Meadows at Twilight : Food and Music Meet in Symphonic Convergence in O.C.

Even if you can almost see the July 4 fireworks from your backyard, this year you’ve decided you need something a bit more grand. So you figure you’ll head out to Irvine Meadows, where the fireworks are only a few yards away, the picnic can range from hot dogs to haute cuisine, and the tunes come not from your boombox but from a live symphony orchestra.

But maybe you’re new to this outdoor summer concert stuff. You want to lay on a swell feast, but what to bring? And how to stash and carry it? And, once the baton goes up, what are you going to be hearing and seeing up there, anyway? What’s the etiquette, the protocol? What do you look and listen for, and where should you sit? Suddenly a thick rule book materializes in your mind’s eye.

Relax. At Irvine Meadows, feeding the body with top-notch chow and feeding the soul with music is a cinch. Let a few insiders tell you how:

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You’ve picnicked yourself into a state of well-fed bliss. But with the first thought of the concert!, does some of that bliss vanish? Are things about to go from lovely/loosey-goosey to firm and formal? Nope. This is summer.

The summer concert atmosphere is “very relaxed, and it suits the lifestyle here, which is less formal,” says Louis Spisto, the orchestra’s vice president and executive director. “The summer season is as informal as it gets.

“Many people are always concerned,” he allows, “about how much they need to know. But I think the people who get the most out of it are the ones who approach music as they should, for the sheer enjoyment of it.

“When people get overly concerned about how much they should know, it’s really a waste of energy. They should be more concerned with enjoying the evening, packing a good picnic and allowing the music to relax and invigorate and stimulate them.”

But what if, horror of horrors, you get really invigorated and applaud in the wrong spot? In the summertime, Spisto says, the answer to that is: So what?

“People are a little bit intimidated about knowing where and where not to clap. But we don’t get too hung up about that, especially at the summer concerts. During a concerto, for instance, invariably the audiences clap at the end of every movement. That tells us there are a lot of first-time concert-goers, and that’s fine.”

(If you want to be correct, here’s how: Look at the program, count the number of movements, or sections, of the piece about to be played, and when the last one ends, then applaud.)

There is one all-too-common goof that will get you stared down by your neighbors, but it is easily preventable. If you bring wine bottles into the amphitheater, don’t drop them, and, when you’re finished pouring, stow them somewhere. Empty and unattended wine bottles at summer concerts have a mood-shattering tendency to roll all the way down a row of steps.

OK, now you’re relaxed. But what about those people onstage? What are they actually up to? And how tightly are they wound, sitting in front of a big hillside full of staring people?

Actually, says Pacific Symphony conductor and music director Carl St.Clair, they’re probably at least as well fed as you are. “Many of the musicians do exactly what the audience is doing. Between our afternoon rehearsal and concert time, they’re having their picnic,” St.Clair says.

“Some picnic in the same group every year, and they’ll say, ‘You bring this and I’ll bring that.’ Sometimes I do pretty much the same thing. I love walking around on the grounds and seeing people, and sometimes my family or people I know have a little picnic.”

Half an hour or so before concert time, the musicians go backstage to “change into their gowns and tuxedos and contemplate the music,” St.Clair continues. And then, one by one in a fairly leisurely process, they assemble on the stage and tune their instruments, waiting for the concertmaster and conductor to appear.

St.Clair says that backstage, he is “pretty much inside my own thoughts and intentions, musically. I’m not telling jokes and things like that. But it’s also not a stiff sort of mood. Sometimes I’ll be in my dressing room until the very last moment and then I’ll walk right out onstage without hanging around a lot.”

First, however, the house lights dim, the tuning orchestra falls silent, and the concertmaster--the violinist who sits immediately to the conductor’s left--walks onstage (applause is traditional here), sounds a tuning note, and the orchestra retunes one last time.

A few seconds later, the conductor walks out. If there is a featured soloist, he or she precedes the conductor onstage (more applause).

The mood backstage just before the downbeat “varies dramatically from artist to artist,” Spisto says. “Some are very calm and jovial, others are very tense and reclusive. Carl is always doing last-minute score checks, because generally he memorizes his score. Some pianists may work on the keyboard a little bit, very lightly. Violinists may do the same type of thing.”

Nerves can intrude. Spisto remembers one “very unusual performer one year. This pianist was with us to do the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, and his response to his tension . . . we were quite concerned whether he was going to get through the piece.”

But “he made that piano shake like nothing I’d ever seen or heard before. It was an incredibly emotional performance. This guy was out of it, but the audience loved it. They went wild.”

Where to sit? Because the concerts are outdoors and the sound is amplified, there are no acoustical seating concerns as there are in a concert hall. However, says St.Clair, “it’s sometimes more exciting to sit on the left” if a piano concerto is programmed: It can be fun to watch the pianist’s hands.

Finally, audience veterans say, expect a bit of a chill from above and a bit of unyielding hardness from below. Summer nights on the hillside can get nippy, and your picnic blanket can double as a stadium blanket. The bench seats in the amphitheater are metal: That same blanket also can serve as a cushion.

“It’s just a much nicer way of hearing a concert than in a concert hall,” says concert-goer Pat Kirkbride. “It’s a totally different experience. You may have to bundle up a bit, but that makes it better. You can just cuddle up and enjoy good music and good food and drink, and you don’t have to get dressed up.”

* The Pacific Symphony’s summer concerts take place at Irvine Meadows, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, tonight, July 20 (“Five-Star Beethoven”), Aug. 10 (“Mozart in the Meadows”), Aug. 24 (“Classical Brass”) and Sept. 7 (“Tchaikovsky Spectacular”). Series tickets: $90-$170. Individual concerts: $13-$75. (714) 755-5799.