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MUSIC : An Orchestral Blending of Seasons

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<i> Chris Pasles covers music and dance for The Times Orange County Edition. </i>

The Irvine Chamber Orchestra disappeared before anyone heard it give a concert. No news there; lots of cultural dreams go up in smoke. But the nifty trick here is that the orchestra hasn’t vanished without a trace.

The ensemble, announced with such high hopes by conductor John Elg a year ago, has merged with the Orange County Four Seasons Orchestra, itself a fledgling venture started last fall by violist Carolyn Broe. That group gave its first--and only--concert in October at the neglected Santa Ana High School Auditorium. The new orchestra, which will retain the Orange County Four Seasons name, will play its first concert at the new Irvine Barclay Theatre on Tuesday, a date that had been reserved by Elg for his group.

“Carolyn and I have known each other for years,” Elg says. “We both were simultaneously trying to start our orchestras. We’ve merged because, in essence, Carolyn was further along with her nonprofit status and mailing lists and all the administration.

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“I essentially gave her this date, still retaining some of the players and this program I had arranged,” he said. The program, which Elg will conduct, will include works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Howard Hanson, David Diamond and two Orange County composers, John Gerhold and Kenneth Friedenreich.

Elg said that Gerhold is an Irvine resident who is finishing his doctorate in composition at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and Friedenreich is in his late 30’s and lives in Costa Mesa. “Carolyn’s vision was more for Baroque repertory, mine more more 20th-Century works,” Elg noted. “But we decided to merge the two to give a balanced season with repertory not done by the other groups.

“Optimistically, we would like to do a season of four concerts. Three would be eclectic offerings of works that are not in the the standard repertory of Pacific Symphony, South Coast Symphony and so forth, always featuring Orange County talent as players. (The fourth) would be an annual composers’ concert featuring works of Orange County composers.

“We want to try to give some Orange County composers a venue to do some world premieres,” he continued. “There are a lot of composers down here. A lot of people from Los Angeles migrated here for other jobs, but still do compose. Some are retired people, very fine composers. There also are grad students. There’s a cross-section of talent. This is going to be, hopefully, a way for them to present their work. We would welcome Orange County composers to get in touch with me or with Carolyn and submit scores this summer for consideration for the 1991-92 season.”

Right now, however, the effort is still shaky. There is only about $1,000 left over from Broe’s concert in October, Elg said. “It’s slow going. But we just received our official nonprofit status . . . and so it will get easier to attract board members (and) corporate help.”

They don’t plan on going back to the high school, says Elg. “It was so expensive because of security reasons. We attracted a lot of people, but we feel we can attract as many people to the Irvine Barclay.”

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He added, though, that “we would like to play also in the northern and southern part of the county as well. That’s another reason we took the name of her organization.

What: The Orange County Four Seasons Orchestra.

When: Tuesday, March 19, at 8 p.m.

Where: The Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Road, Irvine.

Whereabouts: On the UC Irvine campus, on Campus Road near University Drive, across from the Marketplace mall.

Wherewithal: $15 and $19 ($12 for students and seniors).

Where to Call: (714) 854-4646.

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