The Young at Art : An Unusual High School Attracts Talented Musicians, Dancers, Actors and Visual Artists

Snatches of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto overlap passages from Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” Mozart’s Oboe Quartet and Copland’s “Rodeo.” For good measure, someone else is practicing some Bartok.

Students in the instrumental music program at the Orange County High School of the Arts are boning up to join the South Coast Symphony in a Fourth of July Pops concert at Irvine Heritage Park, and the scene is what you might call creative chaos.

The 65 music students make up one group of five at the high school, which draws about 290 talented youngsters from Orange County and four outlying communities for pre-professional training. The first classes were offered in September, 1987; the second full year ended Wednesday when finals were given.

The music students were the last to arrive at OCHSA.

Only four of the arts programs--dance, musical theater, technical theater and visual arts--were offered at the start. “We had received applications in all five areas,” said OCHSA Director Ralph Opacic, “but in the instrumental music program we did not get enough of any specific instrument to run a symphonic band or a concert band or even a jazz band program.

“So in the second year, we went into partnership with (South Coast Symphony Director) Larry Granger and the South Coast Youth Symphony (a well-regarded, 16-year-old organization) and got a 70-member orchestra just like that.”

As they finished their first year last week, some of the students reflected on what kind of time they had.

OCHSA classes are held at Los Alamitos High School, and as the new kids on the block there, they encountered some hostility at first.

“At the very beginning,” recalls sophomore trumpeter C. William Alsop, “they were putting articles in the (school newspaper) that were not very positive about OCHSA.”

Opacic remembers an editorial entitled “OCHSA Invasion,” which, he said, “attacked the sudden influx of students from outside the district . . . and the great emphasis and attention on the performing arts program.”

“I think there was, on the students’ part, a little bit of adjustment and jealously,” he said.

Beyond that, the arrival of the OCHSA students led to a loss of space for regular students.

Sophomore violinist Heather Simon, 16, who had been going to the school before the music program opened, remembers that part of the cafeteria was used to make a dance studio.

“Kids were upset,” Simon said. “They didn’t have as much room to eat.”

But the OCHSA students responded in a creative way.

“They had T-shirts made with the message, ‘OCHSA Invasion: Make Friends With an Alien Today,’ ” Opacic recalled. “I think they put that into perspective nicely.”

That creative response might be expected from the kind of students attracted to an arts magnet school.

Tuition-free, OCHSA is one of 10 specialized arts high schools in California. Admission is based on auditions, interviews, recommendations and academic record. The students, in grades 9 through 12, carry a regular load of academic courses at Los Alamitos from 8 a.m. to 1:45 p.m., or else take academic courses in the morning in their home districts and commute to Los Alamitos for afternoon arts classes from 2 to 5 p.m. They can study music history and theory; ballet, jazz, flamenco and Middle Eastern dance; acting styles and play writing; scenic design and construction; ceramics, drawing and print-making, among other courses.

Instructors include such working professionals as Stevi Meredith, director of the Long Beach Playhouse; Doug Shaeffer, director of Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call Dinner Theatre in Santa Ana, as well as South Coast Symphony conductor Granger.

Although the problems of overcrowding at Los Alamitos haven’t gone away, things are improving.

In its first year, OCHSA built a 700-seat theater, the Margaret Webb Performing Arts Center, which also will be used by the high school students and community groups.

The cost was about $500,000. About $100,000 came from the state; $150,000 from the private Los Alamitos Education Foundation, and the balance from the Los Alamitos Unified School District general fund.

Last year, three dance studios were built at a cost of about $100,000. Next year, there are plans to build an orchestra rehearsal room, to cost about $90,000.

OCHSA began with a $194,700 operating grant from the state Department of Education. Last year, state support was increased to $221,900. Next year, the school will receive $275,000. Its proposal for funds was ranked first out of 42 applications, which included other specialized projects in agriculture, the humanities, and math and sciences.

Under grant guidelines, though, next year will be the last year that the state will extend money. After that, the school will have to fend for itself. But it has some resources.

It will continue to get funds from the Los Alamitos school district for its fully enrolled students. (See accompanying story.) Additional money is expected from various business organizations and a private foundation already in place to raise funds for the school.

Meanwhile, the student body has grown from about 125 in the first year to 290 in the second. The school is expecting 300 to 350 for next year, according to director Opacic.

The rise is in marked contrast to the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts--where applications fall short of available openings.

Opacic feels that there would be even more applicants to OCHSA if the school could get the word out. “We need to publicize more around the county that we are here. We are drawing from neighboring districts, but from mid- and south Orange County, we’re not drawing much because they don’t know that we’re here yet.”

He feels the appeal of OCHSA lies in the high level of academic programs at Los Alamitos (designated as both a California Distinguished School and a National Exemplary School). “Students coming here are getting not only performing arts experience,” he said, “but a high academic experience as well.”

He notes, however, that “one of the stipulations we wrote into our grant was that we were going to try to motivate the at-risk students, those students who were not achieving academically. We felt that if we could motivate them in the arts, we would motivate them academically. So we have students in the gifted and talented program, but we also run the gamut of students in our continuation and special ed and remedial classes.”

He is puzzled by the decline in applicants at the Los Angeles school. Perhaps the Los Alamitos high school setting provides “more of a unifying factor” for the students than at the Los Angeles site, Cal State Los Angeles. “Possibly the Los Angeles students feel a bit isolated on the college campus,” he said.

