Emigre Orchestra on the Horns of a Dilemma : Music: Members of the West Coast Chamber Orchestra are divided on whether to program all-Chinese pieces or appeal to a wider audience with Western programs.

It’s Friday night and 17 emigres from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong are gathered in Monterey Park where, as members of the new West Coast Chamber Orchestra, they are rehearsing a varied repertory under the baton of Liu Dunnan. They plan to play some Bach and Grieg before getting down to their true mission: performing traditional Chinese music scored for chamber orchestra.

“There are so many Chinese musicians in this country and so many composers here too that we wanted to establish an orchestra of these musicians,” says conductor-composer Liu, a Shanghai Conservatory graduate who served as composer-in-residence with the Shanghai Symphony before arriving in the United States in 1983.

But life for many of these Chinese immigrant musicians has been a struggle. In seeking freedom abroad, they have given up secure posts with the leading orchestras in Shanghai, An Hui and Hong Kong only to labor in jobs away from music.

Principal violinist Huang Daying, a 20-year Shanghai Symphony veteran, has worked as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, a cook for China Airlines and today is a dietary consultant and chef at Alhambra Community Hospital. Violist Xiang-yao Li is a part-time clerk at a Chinese jade store in Alhambra. Violinist Mariea Lou is a secretary at the Chinese Yellow Pages offices near her Monterey Park home.

Anxious to retain their skills, many of these performers still study and teach private students. Accepting for now the futility of trying to secure posts with American ensembles--and determined to forge a strong musical identity of their own--they decided last May to come together as the West Coast Chamber Orchestra.

According to Liu, the ensemble’s goal is ultimately “to introduce Oriental music to American culture.”

Toward that end, the orchestra will perform a program of Chinese music and Western fare tonight at the nearby First Baptist Church of Alhambra.

Finding the right programming mix is but one challenge facing this fledgling group. Funding is another. For its first concert last October (expenses ran around $1,300), musicians received no salary. “They were lucky to get gas money,” says Liu. The ensemble strives to appeal to the local communities--Monterey Park boasts an Asian population of 57%--and to tap new audiences.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Liu and his fellow musicians met in a small conference room at the San Gabriel Episcopal Church in Monterey Park, the site of their weekly rehearsals, to discuss the game plan for their orchestra. But there is little consensus this day on what direction the orchestra should take in terms of programming, instrumentation or personnel.

Pianist-businessman Logos Hall, 26, who acts as both interpreter and informal manager for the group, believes that in order to broaden its appeal the orchestra should be open to players of all nationalities. He also deems it prudent for the orchestra’s programming committee to adopt “Western compositional techniques” for scoring Chinese folk songs and lullabies passed down through the ages.

“We hope these Oriental traditional pieces--each work runs about five minutes--will be accepted by Americans,” adds Hall.

Liu, on the other hand, believes that in order to secure a niche in the marketplace, Chinese music alone should be programmed and Chinese instruments eventually introduced in performance.

“Chinese music is a simple line with simple harmonies,” he explains. “We want to perform this music because it would make us different from other orchestras.”

But principal bassist Wang Shichang, a composer for 30 years, recoils at such suggestions. He recalls his tenure with the Shanghai Symphony in the mid-1950s when players attempted in vain to embrace the colors of Tchaikovsky and other Western composers on Chinese instruments.

“Why try to express yourself on Chinese instruments which are so limited?” he says. “Besides, music should not be divided into instruments. These Chinese instruments are so ancient and they cannot express the whole. A Chinese violin cannot express harmonies, it is so limited in range.”

As Liu and company dicker over orchestral policy, they rib each other and marvel at the free exchange of ideas--a far cry from the years spent under the yoke of Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, when music was monitored and Chinese musicians were deprived of all contact with Western culture.

Wang, who enjoyed working with many foreign musicians in the Shanghai Symphony, was redeployed to a “medical factory” for 15 years. “If you were born in a ‘bad family,’ that is, being educated or a professor or lawyer, you couldn’t play in any orchestra,” Wang explains. “Farmers and peasants could play but of course they were not good enough.”

Liu, the son of a member of the clergy, says that after his piano concerto won a national contest he was permitted to leave the country to attend Indiana University. But his wife, a choreographer, was not allowed to accompany him. The couple, who have not seen each other in eight years, hope to be reunited in California in May.

The fates perhaps smiled a little gentler on violinist Huang Da-ying and his wife, cellist Liu Shao-lan. Joining the Shanghai Symphony in 1960 at a salary of about $65 each a month--”Musicians made more then than doctors in China,” says Huang--the couple were allowed to remain in residence at the orchestra dormitory, a facility they shared with about seven other families. There, if they covered the windows and sealed the doors, their talented young pianist son could practice Western music relatively undisturbed. In fact, Huang Sijing, who also studied violin with his father, went on to attend Juilliard and at 24 is now one of the youngest members of the Boston Symphony.

While the senior Huangs welcome serving as principals with the West Coast Chamber Orchestra, they regard the new venture as a hobby rather than an opportunity to rekindle their once-successful careers.

But not all players have reconciled having to earn their living away from music:

Conductor Liu acknowledges that some frustrated members have talked about returning to China; music adviser Mao Yurun, a violinist who taught music theory at Shanghai Conservatory and later at Brigham Young University, worries that the door that has allowed Western musicians and teachers into China, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai, could well close, with all gains lost. But for orchestra spokesman Hall, the answer is clear-cut.

“You have to look at the bigger picture,” says Hall, who at age 15 was allowed to leave China following his acceptance to the prestigious Juilliard.

“If you’re a dishwasher today, you can always get a better job and your kids can get a better education. The mentality in the Chinese community is that their children can always do better. In this country there is always hope. The son or daughter of a dishwasher can one day be a concertmaster and play with a great orchestra.”