he was promised turned out to be a couch in an apartment he shares with two other students.

As for transportation, Roberson and others said they have often found themselves ferrying fellow students to and from their apartments near SDSU and rehearsal facilities at UCSD.

In some ways, the festival has been feast and famine. The students make up the various festival orchestras, and some of them complain that the heavy workload is taking away from the time they feel they should be devoting to study and technique.

They also complained of an imbalance in the curriculum, saying the rehearsals for large orchestra are too many and that those for the smaller chamber music format are too few. Students said they often find themselves double-scheduled--assigned to rehearsals at the same time in different places.

More than a dozen students interviewed described the institute as a logistical nightmare.

Marian Liebowitz, who resigned as head of the festival’s woodwind department, estimated that about 25% of the 250 students who were expected to attend have withdrawn and gone home. No one can say for sure what percentage has left, because no one connected with the festival seems to know how many showed up, or who among those who did show up have paid their tuition.

In the third week of the festival (which began June 19 and continues through July 24) the administrative staff and two musical department heads resigned when it became clear that teachers could not expect to be paid for the rest of the festival.

Alan Siebert, head of the brass department, and Liebowitz called the professional musicians who had not yet arrived and told them that, if they came to San Diego, they should not expect to be paid. The loss of salaries effectively gutted the institute’s brass and woodwind departments, although a number of the nation’s top teachers and musical coaches have remained to work without pay.

Amazingly, amid the reports of almost daily staff resignations, the students have closed ranks and focused on making music. They are rehearsing daily at UCSD and performing the remaining concerts and operas at the festival’s Donald F. Sammis Pavilion near the Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad. Impressed by the musicianship of their peers, they seem to have adopted the attitude that, if you end up with a lemon, make lemonade.

“This is the first year of the festival. You don’t really expect them to keep things organized,” said 17-year-old violinist Young-Gi Kim. “I think people should quit complaining.”

Jill Gummo, a 20-year-old bassoonist from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, agrees. Like most of the students, she heard of the festival through a music teacher, who told her that one of the country’s top bassoon teachers, Leonard Sharrow of the New England Conservatory, was on the Batiquitos faculty.

“I’ve learned so much. I’ve really just pumped the festival for everything,” Gummo said. “You can either complain or get a lot out of it.”

She said that, as of last weekend, she had spent about $1,250 on tuition, airplane tickets and housing.

“I lost some money,” said Gummo, who received a partial scholarship that reduced her tuition. “I didn’t get my third lesson with (Sharrow).”

But she said that hasn’t really kept her from achieving her purpose in coming to the festival.

“You can be negative all your life. It’s what you make of it. I’ve played with great players from Juilliard and the New England Conservatory. I’ve got a better grip on what I want to do.”

Gummo said her festival experience has convinced her to consider pursuing a master’s degree in arts administration.

Although not all of the students are as positive about the organization as Gummo, even some of the disenchanted have found ways to gain from the experience.

Several who dropped out of the program have taken advantage of the general excellence of their colleagues and formed an ad hoc group, which is performing publicly in San Diego.

The group, called the Corinthian Players after the name of the apartment complex where the students live, will begin appearing at area churches this weekend. It also may give dinner-hour concerts at the Westgate Hotel downtown, according to Laura Barron, the student who organized the group.

Barron, a 20-year-old flutist from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., said she doesn’t want the opportunity here to go to waste.

“We all came out here essentially attracted by the faculty that Batiquitos had promised,” Barron said. “But there has been a problem with funds, laying off teachers. We didn’t want the festival to obstruct our education, so we’ve created our own musical experience.

“It’s a matter of principle,” she said. “We came here to take advantage of opportunities they would provide us. Now it seems we are providing them with our services as musicians. We would rather do that independently.”

Barron said the Corinthian Players, a sextet of woodwind and string players, practice each day at the apartment complex.

Although the festival institute affords a rare educational opportunity for young instrumentalists, it may play an even more significant role in the careers of emerging opera singers.

According to Los Angeles soprano Mary Lou Basaraba, 30 to 40 opera students--sopranos, altos, tenors, baritones and basses--were attracted to the festival by a promotional brochure promising “a surprising number of teachers and conductors you wouldn’t normally see at a festival.”

“We were led to believe there would be a large faculty. We found out later that, if the teachers didn’t recruit enough students, they wouldn’t be here,” Basaraba said.

According to the brochure, 16 voice coaches and teachers would be at the festival. In fact, only five were in residence.

Still, when news of financial difficulties surfaced July 4, nearly all of the singers chose to remain, Basaraba said, and the small staff backed them by agreeing to work without pay.

“We are now committed,” Basaraba said. “I think we are going to get through.”

Undeterred when a number of orchestra and chamber music recitals failed to materialize, Basaraba arranged with instrumentalists for her own chamber music programs.

The real attraction holding the singers, she said, is the chance to sing in an opera and to add another critical role to the all-important resume. Basaraba has been cast in Puccini’s one-act comic opera “Gianni Schicchi.” But that may be canceled because of lack of money. The orchestra for the two performances next week has already been replaced with a piano.

Through all of the month’s upheaval and disappointments, most of the students are following the lemonade philosophy. A sign taped on a wall in one room at the Corinthian Apartments seems to have become the unofficial motto of this year’s Batiquitos Festival student body:

“Music allows our dreams a chance to sing and dance.”