Arts Panel Lauds 3 Groups, Pans a 4th : Evaluation: Two major Orange County chorales and a local symphony were praised but another symphony was criticized by a state arts advisory group.

A state arts advisory panel meeting here this week had bouquets for Orange County’s two major chorales and for one local orchestra. But for another local orchestra, it had brickbats.

The Pacific Chorale, the Master Chorale of Orange County and the South Coast Symphony all were highly praised, but the Garden Grove Symphony was called “very poor” in preliminary discussions by the seven-member panel, which is evaluating 80 chorales, orchestras and opera troupes statewide. Orange County’s Opera Pacific and Pacific Symphony were to be considered late Thursday.

Today, the panel will assign each group a numerical ranking (from one to four, the highest) to be used by the California Arts Council when it awards its 1990-91 Organizational Support Program grants this summer. In past years, only groups rated three minus or above have received grants.

The panelists include John Alexander, artistic director of the Pacific Chorale, but he left the room while his group was being discussed.

“This essentially volunteer chorus (all but 22 of the Pacific’s 152 members are volunteers) is at a higher level (artistically) than all the rest” of the chorales applying for CAC grants, said Patricia Mitchell, deputy general director of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. The chorale was rated four minus last year.

“They do major pieces fabulously,” added Robert Cole, director of UC Berkeley’s performing arts presenting program. “I’d like to sing in this chorus.”

The panels judge groups’ fiscal and managerial strength and community outreach as well as their artistic mettle. A word of caution came from panelist Rand Steiger, a San Diego composer, conductor and percussionist who said he hopes that the Pacific “doesn’t lose touch with (its) home base” now that it has begun performing regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Pasadena Symphony and at the Ojai Music Festival.

Other panelists said the chorale should add minorities to its all-white 19-member board--an effort already in progress, according to the chorale’s application.

The Master Chorale of Orange County, ranked three last year, was called “one of the finest chorales” in the country by panelist Denis de Coteau, music director and chief conductor of the San Francisco Ballet. “The quality of singing is far beyond that which I’ve heard back east and (artistic director) William Hall has not been afraid to attack 20th-Century music,” de Coteau added.

Panelists further praised the chorale for an increase in subscriptions sold and for a 22-member board of directors that includes five minority-group members.

South Coast Symphony, ranked three minus last year, was complimented for taking a serious approach to orchestral music. “This is a real orchestra. They play real music” instead of fluff, Cole said.

Alexander said it is especially “amazing” that the orchestra, which usually plays in a modest hall at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, “has accomplished what it has (in the) shadow” of the $73.3-million Orange County Performing Arts Center.

In stark contrast was the criticism of the Garden Grove Symphony which has failed to qualify for CAC grants for the past three years.

“Artistically, I think (the orchestra’s) standards are very, very low, very poor,” Cole said. “It sounds like it doesn’t have very good artistic leadership.” Edward Peterson is founding conductor and artistic and music director of the orchestra, which ranked two plus last year.

Clifton Swanson, music director of the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, was sent by the panel to hear the orchestra play live and wrote back that while it appeared to have strong community support, its “programming . . . in general tends to be very light and popular in orientation. Each concert borders on a pops flavor.”

Since then, the orchestra has announced elimination of its two-concert pops series and its annual New Year’s Eve concert in order to focus its audience’s attention on classical concerts.

In the past, the orchestra has defended lightweight fare, maintaining that it wants to reach a broad range of listeners including those unfamiliar with classical music. Cole rejected that argument. Noting that the orchestra’s programs have contained as many as nine short pieces “instead of one, two or three solid” works, Cole said, “(If) they think that’s too ambitious for the audience, then they shouldn’t have an orchestra.”

The Garden Grove Symphony was lauded, however, for its efforts to reach the large Korean community in Orange County. Through a guest conductor exchange program, Peterson will be conducting the Inchon Symphony in Korea in November and Won-Sik Lim of Korea is scheduled to appear in Orange County in September. The orchestra has two Koreans on its board.

Grants will be awarded Aug. 23 and 24. Tere Romo, manager of the CAC’s Organizational Support Program, said it is impossible to predict how many groups will win grants until the council’s new budget is determined.