Charting the Symphony’s Course : New conductor Boris Brott brings big ideas, charisma, feisty can-do spirit and a touch of glitz to the Ventura County Symphony.

For any self-respecting orchestra, the arrival of a new conductor is a momentous--and potentially delicate--occasion. If the orchestra has significant role within the life of its community, a conductor winds up being a part of the civic fabric.

The what-ifs pile up. What if we end up not liking him? What if he ends up not liking us? What if he gets a better offer elsewhere? What if we miss the Old Guard?

For the Ventura County Symphony, the arrival of a new conductor has a particular intensity, because it’s the first time such a thing has happened.

It was in 1962 that Frank Salazar made official the entity known as the Ventura County Symphony. For a few years before that, Salazar had led an orchestra made up of colleagues at Ventura College and elsewhere. Gradually, the symphony gathered steam and community support, and, when the Oxnard Civic Auditorium was built in 1968, it found a venue to call home.

Over the years, Salazar has introduced surprisingly daring programs. Last week, Salazar commented, “I had 30 years of exciting artistic choice in which I had the opportunity to present a vast repertoire to the county, a repertoire from all epochs, all styles--especially American and contemporary music.”

Three decades after his orchestra began playing in the Buenaventura High School auditorium, Salazar is passing his well-worn baton to Boris Brott, a very different sort of personality.

And a conductor’s personality is an important part of what gives an orchestra its color. The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, is cool, aloof, exacting, Finnish. Not so with Brott, imported from Canada.

The signs are everywhere. Flyers tease us with cheekiness: “Boris Is Coming!” Boris is fond of bow ties and doesn’t have time for excessive decorum. He knows how to navigate through the social whirl--a peripheral but important part of the modern-day symphonic life.

From this early vantage point, Brott seems to be a man of driving force, big ideas, charisma and feisty can-do spirit.

He’s also not afraid of detectable evidence of show biz glitz. For this story, the photographer accompanied Brott to a photo opportunity on a yacht.

“I hope it’s not too kooky,” Brott said later.

As for the giddy “Boris Is Coming!” brochures, which picture Brott among other celebrated Borises--namely, Yeltsin and Karloff--he smiled and said, only a bit sheepishly, “I take no responsibility for that.”

Brott has hit the ground running in Ventura.

Regionally, he has visions of collaborating with the Santa Barbara Symphony on programs and generally making a connection with that organization and its audience. He also talks of eventually striking up affiliations with the prestigious Ojai Festival. He and the board have plans for educational outreach and an extension of the “Composers Alive” program he produces in Canada, in which the lives of composers are dramatized.

Basically, Brott is doing what seems to come naturally: He is thinking big. He has no compunction about it.

“What the orchestra has to look at is developing an individuality that is more than indigenous to its location,” Brott said.

“We have to develop a sound, a way of doing things, a concentration upon education that will make what we’re doing here of national significance--first of all for artistic reasons, but also for support reasons. The only way I’m going to be able to create what I want to do here is with resources that are nationally based, as opposed to locally based.”

Brott comes on like a lightning rod for change and growth, exuding a sense of progressive thinking and resourcefulness--qualities that, in fact, counteract his inaugural season’s rather staid program (see accompanying story).

Karine Beesley has seen the change coming. Beesley, who got her master’s in arts administration at the University of Utah, was hired as the symphony’s executive director in 1987 and was the organization’s first steady, professional manager. Her arrival may have been the opening of the current chapter of transition that Brott, for the moment, closes.

Internal thinking, said Beesley, is also geared toward recruitment of new members and developing more of a countywide presence. Plans are under way for concerts in the forthcoming Thousand Oaks Cultural Center in 1994. Until then, the symphony’s public meeting place is still the Oxnard Civic Auditorium.

“We’re also exploring the feasibility of performing in outdoor venues,” Beesley said.

This year, the symphony’s budget is about $650,000, which puts it squarely in the ranks of what are termed metropolitan orchestras. Beesley said that 48% of that revenue comes from earned income--ticket sales and other sources. A small amount, she said, comes from state and national grants. The rest is from contributed income--individual donations and fund-raisers such as the annual Design House affair and the annual 10-K run.

The push now is to move toward greater self-sufficiency.

“We want to find corporations and foundations who are interested in maybe lending their name to a series of concerts, and sharing the marketing opportunities with us--so it’s not a charitable contribution, but an advertising dollar,” Beesley said.

Beesley points to the board as the catalyst.

“We have what I consider to be a young, and quite aggressive, board of directors. A lot of them have their own businesses and are entrepreneurs. In a lot of ways, it’s not a traditional orchestra board--the old, retired, moneyed sort of board.

