Keith Clark, the outgoing music director of...

Keith Clark, the outgoing music director of the Pacific Symphony, will form a new orchestra in Southern California to fulfill a 3-year recording contract he has signed with Reference Recordings, a small label based in San Francisco.

Clark also has been approached by a group of local supporters who want him to continue conducting children’s concerts in Orange County and who are trying to form an orchestra for that purpose.

Clark stressed Tuesday that “there is no orchestra at this point. We haven’t had auditions.” But he said he “will produce some records in Southern California . . . with an ensemble of fine musicians that I will bring together for the purpose of making records.” And he hopes to pursue the proposed children’s series.

“I said I would be interested . . . if the organizational things can be worked out,” he said. “I am not at all involved with the organizational aspects of that. The orchestra for the recordings, I am. They’re separate things, although they could very easily involve the same people.”

Clark will vacate his position as music director of the Pacific Symphony, which he founded in 1978, on May 11, having lost a bitter battle that split the board of directors and created a public furor.

He has not announced future plans except to say that he intends to remain in Orange County and that he will continue to conduct the Cathedral Concert Orchestra in New Jersey, which he has directed since 1986.

Clark recently completed a series of five compact-disc recordings for the Naxos and Marco Polo labels, leading the Bratislava and the Slovak Philharmonic in Czechoslovakia.

Under terms of the new contract with Reference Recordings, Clark will make up to six new recordings in California and in Europe over the next 3 years, according to label president J. Tamblyn Henderson.

No specific recording dates have been set, but Marcia Martin, the label’s marketing director, said Tuesday that the company is “looking toward the fall as a first possibility. Right now, (Clark) is arranging repertory and still pulling together the situation with the new symphony.”

The label will pay in part for the musicians and the recording, and a private investor will pay for the rest, Martin added. She declined to name the investor “at this time.” Martin said this is a “pretty standard” funding arrangement among small labels, particularly with classical recordings.

“We are happy to make recordings with (Clark),” she said. “We have great faith in his abilities as a conductor and as a judge of musicians.”

Reference Recordings already has issued two recordings by Clark and the Pacific Symphony: an album of works by Copland with soprano Marni Nixon (nominated in the Classical Performance-Vocal Soloist category for a 1988 Grammy Award), and Respighi’s “Church Windows” and “Poema Autunnale” with violinist Ruggiero Ricci.

Martin said there is enough material already on tape for a third album, but no release date has been announced.

Reference Recordings, Martin said, is 13 years old and “small-to-medium size,” issuing “about six to eight new releases a year” in classical music and jazz. She declined to give annual sales figures.