Diana Halprin: Baton, Bows and Pluck

Don’t look for her to wear white tie and tails when she makes her conducting debut with the Orange County Chamber Orchestra this weekend.

“No pants,” says Diana Halprin, who divides her time between Santa Fe and Orange County. “I feel a conductor must be very powerful. And I believe there is a feminine power that matches in every way a masculine power. Look for me in a simple black gown.”

The violinist, who for eight years was the chamber orchestra’s concertmaster, is planning to take a high-profile step onto the Orange County society scene in coming months. “ Then you’ll see me in color,” she says, laughing.

“I’ve always loved parties,” says Halprin, who once lived in New York. And the idea of going to them here, she says, is not only to kick up her heels but to help promote awareness of the need for music education.

“I want to be an educator here. I want to establish a lecture series. Poor people aren’t the only ones who are deprived in the area of the arts--you can have very wealthy people who are deprived of an artistic grounding too.”

If Halprin has her way, audiences that attend the chamber orchestra’s performances at the Irvine Barclay Theatre will have an educated appreciation for what they hear. “You can’t just walk in and understand a great piece of music,” she says. “You need a guide--some information to hang your mind on. Orange County needs the wellspring of an educational thrust.”

She also wants audiences to understand that a chamber orchestra is to a symphony orchestra what a watercolor painting is to an oil. “It is a small orchestra of woods and strings,” she explains, “more intimate than a symphony orchestra. However, there are moments when the depth and breadth of what we express are equal to the greatest of oil paintings.”

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As a violin virtuoso who has performed around the world, Halprin has had a hefty share of the limelight. (She played for the Barbra Streisand concerts at The Pond at Anaheim and served as concertmaster recently for tenor Jose Carreras when he appeared at Radio City Music Hall in New York.) “It has been wonderful, glorious,” she says.

But not always easy.

A child prodigy, Halprin made her violin solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra when she was 7. “My parents put a toy piano in my hand at the age of 2 and discovered I had perfect pitch,” says Halprin, who is in her 40s.

“They put a fiddle in my hand when I was 3, and before I was 4, I was on stage over 50 times. It was very difficult, to put it mildly. But I survived it. The challenge was to grow up to be a person. I always fought for that.”

Today, being a person has as much to do with her life in New Mexico--which she shares with fiance Joe Goodman--as it does with being an orchestra conductor in Orange County.

Along with attending concerts and educational courses in Santa Fe, the couple enjoy evenings with friends. “It’s not only a social world we enjoy there,” Halprin says, “it’s a world where you can get in touch with nature and art. Art is everywhere--from the bank to the airport.”

Halprin’s home in Santa Fe is full of the collectibles she acquired during her New York days--Art Deco pieces by Erte, a faux silver collection by Chase (“in the ‘30s, the poor man’s sterling,” she says) and two unused garage refrigerators stuffed with other treasures “we don’t have room for.”

She may haul her stored collectibles--some pieces of beautiful Roseville porcelain, among them--to Orange County when she finds a permanent residence here.

“(In Orange County) I have found my artistic home,” Halprin says passionately. “I can’t wait to start conducting.”

For her debut next Sunday, Halprin will not only conduct, she will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. As a violin soloist with the orchestra for eight years, she has earned a following.

“People who have heard that I will conduct are saying, ‘Aren’t you going to play anymore?’ So I thought, OK, I’ll do a marathon--show them I can play and conduct at the same concert.”

It’s that Feminine Power thing at work again.

“I have felt pregnant with something all my life, and, finally, I have a chance to give birth to that something in a way I haven’t had before.”