Music of City Includes Ship Whistle, Copter

SAN DIEGO — Culture isn’t all highbrow, serious stuff. It can be playful.

Like Arthur Frick’s “Playing Cities,” part of the kickoff for National Arts Week here Sunday at the Lyceum Theatre. A composer and artist known for musical instruments like his “beepmobile,” Frick will play San Diego by remote control.

Using a keyboard, he will set off the sounds of San Diego--from cathedral bells and a Navy warship’s alarms and whistle to ambulance sirens and aircraft. Frick, who gained some notoriety in San Diego in 1984 with his play “Nudes,” has also scored the piece for live musicians--saxophonist Hollis Gentry, bassist Bert Turetsky, drummer Will Parsons and guitarist Peter Sprague--who will play along with the jackhammers and explosions.

Sprague will perform a duet with a hovering helicopter while Turetsky does a little bassic call and response with the whistle of the Lynde McCormick, a guided missile destroyer, at the Broadway Pier.

“It should be an interesting acoustic work,” said Frick, who describes it as “musical sculpture.”

The piece will be danced by members of Three’s Company and Friends atop a nearby McDonald’s restaurant. Frick also has an exhibit, “Music for Deaf People,” at the Sonic Arts Gallery, 612, F St.

The 18-minute performance of “Playing Cities” at 7:45 p.m. follows up on Ralph Burgard’s theme for his 7 p.m. keynote address at the Lyceum. Burgard, an arts consultant and author of “Arts in the City,” will speak on how the arts can revitalize the city.

According to Burgard, who spoke by telephone from Boston Wednesday, cities around the country are discovering how the arts can bring vitality back to the urban centers. Community leaders view the arts as an urban magnet for people.

“Part of it is a recognition of an age-old observation that given their druthers, people like to have a good time. If you give them the opportunity, they will respond.”

San Diego is one of five cities picked as regional kickoff sites for National Arts Week, Nov. 13-19. It will be celebrated nationwide by an estimated 6,000 events, according to the sponsoring National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies.

The local week-long celebration is designed to raise public awareness of the role of the arts in shaping San Diego’s cultural identity.

Cities are beginning to tap their cultural resources--performing and visual arts institutions, museums, parks, libraries, the talents of individual artists, historic preservation, and the cultural resources of schools and colleges--as a way to bring life back downtown, Burgard said.

“Those resources are being used . . . by local governments and businesses to create cities that are genuine celebrations instead of a test of endurance,” Burgard said, adding that with the flight of major restaurants and retail businesses from downtowns, city fathers have discovered that the arts are a means to bring traffic back after 5 p.m.

Cities such as Eugene and Portland, Ore., have instituted Saturday Markets in which people sell anything as long as they have made, baked or grown it. The markets draw hundreds of people downtown on weekends.

In Boston, the subway system has created “Art on the Red Line,” enlisting the help of professional artists to overhaul its stations with murals and sculptures as part of a program to build ridership.

Other cities are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars annually into festivals. Minneapolis has spent more than $800,000 a year on festivals to draw people downtown, and the City of Chicago shells out $5 million a year for festivals downtown and 86 neighborhoods, Burgard said.

Because arts institutions are more concerned with just surviving the fiscal year, public arts committees such as San Diego’s Commission for Arts and Culture are acting as brokerages between the arts and community development agencies to help plan events like National Arts Week.

San Diego’s Western Regional Arts Week kickoff is sponsored by the Commission for Arts and Culture and COMBO, in cooperation with the San Diego Repertory Theatre, Horton Plaza, Omni San Diego Hotel, K & K Publications, San Diego Gas & Electric and the San Diego Design Center.

Among the week-long events scheduled are the exhibits “Art in Public Places--Public Spaces” in the City Hall lobby, “Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition” and “Bus Artists” at the County Administration Building, a series of performances at Horton Plaza and the Carlsbad 2nd Annual Temporary Sculpture Exhibition.

Special solo installations open Saturday, Nov. 12 at Installation gallerly, 930 E Street.

Installation is also sponsoring a video screening at 8 p.m., Nov. 16, poetry readings and a talk at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 17, a performance by Sara-Jo Berman at 8 p.m. Nov. 18 and a new music concert by Mark Trayle at 8 p.m. Nov. 19.

A round-table talk on the relationship between grass-roots arts organizations and city arts agencies will be held at Sushi gallery at 7:30 p.m., Nov 15.

There will be numerous art exhibits and theatrical and musical performance throughout the week, which concludes on Saturday, Nov. 19, with Artfest ‘88, an open house of more than 70 visual artists and architectural studios, galleries and bookstores.