Reaching Out--New Audiences, New Artists : Music: The L.A. Philharmonic embarks on an ethnic course, performing in diverse communities in an attempt to reach new audiences.

An audience of more than 1,200 packed the Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles recently as musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed for the first time in the Korean community. The concert was part of a new Philharmonic series of five informal and intimate concerts performed in the city’s ethnic communities.

The first three concerts have drawn good reactions from the community thus far, and Philharmonic officials are calling the series a “smashing success” and are “thrilled” to continue with the program in September.

“The Philharmonic is very eager to explore new possibilities of repertoire, finding new audiences. That’s part of our growth and development,” said David Alan Miller, who conducted 29 members of the orchestra and the entire Young Nak congregation in the one-hour, cross-cultural chamber program May 9 that included “Amazing Grace,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” works by Bach, Handel, and Haydn, a Korean folk song, and the Korean National Anthem.

The series, which includes informal post-concert receptions for audience and musicians, kicked off May 6 with two string chamber programs at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights. The next performance in the series was at Wilfandel House on West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The series continues Wednesday with a string concert at Our Lady of the Miraculous Church in Montebello, and concludes with a program Thursday at the Trinity Baptist Church in Los Angeles featuring a 54-member Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Miller and 125 members of the Trinity Baptist Choir directed by Shardrick Boone.

Although the Philharmonic has 73 years of history, it has not until now made a concerted effort to reach various ethnic communities in greater Los Angeles. While Zubin Mehta’s program during his tenure as music director in the 1970s was similar, said Philharmonic managing director Ernest Fleischmann, it was primarily confined to the African-American community and later evolved into the Summer Institute for Young Musicians.

“You tend to play to older, smaller audiences, you tend to feel more isolated, and music becomes something more for the very rich and the very restricted part of the community,” said Fleischmann.

The current community series, he added, is a “pilot” that he, newly appointed creative consultant Peter Sellars (director of the Los Angeles Festival), and associate managing director Allison Sampson created last February.

“This has been an absolute success for everyone,” said Sampson. “We can only grow if we have a support network . . . listeners who care about music and this past week we found them.”

“This is a wonderful, much more intimate way to be exposed to classical music,” said Dale Hikawa Silverman, Philharmonic principal violinist, contrasting her performance to an audience of about 100 at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights to the more than 3,000 at the Music Center. “When you perform for a smaller group, it’s more expansive and educational.”

The series, Fleischmann said, is also part of the Philharmonic’s ongoing effort to expose more people to music and the orchestra, just as it does through its educational outreach programs and its new “Philharmonic Style” series designed to attract yuppie subscribers.

“We are (financially) supported by the community and we have a responsibility to the total community,” Fleischmann said. “We are hopeful that we will interest many people who have not heard a full orchestra or come to the Music Center. The music we play speaks across a lot of boundaries and borders. You don’t have to speak Spanish or Korean or English to understand Beethoven.”

“Music is universal,” agreed Richard Kim, Sunday school choir director at Young Nak. “Los Angeles has a lot of ethnic groups and music is the one basic fundamental that every ethnic group can share. Through events like this it would be very easy to know our common background, what we share in common.”