San Diego Spotlight : Age Forces Nee Out of Class, But Not From the Podium

Thomas Nee, longtime conductor of the La Jolla Civic-University Symphony, turns 70 next month. He is one of the founding members of the UC San Diego music department. And his genial, energetic presence has been one of the few constants in an otherwise mercurial department.

But under university protocol, faculty members must retire from teaching at age 70. Nee, however, does not intend this to be his final year as the orchestra’s music director.

“I’ll probably stay on conducting the orchestra, which I could do as a part-time position. The university keeps emeritus professors a year at a time, which is a good idea because it keeps them from getting stuck with a bunch of old guys,” Nee said with his characteristic understated humor.

At 8 p.m. Saturday in Mandeville Auditorium, Nee will lead his orchestra in the opening concert of its 1990-91 season. This weekend’s orchestra program, which is devoted to music by the brothers Haydn and Mozart, both father and son, is atypical of Nee’s programming in that he usually includes a seldom-performed, 20th-Century offering. Consonant with the conductor’s unhackneyed approach to programming, however, is his selection of Leopold Mozart’s Concerto for Alto Trombone and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Serenata Notturna,” K 239. Neither of these obscure works is likely to be found on a “Mozarts’ Greatest Hits” album.

The Nee signature pieces will occur later in the season, including Arnold Schoenberg’s early opus, “Five Orchestral Pieces,” Elliott Carter’s “Holiday” Overture, and UCSD resident composer Roger Reynolds’ “Graffiti.”

“I’ve always been naturally interested in contemporary music,” Nee said . “When I was in college, I harassed my teachers about contemporary music, which they were not at all interested in.”

In 1944, when Nee was a struggling teacher in rural Iowa, he happened to hear the Minneapolis Symphony perform a work by Ernst Krenek, the controversial Austrian emigre who was then composer-in-residence at St. Paul’s Hamline University. On the basis of that exposure to Krenek’s music, Nee decided to do his graduate study with Krenek at Hamline. Even when Nee was assigned to conduct the band at Hamline, he made those tradition-bound musicians play works by Schoenberg and Milhaud.

“I suppose this trait is partly selfish, since I like contemporary music,” he said. “But I’ve rationalized it in a didactic sort of way. It’s good in the long run for listeners to get a healthy variety of music.”

Although Nee was a successful orchestra conductor and a founder of the Minnesota Opera Company (along with composer Dominick Argento), he was lured to UCSD with the promise of a department that would specialize in new music performance.

“I had a good orchestra in Minnesota, the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis, and I was loath to leave it,” he said. “But the chance to emphasize new music in a new department made me decide to leave.”

When asked to list the most rewarding 20th-Century works he has conducted with the La Jolla orchestra, Nee was quick to mention Iannis Xenakis’ “Ais,” which the orchestra presented last spring as part of UCSD’s Xenakis festival.

“I’m proud of the Henry Brant piece we commissioned five years ago, ‘Western Springs,’ as well as some of the Charles Ives works we did during the first five years I was here,” Nee said.

Nee claims that his orchestra members--last season there were 95 players on the roster--don’t give him any grief playing this kind of music.

“They know when they sign up that they’ll encounter thorny pieces,” he said. “I try to be careful how I do the first few rehearsals, choosing sections that are easily conquered. I want them to have affirmative feelings about a piece on the first day rather than a month later.”

Next fall, Nee, who came to the La Jolla campus in 1967, will realize one of his long-term dreams: He will conduct a performance of Virgil Thomson’s 1947 opera “The Mother of Us All” at UCSD.

“Frankly, I had thought that it was not my cup of tea,” Nee said. “I thought Thomson’s triadic style was too lukewarm. But when I saw it in Minneapolis, it was one of the most affecting pieces I’ve ever encountered. With its wonderful Gertrude Stein libretto, it’s really a very subtle piece.”

Perhaps Nee’s musical curiosity, which is refreshingly unfettered by doctrinaire allegiances, is the key to his resilient musicianship. The nascent septuagenarian is still the inquisitive college student, prodding his elders and surprising his peers.

Toting up the numbers. Now that the San Diego Symphony has folded its SummerPops tent at Hospitality Point for the last time, it is appropriate to review the summer season’s bottom line. According to symphony management, revenue was up 11% this year over the 1989 summer season. This year’s ticket and subscription revenue totaled $1,571,221 versus $1,409,718. Total attendance was down 5%, however, with 107,292 tickets sold this year versus 112,535 last year.

The addition of more than 100 tables in the cabaret seating allowed the symphony to sell more of the expensive tickets to each concert, which improved total revenue even though attendance sagged. Next summer, when the orchestra moves to Embarcadero Marina Park, management expects to provide even more cabaret seating. Final approval of the symphony’s plans for its new summer home will be discussed by the San Diego Unified Port District on Sept. 25.

Dedication. The San Diego Symphony’s Oct. 19 performance of the Faure “Requiem” under music director Yoav Talmi will be dedicated to the memory Zoltan Rozsnyai, who died last week. Rozsnyai was music director of the local orchestra from 1967-71.