‘Perestroika’ Composition Wins Gorbachev Response : Music: Emigre Marrina Waks-Palatnik sent a tape of her piano rhapsody of gratitude to the Soviet president. She will play it Tuesday in Beverly Hills.

Shortly before Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize last month, the Soviet president received a less lofty but more heart-felt and personalized award from a local composer/pianist--a tape of an original piano composition, “Perestroika (Russian Rhapsody)” created especially for him.

The piece will be performed by composer Marrina Waks-Palatnik on Tuesday at a benefit luncheon for the Film Welfare League at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The 11:30 a.m. event, which includes a special presentation by actor Buddy Rogers and film executive Henry Plitt, will be videotaped and sent to Gorbachev.

Waks-Palatnik, a league member, was 4 when her Russian-Jewish family began a yearlong process of emigrating from the Soviet Union to Israel, but she still remembers the months of uncertainty, delay and fear. About 30 years later the Beverly Hills musician, touched by the Soviet president’s efforts on behalf of glasnost and Soviet freedom, felt moved to honor him with a musical tribute.

“Because of my own Russian experience, I appreciate so much what Gorbachev has done and I wrote this piece in gratitude,” she says. To her delight, recently Gorbachev acknowledged her gift via a letter from a Soviet cultural attache in Washington.

Waks-Palatnik, who says she began studying music at age 5 and is a graduate of Tel Aviv University’s Academy of Music, has performed on concert stages and in hotels in Europe and the United States. Her musical experiences are widely varied and have included playing for silent movies in Israel, soloing in the 1988 Super Bowl half-time piano extravaganza and opening for a Julio Iglesias concert.

A composer since childhood, she says that creating the 10-minute composition for Gorbachev was one thing, but getting it to him was another. She enlisted the aid of Mayor Tom Bradley, who forwarded her tape to Moscow, and Waks-Palatnik is still euphoric with Gorbachev’s response--albeit indirectly. “Now I intend to arrange it for symphony orchestra and I hope one day to perform it for him,” she says. “When I wrote it I combined classical, jazz, pop, Gypsy and Russian folk music to create a musical picture that symbolizes the new revolution in Russia.”

Combining musical styles has been a Waks-Palatnik trademark for years and is one reason why she left Israel at 22 to live first in New York, then Florida before moving to Los Angeles about four years ago. “I was very much influenced by all the music I heard on the radio in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” she says, “and I’ve always given my own touch to every composer. I call my style ‘From Bach to Bruce Springsteen.’ I thought audiences would accept me here more than in Israel.”

Her desire to experiment stylistically has led her to a new entrepreneurial endeavor, a business that she calls “Custom Designer Music.” The idea took root, she says, when she wanted a unique birthday present for her friend, philanthropist Sybil Brand. “It had to be permanent and special, and since I knew she liked movie music from the 1940s I wrote a concerto for her in that style.”

The gift was a hit among Brand’s friends and now Waks-Palatnik says she’s received “more orders than I can keep up with” for her custom-composed works. She says a recent client is actor Sylvester Stallone, who wants a musical composition influenced by his paintings.

Busy with family life and performances, Waks-Palatnik says she composes best late at night, usually in her head rather than on the piano, and often awakens her physician/pianist husband, Abraham Uzi Waks, for subjective feedback. “I work on many pieces at a time. I think I must have a computer in my brain because somehow I can keep compositions separate and add to them as I get new ideas. Sometimes I don’t touch the piano for weeks because I’m too busy, but the music stays with me and I never forget it. I have music in my head all the time.”

Tuesday’s concert will also include a song, “Blind to Love,” that was co-written by Waks-Palatnik and composer Lorrin (Smokey) Bates, who will perform the tune. “Marrina is a talented musician,” says the Golden Globe-nominated composer (for “Twins”), “very well-trained and flexible in her ability to play. She has fresh ideas because her perspective, based on her experiences, is so different, and that’s important in this business.”

Waks-Palatnik sees her future as busy and music-filled. There is the new business to expand, a project for UNICEF and a musical idea for George Bush that has been percolating. “But it’s not developed yet,” she says. It would seem that Dr. Waks will remain on call.