Bring Your Own Brahms : Party On and On at Saddleback’s Chamber Music Marathon

First it was daylong screenings of “I Love Lucy” and “The Twilight Zone” episodes. Now there’s a Chamber Music Marathon, live, 12 hours’ worth.

And anybody can play.

“If you don’t have a group, but you have music you’d like to play, just show up,” said Kay Pech, associate professor at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, where the music marathon begins Saturday at 10 a.m.

“Bring your Brahms! You’re a pianist? Bring a piano quartet and I’ll send you off with a violinist, violist and cellist,” Pech said. “I’ll spot Stacey and Peggy and whoever and you guys can go off to a rehearsal room.”

The marathon is a fund-raiser for the Saddleback Student Chapter of the American String Teachers’ Assn. Pech, faculty sponsor for the event, teaches chamber music classes and leads the chamber orchestra at the college.

“If you do have a group, call ahead for a performance time,” Pech said. “If you just want to listen, we leave the doors open so the audience can come and go. You can run out and get pizza.”

There is a 15-minute limit on each performance, but participants can play as many times as they want, with as many groups as they like. Established groups can schedule as many performances as they want: “We’ve had koto ensembles sign themselves up for every hour on the hour,” Pech said.

Admission for those who come just to listen is $2, and that includes a cookie and a beverage. Performers pay $4.

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Now wait one hemidemisemiquaver: Audiences usually pay and performers get paid. Why would performers pay twice as much as listeners?

Pech’s explanation almost made sense.

“The players are there for fun,” she continued. “And they know it’s a fund-raiser for a scholarship. If I were a musician (out there), I’d pay my $4 fee and play all day.”

Whatever the fee structure, it all adds up: Each marathon raises enough for one music scholarship. According to Pech, there have been eight such marathons over the last 10 years, with a crescendo to the current two or more per year.

Pech expects scores of musicians to participate, and proceeds from the event will help enable one student to attend the ASTA Summer Institute of Chamber Music in Santa Barbara. Tuition, room and board for a week is $425. A similar marathon in January raised $350.

Paying to play isn’t the only difference between the marathon and most musical events. Programs, for instance, are usually printed before a concert; here they come after the fact.

“We never know the program until it’s been played,” Pech explained. “Teachers come with little children playing duets, or maybe a quartet of violinists. Families come and play together. And there’s always new music we’ve never heard before.

“Afterward I type it up and mail it out to all the participants as a memento,” she said.

One would think that individuals hoping to pair up with musical playmates would have to be stupendous sight-readers.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “You’d be amazed. Young ones sit in with old, it’s amateurs with professionals. A lot of people know the music already. Everybody’s very casual.”

And while chamber repertory may by definition connote small groups, they’re not exclusively small ones. The groups often get bigger as the marathon rolls on.

“We’ve done the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6,” Pech said. “It doesn’t need that many players, maybe nine.

“Sometimes when the players get tired, we’ll double two or three people to a part,” she said. “Last time we went till midnight, and for one Hungarian-style quartet movement, we had a pianist and three to a part for the other parts, and at that point everybody was getting kind of crazy.

“This time we’re going to try to stop at 10 p.m.”

* Chamber Music Marathon takes place Saturday at Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Fine Arts Room 101, Mission Viejo. 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. $2, includes beverage and cookie. Performers, $4. (714) 457-9976.