MUSIC : RIO, Orchestra Will Be Helped in Concert

For Mary Moore Young, a longtime supporter of the Rehabilitation Institute of Southern California and a recent booster for the Pacific Symphony, bringing the two organizations together was a natural.

“I had this idea of merging the two entities somehow,” Young said recently. “I just didn’t know how.”

But she and officials of the two organizations quickly figured out a way: a family concert by the orchestra to be held Sunday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. Proceeds will be split evenly between the Pacific and the Orange-based RIO, which has been providing treatment to the physically and developmentally disabled for 41 years.

Young felt strongly enough about the collaboration to underwrite the $100,000-plus price tag of the concert. “I truly believe each one of us is going to have either ourselves or someone in our family or someone close to us who may need the services that RIO provides,” she said.

Young, a native of Missouri, has lived in Fullerton for about 25 years. She has supported RIO for about 20 years and became interested in the Pacific about three years ago.

“My purpose is to raise as much as possible in the concert,” she said. “But at least what I had committed.”

According to Praim S. Singh, 55, executive director of RIO, the institute handles “anywhere from 300 to 400 persons a day.” The center provides long and short-term physical and vocational therapy, as well as other services, for children and adults suffering from stroke, amputation, arthritis, head and spinal-cord injuries and other disabilities.

“Our objective is very simple,” Singh said: “To provide disabled persons of all ages and all types of disability with therapy, training and support to live independent lives, to be like you and me as much as they can be.”

The institute operates on a $2.8-million annual budget, of which “approximately 55% is self-generated” through fees for service, “although no one is denied (access) because of inability to pay,” he said.

The rest of the budget comes from individual gifts, corporate contributions and the United Way.

Singh said the two organizations are hoping to net $100,000 from the event. (A spokesman for the Pacific said that “because ticket prices are ($6 to $14), about 10,000 tickets would have to be sold to raise this amount.”)

RIO’s portion of the gate will be “earmarked for our upcoming project to get an additional 40-apartment complex built on our property,” Singh said, “because we have a tremendous waiting list.

“Usually when we have an event like this, the funds are not used to pay operational costs. We feel that managing our operational affairs properly is our job. These kinds of monies should go to the future.”

The orchestra will use its share of the money for general operating funds, according to a spokesman for the Pacific.

One of the participants in the program will be children’s entertainer Bob Schneider, who always assembles a group of 12 local youngsters to join him on stage.

Well before Schneider arrives in Orange County, the kids receive a videocassette of songs they will help him sing. They get a single 90-minute rehearsal with him, and then it’s show time.

“Usually the kids are well-prepared,” Schneider, 45, said in a phone interview last week from Saratoga, N.Y., where he was vacationing. “There are specific choral parts and choreographed moves. There’s a chorus-line feel to the act.”

Schneider happened into a career as an entertainer about 11 years ago when he started working with immigrant children in the Canadian school system.

“I was a songwriter, basically commissioned to work with English-as-a-second-Language kids in Canada,” he said. “At first, it was a pretty scary thing. I had nothing planned.”

It was raining that day, so Schneider picked up his guitar and simply created a ballad, “Listening to the Raindrops Falling Down,” on the spot.

The song seemed to work, and with his encouragement, the children soon were “making actions of rain falling down with their fingertips.”

He has made several albums since and has continued to work on the principle of “encouraging the kids to help,” he said.

All of this is a far cry from his original plans. Schneider grew up in the Bronx, picked up his brother’s guitar when he was 17 just for fun but had his mind on a different career.

“I went to law school for a year,” he said. “But I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. So I left law school, started writing songs and stuff. Really I was a pop songwriter. I did that for several years.”

He characterized his musical style as “sort of (like) James Taylor.”

He moved to Toronto in 1972 when a “friend asked if I wanted to come up and do some demos.” He was doing various odd jobs, he said, when he landed his part-time artist-in-the-schools position.

Then every thing began to click for him. Now, he wouldn’t dream of going back to law.

“Wherever I perform, it’s great for me,” he said. “I get real close to the kids real quick. I didn’t have this kind of success even in my wildest dreams. It’s been a blessing in my life.”

* The Pacific Symphony will give a family concert on Sunday) at 7 p.m. at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive. Music director Carl St. Clair will conduct works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Leonard Bernstein. Bob Schneider and a children’s chorus also will participate. Proceeds to benefit the orchestra and the Rehabilitation Institute of Southern California. Tickets: $12 and $14 for adults; $6 and $8 for children. Information: (714) 740-2000.

WINNING PIANISTS--Helen Wu, 19, of Irvine, won the $1,500 top prize Sunday in the 1991 Asian Artists Piano Competition, sponsored by the Orange County Chinese Cultural Club. Wu took first place in a field of nine competitors by playing works of Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. As part of her prize, she performed during the Autumn Moon Celebration, sponsored by the Bowers Museum, last Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Elaine Kao, 16, of Arcadia, won the $750 second prize. Melody Lu, 17, of Irvine, and Janice Park, 23, of Orange, took the $400 and $200 third and fourth place honors, respectively. Judges for the competition included pianist Stephen Bardas, USC keyboards lecturer Konstantin Sirounian and Los Angeles Times music writer Daniel Cariaga.