MUSIC : Violist Strums Up Her Own Orchestra : Newport Beach musician puts up her inheritance to launch ensemble to play baroque and early classical music.

Violist Carolyn Waters Broe was so frustrated by the lack of opportunities to play baroque and early classical music in Orange County that she decided to launch her own ensemble and is risking her inheritance to front the new Orange County Four Seasons Orchestra, which makes its debut Friday at Santa Ana High School.

“I have launched it,” the 33-year-old said in a recent interview from her home in Newport Beach, “because I have been rather spoiled by some of my earlier experiences in my career, back in the ‘70s (at Cal State Long Beach and the Hidden Valley music festival in Carmel). And I thought that I would be just achieving greater and greater things in the professional world.”

But “to my surprise, many of the orchestras in Orange County just wanted to play pops music. I felt that it was kind of a sellout.”

Would she name names? “I don’t want to point any fingers,” she said. “Certainly we have needed more chamber music in Orange County, and there aren’t very many groups that cater to the baroque. And I feel that the county has a wealth of fine artists who are capable of soloing in this area.”

Her orchestra’s inaugural concert of music by Vivaldi, Bach and Handel will enlist 18 musicians, including guest conductor Donald Ambroson and three soloists, flutists Mary Palchak and Mary Lazarian and violinist Cecilia Ramos Archuleta.

“I could have added more people,” she said, “but I felt that it would get overbalanced. And really, the baroque is a chamber music era. It’s best not to be played by more than 40 musicians.

“Most of the musicians (in her orchestra) are top-quality Orange County artists,” she said. “Many of them are from the Juilliard School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the St. Louis Conservatory. The conductor graduated from USC. We have people from Europe. I’m trying to dispel the mythology that Orange County musicians can’t play. This is the stigma. You’d be surprised.”

Although some people start new orchestras because they’re itching to get up on the podium and conduct, Broe says she isn’t.

“I would much rather be a performer and soloist,” she said. “I want the very best conductors, who have the most experience in performing baroque literature, and certainly there are conductors who are far more capable to lead the orchestra than myself.

“There may come a time when I do some conducting with the orchestra, but right now I think I have enough to work on, what with getting the publicity and the contracting of the musicians for the orchestra--and playing.”

A graduate of Chapman College in Orange and Cal State Long Beach, she decided to focus on baroque literature because she thinks that “people are very inspired by it, and baroque music is what actually turns people on to classical music at large.”

Regarding the different “camps” of how to play baroque music--whether to perform it on modern instruments, or attempt to re-create historical conditions--Broe said her orchestra will attempt to “to split the difference” between the extremes.

“There aren’t that many musicians who have a full setup of baroque instruments,” she noted. “That takes quite a bit of capital outlet on the musicians’ parts.

“Of course, there are trumpet players who have special baroque instruments, and we will be bringing in some recorders and baroque trumpet players, and some people who have definite background in solo performance of the baroque. . . . We will be over-dotting, taking the trills and mordents the way they were intended. Stylistically, we want to keep with what the composer really intended.”

But specific plans for the orchestra remain a bit hazy.

“We’re just working on two concerts right now,” she said, the one Friday and one this winter that is still unscheduled. “We would like to have one every season, at least one.”

Broe estimates the budget for the first concert at about $7,000. “Something like that,” she said. “I haven’t added up all the pennies yet. I don’t even want to look at how much it’s going to cost.”

Where is the money coming from? “There’s a wonderful group of supporters called La Primavera Guild,” she said. “They are formed as a support group to do fund raising. . . . But the bulk of the money is coming from me.”

She’s putting up her own money? “Yes, an inheritance from my grandfather, who played piano, violin, clarinet and saxophone and was quite a lover of music. I’m hoping that I will get a good audience to hear the concert. I’m more interested in having people hear what I’m doing than in making money.

“Certainly it would be nice to break even and have a little bit of seed money for the next concert. But it really is completely out of love that I’m doing this. It’s because I believe in myself and the other musicians in the orchestra. . . . Anyway, I think there is a greater risk in not following our dreams, and then wondering if we could have created something that would last for a long, long time, something beautiful that would last a long, long time.”

The Orange County Four Seasons Orchestra will play its inaugural concert, guest-conducted by Donald Ambroson, on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Santa Ana High School auditorium, 520 W. Walnut St., Santa Ana. Tickets: $10 ($7 for students and seniors). Information: (714) 673-3036.