South Coast Symphony’s End Is Near : Music: Low ticket sales and a decline in corporate funding prompt the board of directors to tentatively dissolve the orchestra.

Facing a decline in ticket sales and corporate support, South Coast Symphony will shut down, just two months after announcing its 1992-93 season.

The board of directors of the 8-year-old orchestra called an emergency meeting Wednesday and voted to tentatively dissolve the organization. The surprise decision will go to a full board vote Sunday, but compliance is expected, according to board chairwoman Arlene Schafer.

“We just couldn’t go on with what was happening,” Schafer said Friday.

She said that the orchestra had been counting on meeting a $100,000 matching grant for a summer series at Fairview Park in Costa Mesa. But with the recession, “it didn’t happen because some of the corporations we thought we could tap just dried up on us,” she said.

“Financially that would have given us money toward the classical series and for the bills we had. It was like having all your eggs in one basket, and you shouldn’t do that.”

Schafer declined to say how much the bills were. She said Sunday’s meeting would also address the issue of whether subscribers to the new five-concert season would receive refunds. The orchestra had about 500 subscribers last year.

Neither conductor John Larry Granger nor general manager Doreen Hardy could be reached for comment on Friday.

(A recorded message on the orchestra’s phone answering machine says simply: “South Coast Symphony is in the process of dissolving. At this time there is no further information available. Thank you for calling.”)

The summer series of four concerts will be canceled. The season was set to begin in October at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Operating with a budget of about $500,000, South Coast was one of two mid-budget full symphony orchestras in the county. The other, the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove, has a budget of about $320,000. In contrast, the Irvine-based Pacific Symphony has a budget of about $5 million.

South Coast, founded in 1984, had already surmounted a number of serious financial crises.

The orchestra almost went out of business in 1989 because of a $30,000 accumulated deficit that began with an ill-fated venture to offer additional concerts at Santa Ana High School in 1987 and projected costs of $120,000 for the new season. But it survived by obtaining more private and corporate support and trimming its management staff.

Problems were exacerbated last year, however, when the orchestra ventured beyond its traditional home base at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa to offer concerts also at the Irvine theater. Ironically, poor ticket sales at OCC led to concerts there being canceled, while programs at the Irvine theater were sold out.

Granger, who was appointed music director in 1976, also became music director of the Santa Cruz County Symphony last October.

Asked if there is any possibility of reviving the orchestra, Schafer said: “Sure, anything could be revived. But it would have to be that knight in shining armor.”

THREAT TO FUNDING

State budget problems could ravage O.C. arts programs further. F2