International Theme at the Music Center

The music will be on tap at the home of Ginny and Henry Mancini tonight. No dancing--but, if there were, it would be the Music Center two-step.

This is the first, albeit informal, get-together of the International Council of the Music Center--one of the innovative and long-term developments that are part of the performing arts center. The two-step would be perfectly in tune, since the Music Center has bounced right past the designation as a “national” center for performing arts and into the international bracket.

Esther Wachtell, president of the Music Center, said that the rise of the Music Center was identical to that of Los Angeles. “Los Angeles blinked for a moment as a national trading center, and, before it had opened up its eyes again, it was international.” And, like the city, the Music Center is now able to bring together top corporate names from around the world, along with local prominent personas, both from business and the entertainment community.

Arco’s Lod Cook is co-chairing the International Committee, with help from wife Carole, Veronique and Gregory Peck and Heather and Andre Previn, as well as being co-chair, with F. Daniel Frost and Nancy Olson Livingston, of the Music Center’s entire 25th anniversary year. He sees the International Committee as bringing in new people, “who will over time learn more about the Music Center . . . and hopefully promote it around the world and be willing to support it.” The development of national and international friends, Cook said, “people in the top levels of business and entertainment, over time will be a very strong force.”

It’s a particular balance between celebrating, with great and gala force, the 25th anniversary while laying the groundwork for long-term involvement. “My own feeling about the Music Center is that it has been a well-kept secret, not having the visibility that the Kennedy or Lincoln Center do,” Cook said. “This is an attempt to improve that visibility, particularly with business leaders who would have interests on the West Coast and Pacific Rim.”

The caliber of business leaders on the International Committee, Wachtell said, is “the most thrilling of validations that we have received because if we have that kind of leadership, we must be doing something right.”

Cook said that “Kennedy Center has politically high-visibility people, but we have the entertainment industry. We feel that we can provide more visibility, more excitement by involving the entertainment industry more directly.”

And, to make that high visibility high class, producer Nick Vanoff has signed on to make the Music Center Gala show happen Sept. 24. Vanoff, talking from his car phone, said that the Music Center “is a terrific institution and one that should be supported, and we can do a terrific show.”

Vanoff is planning an evening that will be edited into a two-hour television special, and intends to recruit a large number of people in the industry, “30 to 40 stars, well-known personalities.” And what it will be, he said, is “an exemplification of what goes on at the Music Center, heightened by the participation that night of well-known personalities, people who might not be part of the Music Center on a day-to-day basis, but who want to participate in the life and celebration of this wonderful institution.”

With all the talk of new people, Nancy Olson Livingston was clear that old friends have a role in the celebration. “I do not want to leave one person out,” she declared. “That’s the spirit of the celebration. And I want it to be glittering, attractive, gorgeous and marvelous.”

Livingston has put together a 100-person committee for the Sept. 24 Performance and Gala (the patron dinner is the night before). And, next month, some 6,000 members of the Music Center family will receive a mailing that will let people buy into the celebration in special ways.

Goodies that go to couples who contribute $25,000 above their regular gift include Labor Day weekend at David Murdock’s new lodge on Lanai, while other prizes for big givers include a Sam Francis commemorative lithograph.

Wachtell, regarded as the city’s top committee builder, said that the extraordinary International Committee is a reflection of the fact that the Music Center resident companies, in the past 25 years, have been international artists.

On the committee--Lee and Walter Annenberg, Edie and Lew Wasserman, Mellon Bank’s Frank and Ann Cahouet, Merv Griffin, Anne and Kirk Douglas, Diandra and Michael Douglas, Macy’s Edward and Myra Finklestein, Richard and Maude Ferry, producers Richard and Lili Zanuck, Smith Kline Bechman’s Henry and Holly Wendt, TRW’s Ruben and Donna Mettler, First Interstate’s Joseph and Dorie Pinola, and Carol and Walter Matthau, plus a couple dozen equally impressive names.

So there is now a strong International Committee to support and spear-head the Music Center. “And, on top of that,” Wachtell said, “the environment in which they work is an international environment. Los Angeles is an international city.”