MUSIC : How Do You Get to Irvine Meadows? Practice!

Isabella Lippi may have “the gift” for playing the violin, but that doesn’t mean she cares much for practicing.

The 21-year-old musician, yet another of the performers drawing praise from critics and audiences in what is turning out to be a golden age of young violinists, said her mother had to push her to practice.

“But everyone’s mother has to do that,” she added. “I enjoy playing the violin, but not practicing it.”

The Chicago-born Lippi makes her Orange County debut Saturday, Aug. 18, at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. She will join the Pacific Symphony in a Mozart program led by Kate Tamarkin.

Such concert dates are the reward of violin studies that began at the age of 6.

“I guess my parents noticed that I love listening to music on the radio,” Lippi said from the Encore Music Camp in Hudson, Ohio. “Neither of them are musicians, but they just decided to start me on the violin, which was not as expensive as buying a big piano.”

She turned serious at age 9, when a teacher told her parents that she should consider music as a career. “Ever since then, the violin has always been the top priority, over school and everything else,” she said.

Lippi moved to New York after graduating from high school to attend the Juilliard School of Music, but that lasted just a year. “I don’t think I was really ready for a place like Juilliard,” she said. “I just didn’t get enough attention there.”

So she transferred to USC to study with Robert Lipsett, whom she had met at the Encore Music Camp.

Lippi describes herself as a highly motivated person “who thrives in competitive situations.”

“I definitely get inspired by listening to tapes or even live performances,” she said. “If I don’t listen to other people for a while, it’s not as easy for me to get motivated. When I hear other people playing, it makes me realize what I want to do--just keep striving for more.”

A first-place winner in the 1988 Young Musicians’ Foundation National Debut Competition in Los Angeles, Lippi had her big break a year later, when she won a competition to play with the St. Louis Symphony in a pops program.

Leonard Slatkin, the orchestra’s music director, was one of the judges; after hearing her, he decided to upgrade the award.

“They awarded me three subscription concerts instead of the pops programs,” she said. “That was incredible. It was such a lucky break. I was really happy about that.”

Who: Violinist Isabella Lippi will appear with the Pacific Symphony led by Kate Tamarkin in a Mozart program.

When: Saturday, Aug. 18, at 8:30 p.m.

Where: Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: San Diego Freeway (405) to Irvine Center Drive exit. Turn left at the end of the ramp if you’re coming from the south, right if you’re coming from the north.

Wherewithal: $8.50 to $37.50. (Lawn seating at $7.50.).

Where to Call: (714) 474-4233.

MORE MUSIC AND DANCE:

The Cypress Pops Orchestra will play lighter classics and pops selections at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18, on the Cypress Civic Center Green, 5275 Orange Ave., Cypress. Admission: free. (714) 527-0964.

Music and dance groups from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Colombia and other countries will perform during the Old World Village’s annual South American Festival, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 19, at the village, 7561 Center Ave., Huntington Beach. Admission: free. (714) 894-5151.

Ronald Stoffel, director of the chamber ensemble Moments Musicaux, will give a lecture on building a personal symphonic and chamber music library, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 19, at the Newport Center Library, 2005 Dover Drive, Newport Beach. Admission: free. (714) 644-3191.