Officials Cite Lack of Support, Guarantees : County Loses New World Festival in ’89

The ambitious New World Symphony Festival will not return to Orange County--or Southern California--in 1989 because of lack of audience support last year and the absence of financial guarantees that would make another one work, officials said Tuesday.

“It is not happening. It just isn’t,” the orchestra’s executive director, Jeffrey N. Babcock, said Tuesday by phone from Miami. “We’re making other plans at this point. We have discussed looking at (coming back) a year from now to give (the sponsors) more time to put the funding in place.”

The fledgling training orchestra, founded in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas, came to Orange County last June for a 3-week music festival sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, the Orange County Performing Arts Center and UC Irvine. A festival budget of about $500,000 was planned from corporate and private donations, as well as from ticket sales.

But even though the New World had arrived with a flurry of excitement and met with great reviews, it drew only 2,199 of a potential 9,000 paying customers in Orange County.

“I am horribly disappointed,” said Erich A. Vollmer, executive director of the Philharmonic Society and managing director of the first festival. “I think we started something quite significant, and it was quite unfortunate that the financial loss was so great the first time.”

According to Center President Thomas R. Kendrick, festival sponsors took a $300,000 beating last summer.

“This loss was covered by the Center, the Philharmonic Society, in equal parts, and UCI in a lesser share,” Kendrick said. “It was understood from the beginning that a subsidy would be necessary, last time and this time.”

But because of the extent of the first-year loss, sponsors said they would not bring the orchestra back unless sufficient funds were committed in advance. Kendrick said they couldn’t get that commitment.

For the first festival, planners budgeted $126,000, or 30%, of the orchestra’s cost to ticket sales, Kendrick said. Instead, only $51,000, or 14.3%, was generated by ticket sales.

Vollmer confirmed that financial obstacles scuttled a second festival. “The deciding factor is a simple one,” Vollmer said. “ . . . Underwriting has not been obtained, and to proceed with a second installment this summer would be financially irresponsible.”

Vollmer said nearly 75% of the proposed budget of about $500,000 would have had to come from contributions.

“None of us were optimistic that tickets sales would soar, even given the great critical response the events received the first time around,” Vollmer said. “We were left with a great gap to fill.”

The first festival included four orchestra concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and three chamber music programs at UC Irvine.

Thomas formed the New World Symphony as a training orchestra for musicians between the ages of 21 and 30 and recruited 90 members from about 1,000 candidates nationwide.

Expectations were high when the sponsors announced the summer series. Babcock had said he hoped the orchestra could establish “a permanent home (in Orange County) over the next several years.”

Said Vollmer: “What we failed to realize last year when we went into the first one was that we were horribly late to develop a presentation which might have been successful with major corporations.

“So after the festival concluded, we tried to get started earlier (on the next one). But I think that the pressures of our individual lives and commitments just prevented the kind of focus of attention that this kind of project needs.”

Vollmer said the three sponsors hope to have some type of summer music festival in 1990.

Babcock said the New World Symphony’s plans for this summer will be finalized within a week and will at least include one appearance on Aug. 13 at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia. But there are no plans for the orchestra to come to California.

“We are sorry,” Babcock said. “The orchestra liked Orange County so much. We were looking forward to at least as long a stay.

“I think the people out there did a great job putting it on the first time. They want it to continue. We’re really looking for the following summer so that we have a year-and-a-half lead time to put it together right.”

Conductor Thomas was in rehearsal with the orchestra in Miami and could not be reached for comment.