Local Fans Back Home-Grown Symphonies

By ROBIN RAUZI

April 18, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Conductor Jerome Kessler remembers well arriving at his orchestra’s first rehearsal. He drove up the hill toward the Community House, rabbits scurrying out of his path.

It was a typical summer evening in 1982 in the small, eclectic community of Topanga. Word had spread among the 2,800 residents about the new orchestra: Inside the Community House sat nearly two dozen people with violins--more than Kessler had ever imagined.

“We learned very quickly,” Kessler said, “the difference between violinists and fiddlers.”

It’s not the kind of problem the Los Angeles Philharmonic is likely to face during its auditions. Nor do dogs wander in and out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion during matinee performances. But for the 45 members of the Topanga Symphony, this is the norm.

Across Southern California, as in Topanga, local auditoriums, community centers and even school cafeterias are alive with the sounds of Beethoven. And it’s in tune. For while few would confuse these community orchestras--each of which performs a handful of concerts a year--with the 108-member L.A. Philharmonic, they aren’t entirely the pick-up groups of hobbyists one might expect. The players come together for various reasons, but have one thing in common: They’re packing the house.

At the 1,236-seat Hall of Liberty in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, concerts of the Burbank Chamber Orchestra overflow. They have had to prop open the rear doors so people standing in the foyer can listen. In Topanga, they open the window to allow those sitting at outdoor tables to hear. And in Santa Clarita, the Symphony of the Canyons sold out each of its five concerts this season, the last one more than two months in advance.

Of course, selling out is relative. The Burbank and Topanga concerts are free. The Symphony of the Canyons--which charges $5 to $8 per ticket--plays in a cafeteria-cum-concert hall with seating for 312.

Why the need for symphonies, when the nearby L.A. Phil offers world-class musicians and three concerts a week? “I think every community wants it to be known that it has culture,” said Robert Lawson, conductor of Symphony of the Canyons. “When you have a symphony orchestra--especially a professional orchestra--you can look to it as ‘See, we have culture here!’ ”

For the Antelope Valley, overhauling its orchestra was part of growing with the region, now home to 300,000 people. When Lancaster built a 750-seat performing arts center in 1991, the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra shed its gymnasium venue and a lot of local amateur players.

“What worked back in the ‘70s and ‘80s wouldn’t necessarily work now,” said Donna Jean Enstad, president of the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra in Lancaster. “Things are more competitive as far as entertainment.”

Symphony of the Canyons is one organization with aspirations of outgrowing its “community orchestra” label. Only 3 1/2 years ago, said conductor Robert Lawson, they were a fully volunteer group hatched out of a collaboration with College of the Canyons.

“We raised money on cookie sales so I could buy music,” he said. Now the group can afford to pay some of its players--though not much--and is looking for a 1,000-seat auditorium in Santa Clarita.

Lawson, who was associate conductor of the now-defunct Ventura Symphony and founded the Channel Islands Chamber Orchestra, believes Symphony of the Canyons can develop into a fully professional regional orchestra.

He wants to maintain affiliation with the college, offering students a sort of musical internship. At the same time, he hopes to draw in musicians from Los Angeles’ huge pool of freelance and studio players.

That’s how it all started in San Diego, says Beth Folsom, who played violin there for 20 years before moving to Agua Dulce. When she started, the San Diego Symphony rehearsed in the evenings; she was lucky to make $1,000 a year. But talent attracts talent, and by the mid-1980s--for Folsom’s money, anyway--San Diego had one of the best orchestras in America.

As concertmaster of Symphony of the Canyons, Folsom hopes she can be one of those talent magnets. Right now, she said, “It’s a very good community orchestra. It’s just not in the same league as Pasadena or Glendale. . . . That’s why I’m staying: to get it into that league.”

These days, however, musicians talk about orchestras such as Glendale’s and San Diego’s in tones reserved for sick relatives. San Diego is about $3.4 million in debt, and Glendale had to cancel a recent concert when it didn’t have the money to hire musicians.

High-profile troubles like these--combined with a panic over cuts to government arts funding and dissolving arts programs in public schools--cause concern for the state of classical music performances.

Yet in Los Angeles County alone, at least half a dozen new orchestras have sprung up since 1990. Kris Saslow, executive director of the California Assn. of Symphony Orchestras, noted a similar trend among her group’s members statewide, with the newest groups based most frequently in upper-middle-income suburbs.

That profile certainly fits Simi Valley and Calabasas, where inchoate orchestras are looking to draw on a demographic typical of symphony-goers.

“I really thought that our area here could support a chamber orchestra,” said Calabasas Chamber Orchestra founder Tony Kissane. “And I felt that culturally it would add something to the status of the community in the area.

“Agoura has a community band, and Thousand Oaks has a symphony, and the west San Fernando Valley has a symphony, but Calabasas didn’t have anything in terms of a musical ensemble.”

Neither did Simi Valley, as Philippe Fanjeaud discovered when he moved there four years ago. He’d been a conductor in his native France, and two years ago founded the Santa Susana Symphony.

While starting it as a boutique orchestra--one formed on the aspirations of a conductor rather than a city council--Fanjeaud believes that it is something the city needed. “They didn’t know it, but they did,” he said. “I think every city on earth should have an orchestra.”

But the challenge of playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with only 40 musicians is nothing compared with keeping an orchestra financially viable, as Fanjeaud is finding out. Unlike Europe, government subsidies are hard to come by. And ticket sales, even at the major metropolitan orchestras, never cover all the costs.

While the Santa Susana is his baby, he’s trying to put together a board that has members with more expertise in finding sponsors and forming a nonprofit corporation.

That’s just the beginning, said Jim Domine, who for 16 years has managed and conducted the West Valley Symphony, which fills the 400-seat Pierce College auditorium. His success is helped by his distance from the Music Center. Driving downtown is a tremendous hassle, Domine said, even for a music-lover like himself. He looks at the West Valley as a niche market. “We’re a microbrewery,” he said, “not Anheuser-Busch.”

As such, community orchestras can’t let their ambitions outstrip their wallets, said Domine, who has music degrees from UCLA and USC and owns a print shop in Winnetka with his brother. “Arts people tend not to realize that it’s like any other business.”

For Topanga’s Kessler, whose orchestra has an $8,000 annual budget, success has to be measured in terms other than the number of violins on stage. Are you bringing music to people whom--for whatever reason--wouldn’t see the L.A. Phil? Are you entertaining your audience and introducing them to new music? Those are the things from which he draws satisfaction.

“We’re not planning a European tour, which is a wonderful trip--and a wonderful ego trip,” joked Kessler, who said his symphony’s next local concert will be Aug. 25. “But we’re not going to do it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

DETAILS

Burbank Chamber Orchestra

* WHERE: Hall of Liberty, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Hollywood Hills.

* WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, arrive early.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: (818) 848-8841.

Calabasas Chamber Orchestra

* WHERE: Calabasas High School, 22855 W. Mulholland Highway.

* WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

* HOW MUCH: $9 general admission, $5 students and seniors.

* CALL: (818) 878-4225, Ext. 242.