New World Drew Fewer Than 2,200 Paying Customers

Even though it arrived amidst a flurry of hoopla and met with great reviews, the New World Symphony drew only 2,199 of a potential 9,000 paying customers in Orange County this summer--and its sponsors took a $250,000 beating. Last week, the sponsors said they won’t bring the Miami-based orchestra back here unless sufficient funds are committed in advance. But they’re not yet sure how much money they’re talking about.

Everything “is subject to negotiation. Nobody is prepared to name a specific figure now,” a spokesman for the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Friday. The Center, the Orange County Philharmonic Society and UC Irvine co-sponsored the orchestra’s first visits here, a series of concerts and workshops from June 24 through July 7.

Erich Vollmer, the Philharmonic Society’s executive director, announced at the organization’s annual meeting last week that he would like to bring the orchestra back. But unless funds are committed by November, he said, the idea will be dropped.

Though the orchestra’s “Summer Festival” was highly touted by the sponsors--at one point, there even was talk of Orange County becoming the orchestra’s permanent summer home--and was well received by critics, the ticket buyers stayed away in droves.

A total of 7,770 people attended the orchestra’s three concerts at the Center (leaving 1,230 empty seats), but only 2,199--28%--paid for their tickets, according to spokesmen for the Society and the Center. The others--music students and teachers, among other groups--got their tickets free.

(An additional 1,143 people attended a chamber music series at UCI. A Philharmonic Society spokesman insisted that he didn’t know how many of those tickets had been paid for.)

The sponsors had hoped that tickets sales would cover half the estimated Festival costs of $500,000, with the remainder coming from private and corporate sources.

Formed in 1987 by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the New World Symphony is a training orchestra for musicians between the ages of 21 and 30. Thomas recruited 90 members from about 1,000 candidates nationwide.

The orchestra drew national attention and was critically well-received when it offered its first concert in Miami last February. And expectations were high when the three sponsors announced the summer engagement in Orange County. The orchestra’s executive director, Jeffrey Babcock, said he hoped to make Orange County “a permanent summer home over the next several years” for the orchestra.

Local critics acclaimed the orchestra when it played under the direction of music director Tilson Thomas and guest conductor Eduardo Mata, music director of the Dallas Symphony. Repertoire ranged from such war horses as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 to such rarities as Mahler’s massive choral work “Das Klagende Lied,” (which featured the Master Chorale of Orange County).

Vollmer had said in April that the festival was “a bit of a guessing game.”

“We don’t know what the market is,” Vollmer had said. “Nothing like this has occurred before.”