Pianist’s Prizes Exceed His Age

Award-winning pianist Anders Martinson, 17, solos with the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra tonight.

Martinson has been playing the piano since he was 6, encouraged by his musically inclined parents. Already he has given more than 150 concerts, recitals and other public performances and soloed with several Southland symphonies. He has racked up 19 first-place awards.

They have not come easily. During the school year, Martinson spends three hours a day at the piano; in the summer, it’s six hours.

When he’s not at the keyboard, Martinson collects fish and semiprecious gems and plays soccer and table tennis.

He will graduate in the spring from Santa Monica’s Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. Next year, he says, he will either go to college (Yale is his first choice) or devote himself full time to music. Sometime soon, he hopes to branch out from his classical repertoire into jazz.

He’ll be nervous tonight, before he performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major.

“I always get nervous--(that’s) good, because it gets my adrenaline up, and then I’ll play well,” Martinson said.

Tonight’s concert is at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium at 7:30. Admission is free.

The Brentwood Chamber of Commerce will present its 1991 Citizen of the Year award to B.J. McMorrow, president of B.J. McMorrow Enterprises.

McMorrow, an active member of the Brentwood business community, will be honored at the 24th Annual Honorary Mayor’s Ball on March 23 at the Bel-Air Country Club.

The Santa Monica Police Activities League has elected new officers. They are Kathleen Schwallie, president; Jack Butefish, first vice president; Ron Gruzen, second vice president; Rosalie Argenta, secretary, and Pam Brady, chief financial officer.

Joseph Mitchell has been named chairman of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Board of Directors.

Mitchell, a longtime supporter of the medical center, has served most recently as chairman of the board’s Executive Committee.

The West Hollywood City Council has appointed Gay Forbes the new director of the city’s Community Development Department.

Forbes, formerly with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has experience in residential and neighborhood business zoning, urban design guidelines and alternative housing.

The Legal Division of United Jewish Fund presented Irwin Buchalter of Beverly Hills with its Maimonides Torch of Justice Award at a dinner March 14.

Buchalter will be honored for his commitment to Jewish and community causes. He is a past member of the Jewish Federation Council’s board of directors and has chaired the United Jewish Fund’s Legal Division.

James Fulton, director of the Chemical Dependency Center at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, has been elected president of the California Assn. of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors for 1991.

Fulton, who has developed treatment programs at several local hospitals, has more than 20 years’ experience in chemical dependency treatment.

He is a resident of West Los Angeles.

The West Hollywood Library has chosen the winners of its photo contest, “Year of the Lifetime Reader.”

The winners are Bonnie Hulkower, youth division; Patricia Gardner-Grey, adult color division, and L.A. Sands, adult black and white division.

The winning photographs will be forwarded to the national contest at the American Library Assn. headquarters in Washington.