Orchestra Plans Halloween Treats : Music: Symphony opens season amid decline in funding. But officials say tradition of free admission will continue.

Dennis Trembly, noted co-principal bass with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, calls free community concerts “enlightened social practice that make a society of more sensitive individuals.”

For almost half a century now, the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra has been pursuing that path of enlightenment. It could well be argued that the orchestra has successfully fostered sensitive individuals, at least in Santa Monica, a city oft-noted for its kinder, gentler approach to the downtrodden.

In its 48th year, the semiprofessional orchestra will launch its concert season on Halloween night at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with a decidedly festive program: Wagner’s overture to “The Flying Dutchman,” Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre,” and Mussorgky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain.” Trembly will play a double bass solo with the orchestra, which is made up of a third each of professional, student and non-professional musicians, during the “Danse Macabre.”

Music director and conductor Allen Robert Gross will be overseeing the symphony’s program for the third year.

Gross, who is chairman of the music department at Occidental College and conductor of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony, said: “We’re going to do some uncommon things for Halloween. We are going to have the original version of ‘A Night on Bald Mountain,’ which doesn’t end with the soft church bells like the revised and reorchestrated version most common. It ends with a frenzy of music. It’s a piece seldom played because it is so difficult. Then we figure we should have a lugubrious instrument do solo for such a lugubrious event, so we’re having the double bass play the solo.”

Historically, the Santa Monica Symphony has drawn from studio musicians who recorded music for the movie industry. Jacques Rachmilovich and other musicians who were hungry to play classical music founded the symphony in 1945 and even made some recordings, said Sheila Wells, president of the Santa Monica Symphony Assn.

The symphony has since grown into one of “the premier community orchestras in Southern California,” said Wells, under composers Arthur Lange, Peter Meremblum, former CBS Symphony director Victor Bay and Yehuda Gilad, a faculty member of the USC School of Music.

Unlike a number of community orchestras, Wells said, Santa Monica Symphony’s non-professional musicians, drawn from the community, rehearse once a week before performances. Two full-dress rehearsals with the professional musicians before each concert ensure that the program is polished before performances, she said.

But like professional and semiprofessional symphony orchestras in places as varied as Los Angeles, Oakland, New Orleans and Denver, it has become increasingly difficult for the city symphony to survive in the face of rocketing costs, funding cuts and a dearth of donations.

This year the symphony, which is funded by the city, the county and the American Federation of Musicians, is about $25,000 short of its $62,000 operating budget, according to Robert K. Roney, director of the Santa Monica Symphony Assn. Board and its past president of 22 years. Roney said the association will raise the money with benefits and fund-raisers.

“In the long term,” Roney said, “there is a sense of peril (concerning the orchestra’s survival), but that is not particular to Santa Monica. It’s happening all over. We had to cut one concert from the season about 10 years ago. We could cut another one. Last year, we got a donation from an angel (that saved us).”

This year the Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Division allotted the orchestra $12,800, down from last year’s $16,100, Roney said. The Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission gave the orchestra $2,500, the same amount it has given over a number of years. Another $3,900 was received from the Music Performance Trust Funds as arranged by Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians, down from $7,500 last year, said Roney. Annual contributions from individuals, small business and corporations generate about $18,000 a year, he said.

About 78% of the budget is spent on performance production, with pay going only to the conductor and union musicians, Wells said. Although the orchestra has free use of the auditorium, its longstanding venue, Wells said it works out that the orchestra’s production costs are about $15 per seat for the 800 to 1,500 people who attend the concerts.

“The people of Santa Monica have season tickets to four concerts of the season and they don’t even realize it,” said Wells, who added that the symphony does not charge for admission because it is semiprofessional and because of the free use of the auditorium. “There are 3,000 seats in that auditorium and we’d love to see them filled. This is a wonderful civic asset.”

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Despite the mounting hardships, seasoned conductors, noted soloists and dedicated musicians come together again and again to labor at what they dearly love: live classical music, performed with all the pomp and circumstance allowed full-professional orchestras.

Trembly said the symphony’s struggle is simply emblematic of tough economic times.

“There is a trend in American society to undervalue the arts because of a preoccupation with physical survival, which dulls and calluses people. Live music encourages people to put something in their lives that is not grim. Concerts are like kaleidoscopes of thoughts and emotions . . . your imagination is stimulated by the physical quiet of sitting still, while you’re getting a great deal of sensation. That is a unique experience.”