“One of the reasons that the association is as viable as it is today is the fact that this board of directors is not afraid of change. We don’t take kindly to people saying that things have to be the same all the time. We try to be very open.”

She shrugs. “Heck, it’s stressful, but it’s exhilarating.”

Beesley said that after Salazar submitted a retirement proposal in December, 1990, the process of searching for a replacement began. A pool of 160 applicants was gradually reduced to four finalists, who were visited “on their own turf,” she said.

“It happened very quickly, and if we ever go through a search in the future--which I’m sure we will at some point--I think they’ll want to take a little bit more than eight months to do it. But we wanted somebody on board for the ‘92-’93 season.”

Greg Smith, a board member for the last nine years and the current board president, headed up the conductor search. The first order of business was deciding what they wanted.

“One of the big decisions we had to make was whether we were looking for someone with less experience who could spend more time here versus someone like Boris, who had a lot of experience and has proven abilities but who would be a non-resident,” said Smith. “Also, he is someone who has experience in building orchestras.”

Enter Brott, credentials and bow tie collection fully in order.

Born in Montreal, the son of renowned Canadian composer Alexander Brott, Boris took up the violin at age 3 and debuted with the Montreal Symphony at 5. He won the Pan American Conductors Competition, and he was an assistant conductor to the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

For 21 years, he led the Hamilton Philharmonic, while also working with orchestras in nearby Toronto, in Buffalo, in Dallas, and with the New York Oratorio Society, among others. His engagements as a guest conductor in Canada and England have been numerous, and he has made a specialty of redefining and focusing orchestras in need of direction. He’s an orchestra fix-it man.

Brott heard about the position through his cellist brother Dennis, who has performed here (and will perform here again this season). A real lure was the schedule in Ventura, which allowed him to continue living in Hamilton, working with the Montreal Chamber Orchestra, and pursuing his guest conducting career, while also having hands-on experience with a new orchestra.

“I thought, ‘Well, this is an ideal opportunity for me to make a stamp and do something and actually be able to make a contribution,’ ” Brott said. “There’s no sense in going somewhere where you’re not going to be able to do anything. And, despite the difficult economy, I feel that this area has the potential for growth.”

Beyond musical pedigree, the board looks to Brott for guidance in virtually all phases of the operation.

“No one else on the board has worked with orchestras with million-dollar budgets, which is where we’re heading,” Smith said. “It’s a great asset to work with someone who’s been there before, who’s made mistakes as well as had successes. He can help us avoid a few pitfalls.”

Within the symphony, attention was paid to the fact that the existing approach to programming, while artistically well-rounded and inclusive of contemporary and other non-traditional concert fare, wasn’t warmly received by some audiences.

“We’re trying to make the whole experience of the concerts a little more appealing to a broader group of people than we have done in the past,” Smith said.

“We want to make the programming a little more user-friendly. Our attempt is to put less contemporary music on our regular concert series, and we’ll be offering a separate series, probably in a smaller environment, that will be specifically devoted to contemporary music.”

Even the orchestra’s look is undergoing a change. Last week, Brott called a press conference at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium to unveil plans for a revision of the staging there.

Upon hearing the Symphony last season, Brott noticed that the sound was distributing unevenly. He concluded that much of the sound was being sucked into the high-ceilinged area backstage.

In order to “obviate the chimney effect,” he consulted oboist and acoustician Bruce Walker and worked with designer Dominick Parisi to shift the orchestra’s playing area forward. Special platforms will extend 15 feet out, over the first three rows of seats.

Visually, too, the scenery will change this season. The symphony logo and atmospheric effects will be projected on a scrim behind the orchestra. A gold leaf band will appear across the top of the stage. The musicians themselves will be adorned with gold accessories.

Brott says his eye is on the horizon.

“My prime goal initially is to sow the seeds of enthusiastic collaboration of all the players--the board, the auditorium, the press, the players, the audience. Once we’ve got a feeling of ‘Hey, this is exciting, this is fun,’ that’s the first step, and then you can do things with that.

“It has to be holistic and it has to be long-term. You can’t conceive of things in the short term. They have to be evolutionary. I may only be here for three years. I have to sow the seeds of what can go on for 20 years now.”

Brott has more ideas and ambitions than he has time to talk about them, but for the moment, the goal is clear.

He stood in the Oxnard Civic Auditorium and gazed out at a hall of empty seats.

“Actually, my main objective is to fill the hall, to make tickets hard to get.” He paused, then smiled. “Well, not too hard to get.”