Youth Orchestra Starts Season on Bold Note

The Glendale Youth Orchestra enters its third season next week with a new leader and ambitious plans for a larger program, more performances and a new concert home.

Having found its legs in its first two seasons, the group now hopes the new music director and conductor, Richard Rintoul, can lead it to a new level of play--and local prominence.

Already, organizers plan to add a third concert to the schedule and to try to move the performances, which had been in the Lanterman Auditorium in La Canada Flintridge, to Glendale.

The orchestra was founded in 1988 by a group of Glendale parents to supplement the musical education their children get in school. Looking to tap high school talent, the group is opening auditions to 10th-grade players. Until now, the orchestra has taken players from grades six through nine. Rintoul hopes eventually to add players up to 12th grade and to form a separate high school group.

Orchestra officials say hiring Rintoul, 36, is a solid first step toward more visibility for the program. A professional violist who has sat in with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and other groups, Rintoul says his primary musical love is conducting.

He also is music director and conductor at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, a well-regarded after-school conservatory for high school musicians that is affiliated with USC. He studied conducting with the late Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas and has led a number of orchestral performances, including the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra last February.

Most attractive to the Glendale orchestra’s directors, however, is Rintoul’s broad experience with young players. His delivery is gentle but exact, the tone of someone not unfamiliar with musicians who might rather be playing baseball than violin.

“That’s my challenge,” he said, smiling.

One of his Colburn student groups, a 25-member string orchestra, recorded a compact disc and video and toured England this year, he said.

“I know the Glendale group is not at the same level, but over a period of years, things can grow,” Rintoul said. “I’ve seen it happen. I can see the potential that there could be something hot here.”

Diana Rutledge, president of the Glendale Youth Orchestra’s board of directors, said the group chose Rintoul after getting applications from all over the country. “He’s going to be the one to take the program to the heights that we see,” she said.

Officials hope to find grants to support an expanded orchestra program. Each student pays the nonprofit group $125 in tuition and the city of Glendale kicks in $5,000 a year. Private and corporate donations cover the rest of the $13,000 to $14,000 budget, Rutledge said.

Organizers hope to add overseas travel and performance to the orchestra’s repertoire, along with summer music retreats closer to home and more community performances, such as chamber ensembles.

For now, Rintoul faces more down-to-earth tasks. He and his wife, Ingrid Runde, a violist with the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra, are settling into their new Glendale home. In addition, Rintoul is looking for an affordable concert hall in the city and picking this year’s crop of 70 or so young players.

Auditions will be held Sept. 21 and 22 at the North Glendale Methodist Church. The audition fee is $15. Advance applications are required and are available from Marge Parks at (818) 507-1544, or the orchestra, P.O. Box 4401, Glendale, CA 91222.