Romanian Pan Flutist Joins Symphony Today : Performance: Gheorge Parvu will play the ancient instrument in two selections with the Garden Grove orchestra.

It was in the dead of winter, early in 1988, when Gheorge Parvu attempted to cross the Romanian border into Yugoslavia. He chose January for his escape because, he said, guards at the heavily patrolled border “pay not as much attention when it is cold.”

He carried no food or water, but did have the wooden pan flute he had made himself. Tonight, less than two years after his escape, he will play the instrument in two selections with the Garden Grove Symphony.

After making it over the border and walking for 35 miles, Parvu was arrested in Yugoslavia for lack of official papers and spent 15 days in a Yugoslav jail and 15 more in a relocation camp. He lived in Belgrade for four months and 10 days--he can recite the exact length of each stage of his journey--before receiving permission to emigrate to the United States.

He came to live in Anaheim in May of last year after a friendly American consulate, a native of San Diego, recommended Southern California as a new home. Parvu goes to work each afternoon as a janitor for the Placentia Unified School District, but he hopes to make a mark with the pan flute, an ancient instrument that has survived in a number of cultures.

Named after the Greek god Pan, the instrument is a bundle of hollow wooden tubes of varying lengths; it is played by blowing down into the tubes. It is an obscure instrument in the United States, though it has been popularized somewhat by another Romanian, Gheorghe Zamfir, whose recordings are hawked relentlessly on late-night cable television.

Garden Grove Symphony manager Yaakov Dvir-Djerassi heard about Parvu from another musician and arranged a meeting.

“As far as we’re concerned, we always look for the unusual,” Dvir-Djerassi said. Parvu auditioned in November, 1988, and was worked into this year’s holiday program, which also features the Vocalworks quartet. Parvu will perform with the orchestra during “O Holy Night” and an arrangement of a Romanian folk tune, “A Floral Dance.”

Parvu has played during services at several area churches, but tonight’s concert is his biggest performance since his arrival in the United States. He first heard the pan flute on the radio, as a child in Romania. He immediately told his father, a pianist, that he wanted to learn the instrument. He studied with Zamfir, among others, performed on several recordings and was featured on national television.

But musical success was not enough to keep him in Romania. His father was a dissident who was jailed twice; Gheorge converted to Christianity in 1980 and repeatedly was persecuted for his beliefs. So he escaped.

“In Romania, we have very good people. It’s a very nice country,” Parvu said. But, he added, the totalitarian government is another matter. He enjoys his new-found freedom--”I’m very happy,” he said. “This is my new country”--but he worries about his homeland, which has so far been untouched by the wave of democratization sweeping Eastern Europe.

“I have pain for my country, because every country in Eastern Europe, they have victory,” Parvu said.

Change, he hopes, will come soon: “All the time I hope, because is not hope, is not life.”

The Garden Grove Symphony presents “Christmas Vignettes,” a program of traditional and contemporary Christmas music featuring jazz ensemble Vocalworks, Romanian pan-flutist Gheorge Parvu and violinist Mischa Lefkowitz, at 8 p.m. at the Don Wash Auditorium, Stanford Avenue and Euclid Street, Garden Grove. Tickets: $7 to $25. Information: (714) 534-1103.