The New Conductors: Schifrin Aims for Glitz in Glendale

The L.A. Philharmonic’s Esa-Pekka Salonen isn’t the only new music director in the Southland. Here and on the facing page, Calendar interviews the new heads of the Glendale, San Diego and Inland Empire symphonies.

After filling in as guest conductor of the Glendale Symphony for the last three years, Lalo Schifrin, 57, plans to enliven his first season as the orchestra’s music director and conductor, beginning Oct. 7, with the force of his personality and some Hollywood-style promotion.

Schifrin said he plans to expand the orchestra’s traditional scope of pops and light music in several directions--by bringing in big-name pop stars such as Ray Charles and Doc Severinsen, by adding more weighty pieces from the classical repertory, including early 20th-Century works, and by featuring child virtuosos.

“Classical music has to move with the time if it’s going to survive,” he said, sitting on a couch in his Beverly Hills music studio. “I don’t think the symphony orchestra is moribund, as some people claim, but certain things to revitalize and rejuvenate certain institutions have not been done.”

For a classical concert to succeed in this day and age, Schifrin said, it requires a touch of Hollywood glitz.

He is currently working on a special event that will bring together his composing talents, the Glendale Symphony and a friend from Hollywood.

“I plan to write a classical piece with no concessions and invite Doc Severinsen from ‘The Tonight Show’ to play the solo. He’s a great overall musician with a mass appeal, and the piece will give him the opportunity to play outside his pops, Johnny Carson image.”

Schifrin’s Hollywood connection is well-established. He has been nominated for six Oscars and has won four Grammy Awards for a body of work that includes such film scores and TV theme songs as “Dirty Harry,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Mannix” and “Cool Hand Luke.”

He wants to bring some of that glamour to the Glendale Symphony. An eclectic, multifaceted musician, Argentine-born Schifrin took over as the Glendale Symphony’s music director three months after becoming the first music director of the recently formed Paris Philharmonic, where he spends about three months each year conducting a kind of unconventional classical repertory that his Glendale audience might find difficult to enjoy.

In Glendale, Schifrin assumes leadership of an orchestra that has attracted a steady following (2,300 subscribers) with its light music. Now in its 66th continuous season, and with a budget of $440,000 and an aging audience, the orchestra is faced with the challenge of attracting a new generation of listeners.

Schifrin plans to do so by creating concerts that are introspective enough to keep the music lover’s interest, and fun enough to bring in the uninitiated.

“I think that our musicians as well as our audiences deserve a taste of what is called the mainstream of the symphonic repertoire as well as early 20th-Century works.”

For this season Schifrin has put together a varied program. Contrasts include popular operatic duets with Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” on Oct. 22, and eight standard symphonic marches with Gottschalk’s Symphony No. 1, “A Night in the Tropics” on March 11. For the Dec. 12 Christmas concert, 9-year-old Tamaki Kawakubo will share the stage with the Valley Master Chorale. On Feb. 10, Ray Charles will be soloist on a concert of American music from Joplin to Gershwin.

As for contemporary composers, Schifrin said he will not subject his audience to music it may not be prepared to enjoy.

“A music director has to be not only a musician and a dramatist, but also a psychic with a sixth sense about what his audience can take in. At this point, I don’t think the Glendale audience is prepared for the extreme avant-gardism of our time. This does not preclude the possibility of scheduling in the near future the music of authors like John Adams, a minimalist whose work is more accessible.”

Schifrin said that “without dancing or jumping, I plan to talk to the audience throughout the concerts, make comments to help them grasp the music better and establish a direct rapport with them. If the conductor is accessible, so is the music. If he is aloof, the music becomes boring.”

To attract young audiences--”the people who are too old to rock and roll, but think classical music is too intellectual and high-brow--” Schifrin said orchestras should begin educating audiences at the elementary and high school levels. He would like to expand the symphony member’s voluntary chamber music performances in local schools “to compensate for the lack of music education in the school curriculums.”

Schifrin said he intends to be visible in Glendale and won’t shun fund-raising duties.

“Fund raising is something that comes with the territory,” he said. “In many ways, it’s easier to be a guest conductor--you just come, rehearse, perform, and get on a plane and leave. But I enjoy getting involved with the community. I’m a very social person.”