‘Coffee and Cookies’

Lois Arthur’s Feb. 3 letter regarding the “compromises” and lack of “coffee and cookies” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center made interesting reading.

Mrs. Arthur stated she has “suffered midweek scheduling” at the Center. But in reviewing the 1989/1990 Orange County Philharmonic Society Great Orchestra Series schedule, 75% of the concerts are on weekends. Also, one third of the International Artists and Virtuoso series concerts are scheduled for weekends. At the Music Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has scheduled only 72% of its concerts for weekends. In addition, virtually none of the recitals, chamber music concerts and special events at the Music Center is scheduled for weekends.

Mrs. Arthur also lamented that in an apparent “money-saving move,” the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled for only “occasional” performances at the Center. Actually, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is scheduled for four of the 12 OCPS Great Orchestras series concerts. No other major orchestra is scheduled more than once. Also, the other major orchestras scheduled for this season include the Montreal Symphony, Frankfurt Symphony, Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, Seattle Symphony, Orchestra Der Betthovenhalle Bonne and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This schedule hardly sounds like it is designed to cut costs!

Finally, Mrs. Arthur complained about the Center’s box office staff (“less than pleasant”), the “enormous increase in ticket prices” and the “poor acoustics.” With all due respect to Mrs. Arthur’s perception, I have consistently found the Center staff to be not only very pleasant but helpful, knowledgeable and accommodating. Moreover, the Center’s range of ticket prices, as summarized in a Jan. 28 article in the Los Angeles Times, were not significantly different from the range of ticket prices at the Music Center or other major performing arts centers throughout the country.

Finally, the Center was designed with some of the finest and most up-to-date acoustics of any performing arts center in the world. Perhaps when Mrs. Arthur complained that from her seats “spoken words from the stage were indistinguishable,” the cause might have been the clamorous late arrivals stumbling in the dark to their seats, patrons rustling through programs, digging through purses for glasses, keys and makeup cases, unwrapping cellophane from candy and then slowly crumpling the loose wrappers.

Perhaps it was the all-too-frequent coughing, sneezing, throat clearing, nose blowing, running conversations and other discordant behavior.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Arthur, these are issues that even coffee and cookies will not cure.

GARY N. BABICK, Corona del Mar