A Towering Fund-Raiser to Make Music

In what may have been a whimsical nod to patrons who paid as much as $750 each to attend, Saturday’s benefit concert for the San Diego Symphony opened with a drummy version of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”

The program itself could have been titled “Fanfare for a New Office Building,” since the co-star of the Symphony Towers Opening Celebration was the new tower on B Street that, at 34 stories, claims the current distinction of scraping the sky closer than any other structure downtown. The building, connected to the soon-to-open Marriott Suites Hotel by a suspended “Sky Lobby,” also virtually encloses Symphony Hall, where guest conductor Heiichiro Ohyama led the orchestra through the first half of the program.

Acclaimed cellists Mstislav Rostropovich and Lynn Harrell shared top billing with Symphony Towers and contributed the evening’s most dramatic moments with their performances of Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major and Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote.” In a rare musical tete-a-tete, Harrell conducted Rostropovich through the Shostakovich piece in a kind of supercharged cellist-to-cellist dialogue that brought the house both down and to its feet.

The audience included about 700 who signed on for the full gala, which bracketed the concert with a Champagne reception, dinner and dancing. Dorene Whitney, who chaired the massive, record-breaking benefit that opened Symphony Hall in 1985, returned to the scene to orchestrate the Symphony Towers Celebration and said that, although Saturday’s party was on a smaller scale, it ranked as the more difficult production.

“Putting this on was like having a baby, and I forgot just how hard having a baby is,” she said. Whitney added that the labor bore desirable results, since the net proceeds were expected to exceed $300,000. With this figure in mind, she addressed the audience before the program and said, “I want to thank you for helping to keep music alive in San Diego.”

Symphony President Elsie Weston, who served as gala treasurer, called the night a milestone for the organization. “It’s a tremendous night for the symphony,” she said. “We’re excited about the concert, and the bottom line is going to be lovely .”

That bottom line was arrived at through sales of gala tickets at $250 and $750 per person (an additional 1,300 people bought tickets for the concert only) and through an innovative underwriting ploy in which 11 individuals and couples made substantial contributions in order to have suites named for them in the adjacent hotel. Judson and Rachel Grosvenor, who already have their name on San Diego’s Grosvenor Inns and also own the defunct El Cortez Hotel, will be among those to be memorialized on the door of a “Symphony Suite.” Others who will have future hotel guests puzzling over their identities are Neal and Linda Hooberman, Donald and Toni Daley, Annyce and Jacques Sherman, Don and Darlene Shiley, Irwin and Joan Jacobs and Julian and Katherine Kaufman.

The separate categories of gala guests, as well as non-gala concert patrons, presented quite a logistical challenge to Whitney and her committee, and the response was a multi-tiered event that continually separated and reunited the throng. The final plans did utilize several spaces in Symphony Towers, however, which jibed conveniently with the fact that the building was on display.

After the concert, lower-priced ticket-holders retired to the 12th-floor Sky Lobby for a buffet of pasta, steak Diane and lamb chops in minimalist, flower-free surroundings that emphasized the environment. The higher-priced spread in the 34th-floor University Club sold out at an attendance of about 240, which crowded the club to its handsome limits and gave guests seated in the floor-to-ceiling bay windows astonishing views of a city going about its Saturday night fun-seeking. Afterward, all guests were invited to return to the main lobby for dancing to the Steven Spencer ensemble.

The formal dinner featured five courses as well as the attendance of the evening’s stars, and Rostropovich shared the center table in the main dining room with Dorene and John Whitney, Barbara and Neil Kjos, Eleanor and Art Herzman and Sally and John Thornton. The musician’s table mates learned that he prefers to be called “Slava,” and, after the meal, Rostropovich said he would gladly return to play another gig at Symphony Hall.

“I come back anytime, of course,” he said. “San Diego I like very much. Is wonderful place!” The invitations listed the building’s operator, London & Edinburgh Trust, as co-hosts of the evening. The guest list included George and Philip Gildred, whose family’s Fox Theatre was remodeled into Symphony Hall; Charles Graham; Linda and Jerry Kapstein; Kay and David Porter; Bobbi and Blaine Quick; Ellen and Roger Revelle; Jill and Ed Sondker; Paul Richey; Kay and Don Stone; Jeanne Brace; Helen and Bennett Wright; Evelyn Truitt; San Diego Opera President Esther Burnham with Jack Lasher; Frank Laughton; Carol Randolph and Bob Caplan; Junko and Larry Cushman; Marion Bateson; Debbie and John Daley; Susan and Michael Channick; Bea and Bob Epsten; Dottie and Pat Haggerty; Karen and Warren Kessler; Crystal and Det Merryman, and Martha and George Gafford.

RANCHO SANTA FE--About 400 putative and legitimate sons and daughters of the Old West moseyed out to Jean and Ernie Hahn’s Tierra Feliz Ranch last Sunday for the second annual “New Frontiers for Children’s Hospital” Western jamboree.

With its meandering waterways and carefully trimmed lawns (which can double as golf fairways or pastures, depending on the occasion), the 90-acre spread lent itself to the theme by offering winding trails for buggy drives and enough flatland to accommodate the Wild West town that was constructed just for the afternoon.

Transportation to the party site was limited to horse-drawn shays and wagons, which carried guests past the tepees of a Native American village (complete with evidently tireless dancers) on the way to the Hahns’ temporary and decidedly bawdy collection of saloons and gambling halls, where an occasional brawl or gunfight disrupted the Sunday calm.

The theme inspired most guests to dress in the usual cowpoke regalia, although a few showed the imagination to appear as other Western characters, including one fellow who robed himself as a Franciscan padre and jovially blessed everyone he passed. Jean Hahn disguised herself with black braids and buckskins and seemed like nothing so much as a modern Sacajawea leading her guests through some of the cheerier rituals of the frontier.

Hahn invented the “New Frontiers” idea last year, and added a Mexican border village and a parade of Wild West characters as added diversions for Sunday’s benefit. Most sets, as well as a pair of burros, were rented, although the life-size wooden cows that grazed near the dining area belong to Hahn. “I just have a ball doing this,” she said.

“We’ll make in the neighborhood of $160,000, or maybe a little more,” said chairwoman Mary Alice Brady. “The concept of Frontier Town is so unusual that people can’t resist it.”

Blair Sadler, president of Children’s Hospital and Health Center, said the point of the day transcended fund raising.

“We’re trying to get a lot of new people interested in Children’s, and it’s working,” Sadler said. “People who know nothing about Children’s are learning today about what we do and our unique role in the community, and that’s every bit as important to us as the money we raise.”

The day ended with a late-afternoon supper served in the Cattlemen’s Assn. corral, where guests dined on steak and chili while watching entertainers from the San Diego Opera, the Starlight Opera, the San Diego State Performing Arts program and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre.

Event sponsors included Sam and Marianne Alhadeff, Phil and Catherine Blair, Bob and Debbie Weir, Patti Phair, Mel and Linda Katz, Bonnie Kane, Chuck and Anne Dick, Bob and Linda Hallock, Tisha Swortwood, Jody and Earle Honnen, Roger and Alice Casper, Terry and Charlene Brown and John and Anne Gilchrist.