COFFERS BREWING : Southwest Chamber Music Society Ends Its 7th Season With a Concert, Several Major Gifts and Big Plans

The Southwest Chamber Music Society will end its seventh season Friday feeling fat and sassy.

Well, comparatively.

Its budget this year is around $98,000; next year it jumps to $175,000. “We’ve had an incredible convergence of major gifts shored up by an impressive increase in personal gifts,” explained artistic director Jeff von der Schmidt. These gifts, received since January, include:

* A two-year $20,000 grant from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation in San Francisco to rehearse and perform a complete cycle of Beethoven’s 17 string quartets;

* A $15,000 gift from the Ahmanson Foundation in Los Angeles to launch the group’s first summer season, at the Huntington Library in San Marino;

* A three-year $45,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation in Los Angeles to boost the group’s administrative structure and to expand its educational outreach programs;

* A $30,000 matching grant from Chamber Music America in New York for a three-year residency at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena;

* A two-year grant of $40,000 from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation in Los Angeles for general operating support, and

*An $8,500 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to record a CD (the Society’s second), a set of late chamber works by Ernst Krenek, for release in the fall of ’95.

“We’re obviously grateful,” said Von der Schmidt. “Who wouldn’t be excited in this era of riots, fires and quakes to raise these types of funds? It’s a validation of just keeping your nose to the grindstone. A lot of the convergence will look like it happened overnight, but believe me, there was a lot of sustained work. Not every proposal we threw in got funded.”

Formed in 1987 to be the Southland’s first resident chamber music ensemble modeled on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Southwest Chamber Music Society drew on various combinations of area musicians to offer concerts in Santa Ana, Pasadena and Claremont. Its first annual budget was about $25,000.

Since then, the group’s fortunes have waxed and waned. Some venues were added; others dropped out. Eventually, the group found itself playing mainly in two--the Pasadena Library and Chapman University in Orange.

Next year, the Society expects to play in about 10 Southland locations. But the core series will continue in Pasadena and Orange.

A program at Chapman on Friday will reflect a typical Society mix of traditional and new: Halsey Stevens’ Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello, composed in 1959; Brahms’ String Quintet in G, written in 1890, and music for the theater by 17-Century composer Henry Purcell, with soprano Mary Rawcliffe and lutanist James Tyler, founder of the London Early Music Group.

“We want to renew the standard repertory by invigorating it with performances of the best of early contemporary and world music,” Von der Schmidt said.

And what does he plan to do with all the new money? “We’re going to play better and better.”

What: The Southwest Chamber Music Society, playing music by Halsey Stevens, Brahms and Purcell.

When: Friday, June 17, at 8 p.m.

Where: Bertea Hall at Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange.

Whereabouts: Take the Garden Grove (22) Freeway to the Glassell Street exit; head north, cross Chapman Avenue and go three blocks to the university. Or, take the Chapman Avenue exit from either the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and head east, or from the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway and head west, to Glassell Street and then head north for three blocks.

Wherewithal: $8 to $15.

Where to call: (800) 726-7147.

MORE MUSIC/DANCE IN COSTA MESA: THE ROCKETTES

The high-stepping dancers from Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall continue through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive. Also on the bill: singer-actress Susan Anton. (714) 556-2787.

IN IRVINE: STUDENT DANCE WORK

“Phoenix . . . She Rises From the Ash,” by UC Irvine undergraduate choreographer Gina Angelique, winner of the National Dance Assn.’s Outstanding Senior award, will be danced today and Friday at 8 p.m. in UCI’s Fine Arts Village Theatre. (714) 856-5000.

IN CORONA DEL MAR: FLUTE/PIANO RECITAL

Mary Palchak and John Novacek will offer a free program of works by Bussar, Faure, Enesco and other French composers Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Newport Center United Methodist Church, 1601 Marguerite Ave. (714) 644-0745.