In Orange County, there are 20 full-time students and 45 after-school students in the instrumental music program; 45 full-time and 25 after-school students in dance; 50 full-time and 25 after-school in musical theater; five full time and 10 after-school in technical theater, and five full time and 10 after-school in visual arts. Altogether, there are about 125 students coming full time from 24 other school districts (another 50 already were going to Los Alamitos) and about 115 who come to after-school sessions.

Although the school offers pre-professional training, not all the students plan on becoming professionals.

Of 10 music students surveyed, only a few foresee a musical future. The others think about engineering--aerospace for trumpeter Alsop, who is 15; civil engineering for 18-year-old cellist Peter Jaeger. Violinist Simon, 16, wants to be a doctor. Clarinetist Matt Golla, 16, would like to start his own business--”mechanics or . . . something with my hands,” he said.

“Professional is far from what I’m thinking about,” Golla said. “Even if you are the greatest, it’s hard to make a living. You have to get out there and find jobs. You don’t have people knocking down the door for you to do concerts.”

Still, Golla would like to play in an orchestra in his “spare time,” as would violinist Christine Liogys, 17, who is thinking about majoring in biology or psychology.

“I know if I didn’t play violin, I’d probably be disappointed,” Liogys said. “I think my life would be a little emptier if I weren’t in (this program). I would have regretted it if I had not tried out. “

The five who do contemplate professional careers include 16-year-old concertmaster Eugene Goreshter, who someday would “love to be in the Los Angeles Philharmonic”; flutist Deborah Jaramillo, 15, who “would like to be in music education and be a school teacher,” and oboist Tray Stogsdill, 15, who said he’d “like to become a conductor one day.”

Trumpeter Richard Grant, 17, isn’t waiting. He already is part of a salsa band that plays in several clubs in Long Beach.

All 10 of the music students polled said they are pretty happy about the training they’re getting. This wasn’t always the case. Early on, those problems of overcrowding cut both ways--OCHSA students complained about inadequate facilities (dance students, for instance, complained about rehearsal halls that lacked mirrors and a practice bar)--and, beyond that, many said that they found the curriculum to be unchallenging.

Administrators admit that OCHSA got off to a hurried start, a problem Opacic blames on the state’s delay in approving the initial funding request.

“We had five months to hire the staff, develop the curriculum, identify and audition the students, to do what we needed to do in terms of initial facility modification,” Opacic said. “Considering the magnitude of what we were trying to accomplish here, it was a real scramble.”

Now, though, the students said their studies at OCHSA compare favorably with other training they’ve received, even private lessons.

“After a while you get (just) so good and then you don’t get any better,” clarinetist Golla said. “You think it’s over. This school, they made me improve. I’ve improved a lot. I didn’t think I would.”

“You practically play all the time, so you get more practice in,” oboist Stogsdill said. “The music theory is really good. It helped my playing immensely.”

A four-year curriculum is being planned. Still, the students voiced a few suggestions for improvements.

“They could have teachers going in and out, probably on a week-after-week basis, so we can get exposed to more styles,” trumpeter Grant said. “A lot of people interpret music differently.”

And, of course, “it would be kind of nice if we had our own campus,” percussionist William Maruffo, 17, said.

Opacic, however, considers the idea “not feasible, at least in the short run. If we moved to our own campus and had to develop an academic program, there would be real financial considerations,” he said.

Flutist Jaramillo suggested that “if everyone came full time, it would be lot better because then we’d have more time together to practice.”

But the full-time issue is a complex one.

“People who grow up in one community, to leave that community to go to another high school 15 to 20 miles away, is a tough decision,” Opacic said, who sees transportation as another challenge.

“Students have to provide their own transportation, and for students who don’t drive or don’t have their own car or who have both parents working, that is a problem,” he said.

Next year, the high school plans to hire a full-time development director who will try to get private funding to help in the transportation issue, among others, according to Granger, who thinks that might help attract a more diverse student body and higher level of music students.

“We’ve set high standards,” Granger said. “We have not been able to make all the goals originally set. We may not have been able to play a complete Beethoven symphony, but we can play certain movements.

“But we’re on the road. We have tripled the amount of rehearsal time. I wish we could do more. I wish there was more time.”

But he could hardly ask for more dedication from some of his students.

Because they have take a full day of academic classes before their music studies, the OCHSA students have a heavy workload.

“It’s really hard on me,” said concertmaster Goreshter, whose family emigrated from the Soviet Union when he was 8. “I have to struggle in school sometimes. All the time, I have to catch up. There is always something to do, always somewhere to go: rehearsals or lessons, not just in Orange County, but all the way up to La Canada”, where he has a private teacher.

Trumpeter Alsop is an honors-program student. “That really puts a heavy academic load on me,” he said. “You have to schedule your time wisely and fit everything in. . . . You have to think about keeping the stress level down too. You could talk to almost anybody in the program and they would have a lot of stress.”

However, he thinks “that’s why music is very good. It really lowers the stress level.”

Violinist Liogys may be an overachiever: “I have choir too, before school.” She also has a job on weekends. “It seems like there’s never enough time,” she said. “But I really enjoy it.”

Trumpeter Grant flatly rejected the notion of letting up. “People say I should balance it up a little bit more, but it is my life,” he said. “I like it a lot. That’s why I came to the School of the Arts.”