40th-anniversary symphony bash, reading of award-winning play are free for all.

A musician who grew to love the violin after his father made him play the instrument will help the Beach Cities Symphony celebrate its 40th anniversary tonight, and on Sunday a new playwright will unleash the spirits of a success-driven Victorian woman.

The symphony--initially composed of 45 musicians--performed for the first time at the Mira Costa High School auditorium in November, 1949, giving South Bay residents a sample of their musical talents.

Now a 70-piece community-based orchestra, the symphony will open its 40th season with a free concert featuring violinist Stuart Canin. Organizers said they expect between 800 and 1,000 music lovers to attend the concert at 8:15 tonight in Marsee Auditorium on the El Camino College campus, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd.

Canin will perform Henry Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, a romantic work he calls “a perfect concerto.”

Canin, former concertmaster with the San Francisco and Glendale symphonies, is senior lecturer in music at UC Santa Barbara and teaches violin there.

In June, he was in China, teaching master classes to teen-agers at Shanghai Conservatory, when the failed and bloody uprising occurred in Beijing. He was unhurt and was able to complete his teaching assignment.

Canin, 63, first began to study the violin as a preschooler. A native of New York City, he recalls that his father was “a frustrated amateur violinist who passed the violin on to his first son.”

At age 5, Canin said, he began to enjoy playing the violin.

Conductor Jerome Kessler will lead the orchestra in playing selections from Brahms and Rossini.

The symphony is primarily composed of non-professional South Bay musicians, said Kessler, the orchestra’s music director since June, 1988.

“This orchestra is a very good orchestra,” said Robert L. Peterson, chairman of the symphony’s 25-member board and a French horn player in the symphony since the early days.

Peterson said all of the symphony’s concerts are free, and the orchestra relies upon private contributions to help meet its monetary obligations. The symphony’s annual budget is about $35,000.

Reflecting on the symphony’s first 40 years, Peterson said: “It’s been a long, long healthy growth time, with some highs and lots of lows, too.”

Play enthusiasts can enjoy a free theatrical presentation at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Norris Theatre located near Crossfield Drive and Indian Peak Road in the Peninsula Center in Rolling Hills Estates.

A cast of 10 will read 37-year-old playwright Mara Fein’s award-winning romantic drama, “An Experiment in Life.”

It will be the first reading for the piece, which spans 25 years of Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans’ life. Evans, who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, was obsessive about pleasing her husband, George Henry Lewes, an English critic and writer, Fein said.

Fein, a USC professor of English, said she believes the play transcends time because of its strong emotionality, and she hopes it will evolve into a full production.

“An Experiment in Life” placed second in the Norris Playwriting Competition this spring.

The theater’s Play Discovery Project sponsors the competition to identify new talent, said Renata Rafferty, a spokeswoman for the Norris. She praised the biographical play as “a good, solid work.”

There will be no costumes, lighting or sets, but the staged reading will give Fein an opportunity to fine-tune her work, Rafferty said.

Fein, who is working on her doctorate in Victorian literature, said the experiment in the title of her play refers to Evans’ refusal to conform to society’s view of what a woman’s life should be.

Fein, who called Evans her “literary idol,” said she could understand Evans’ insecurities.

“Just like Mary Ann,” Fein said, “I need my husband’s assurance that I am a good writer.”