Rugged Antelope Valley Strikes a Few New Classical Chords

With a breeze to cool the night air and the stars shining overhead, the orchestra eased into the soothing strains of Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” followed by two Mozart pieces, a clarinet concerto and the familiar “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.”

The large crowd on this balmy Saturday evening applauded warmly between each lilting piece as the concert progressed. Some people hummed or swayed in their seats to the music while others sipped soft drinks or munched on cookies.

Another night for the cultured at the Hollywood Bowl?

No, try a baseball diamond in a park, 60 miles away in the rough-and-tumble Antelope Valley, supposed home of “Cowboy Boots and Country Roots” as the local fair’s theme proclaimed this year.

But the success of this Saturday night brush with the classics has introspective locals wondering: Does the high desert really still deserve its hick reputation? And the question had to be asked: Has a spark of a more urban, Los Angeles-style culture finally taken root there?

This was the first classical concert Palmdale officials had sponsored in more than a decade, and with good reason. The last time the city tried, with a Sunday afternoon chamber music series, “The response, to put it mildly, was horrible,” recalled city Parks Director John Lasagna.

So for this first-ever outdoor solo concert by the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra (yes, there is one), organizers had expected perhaps a few hundred people. Jaws dropped when the crowd swelled to more than 1,000, nearly filling the park.

“It was really what we look at now as a happening. The whole atmosphere of the event was incredible. We were absolutely astonished,” said Steve Buffalo, Palmdale’s special events coordinator, who has spent most of his years booking country and pop oldies acts for city events.

In truth, you could tell it wasn’t the Hollywood Bowl even before the concert, when it was announced that the cappuccino stand promised for the evening was a no-show. Once the music began, the sound system at times gave the impression it truly belonged on a baseball field, and the tower lighting really did.

But no one seemed to mind much, and the city gamely tried to create atmosphere by fitting the stage erected on the baseball infield with white latticed wood panels and strings of decorative lights. Concert-goers settled into lawn chairs, rolled out blankets or cuddled in sleeping bags.

As the concert progressed from light classics into medleys from musicals, younger children roamed through the crowd. And when they became too restless, parents took them aside to play elsewhere in the park, although not quite out of earshot.

Only when the orchestra shifted into a trio of marches that culminated with the rousing “The Stars and Stripes Forever”--no one expected the crowd to sit still for an entire evening of classical music--did the local color of the Antelope Valley reassert itself.

Suddenly, an elderly man wearing a cap jumped to his feet and began marching and waving his arms like a drum major, finally leading much of the audience in clapping along with the music. That, and the themes from “Superman--The Movie” and “Star Wars,” and the evening was done.

Conductor Laura Hemenway and her 32-piece orchestra, which had fought the breezes sending their sheet music flying, drew such prolonged standing applause that they wanted to do an encore, but embarrassingly had prepared nothing, apparently presuming they’d be tolerated at best.

And everyone was left wondering: What was it in this land of pickup trucks and leather boots that drew more than 1,000 Antelope Valley residents for a starlight concert--especially when the advertising referred only to the classical selections.

In truth, the classics have long had a home in the Antelope Valley, with the local symphony in various forms surprisingly dating back more than 50 years, Hemenway said. Someone has been attending the concerts all those years. But it was the size of the Saturday turnout that left many amazed.

Hemenway, a 16-year veteran of the orchestra, said she saw few of the group’s regular patrons, who attend its more formal indoor concerts at Lancaster’s performing arts center, in the audience. So, she suggested, “it might have just been the ambience” of the night more than the music.

But a longtime thirty-something friend I met at the concert--who grew up in the Los Angeles area and then moved to the Antelope Valley with his wife to raise a young family--said it was their appreciation of classical music that drew them.

That and the fact it was free.

They had never attended any of the oldies or country music events that have been local staples over the years. Plus, taking their youngsters to an indoor classical concert was generally too daunting and expensive. So when the outdoor concert beckoned, they jumped.

There are many such folks in the growing ranks of Antelope Valley residents, often L.A.-area transplants who arrive with what Lasagna called “a metropolitan attitude,” expecting more from their new home than its traditional rodeos, community parades and weekend target shooting.

As a five-year resident, I’ve often found it hard to tell whether the old-timers or the newcomers have the upper hand. The newcomers certainly are gaining in numbers, but many are gone most of the week because they commute, making it tough for yuppie cafes or coffeehouses to survive.

Still, there’s clearly change afoot. Palmdale officials were equally surprised last year to see the results of an informal survey of residents’ top choices for future local concerts.

Pop saxophonist Kenny G topped the list followed by crooner Michael Bolton, leaving country acts in the dust.