Extending Its Reach : Pacific Symphony Program Educates (and Courts) Ethnic Communities

With a simple Manila folder, the two composers dramatized a powerful musical idea.

“Here,” said Frank Ticheli, handing the prop to Khoa Le, who placed it behind his back.

“Now,” Ticheli said, “give it to me.”

Le refused. Ticheli grabbed; Le pulled back. Ticheli reached; Le swerved. Ticheli lunged; Ticheli got the folder.

Phew.

Then they started again.

“This time really give it to me,” Ticheli said, and Le complied.

No conflict, no struggle.

“Booorrrring!” said Ticheli, who turned to his workshop audience of 350 Vietnamese Americans to explain the idea behind the skit: Traditional Eastern music, characterized by a sense of continuum and timelessness, lacks tension--as illustrated by the easy handoff of the folder. Conversely, Western symphonic music champions tension and release.

“Tension is the hallmark of Western music,” Ticheli said. “In fact it’s the hallmark of Western civilization.”

Laughter broke out as Le translated. Actually, almost everybody spoke English. Few, however, had ever been to a concert by Orange County’s Pacific Symphony, where Ticheli is composer-in-residence, and some had never heard any live orchestra. And that’s what the workshop put on by the Pacific in an auditorium near Little Saigon was about.

“It’s core to our mission to serve as many people from as many communities in Orange County as possible,” says the orchestra’s executive director, Louis Spisto, explaining the In Harmony program.

But besides helping immigrant communities understand symphonic music, the innovative, three-year program has a dollars-and-cents bottom line: It is aimed at boosting the Pacific’s number of repeat concert-goers from nearby Vietnamese, Korean, Latino and Chinese communities.

Symphony officials hope that by offering adult music education--through free workshops in each community--and discounted subscriptions, new audiences will make Western symphonic music a habit.

Arts groups nationwide are obsessed with audience development, what with widespread cutbacks in public school music instruction and deeply reduced public arts funding. Orchestras in San Diego and Sacramento have filed for bankruptcy.

But outreach programs providing only “random acts of music” don’t suffice anymore, says Spisto, and indeed, In Harmony has drawn the patronage of prestigious local and national arts funders, seeking to support lasting change.

The Irvine Foundation helped create and launch the program last year with a $175,000 grant.

“We wanted to develop new audiences from groups that had been less likely to attend performances because of geography, economics or culture,” said John Orders, a former foundation program officer.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced a $50,000 grant last month to subsidize In Harmony’s remaining two years. It was a coup for Pacific Symphony. Many major orchestras were bypassed in the NEA’s first 1997 grant round, partly because of its drastically reduced budget and because groups are no longer judged on artistic merit alone. Now, they must show significant public impact.

Omus Hirshbein, who oversees NEA music programs, said the Pacific is one of a few orchestras “beginning to become essential to their communities in interesting ways.”

The orchestra began establishing ties with minority groups years ago, when it used to perform the majority of its concerts at a Santa Ana high school. It moved to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1986.

It has long staged such events as free concerts and youth competitions. Its Vietnamese advisory committee helped with the presentation of “Fire Water Paper,” an oratorio about the Vietnam War that the orchestra commissioned and premiered in 1995.

In Harmony is intended to strengthen such relationships.

The program starts with a free, short concert in the target community followed by a bilingual workshop on symphonic music and the commonality and differences between Western music and that of each culture.

Next, participants are offered $10 tickets (about half price) to a regular Pacific concert at the center, preceded by a buffet dinner and an in-hall lecture.

Participants then are offered discounted subscriptions to the upcoming season. Seats for three- and five-concert series cost $15 per concert, about 60% less than comparable seats at full price.

Finally, those who bought subscriptions are phoned and sent letters encouraging them to buy full-price seats for the next season.

Composer Le, whose work has been performed by the orchestra, said in an interview that symphonic music is new to many older Vietnamese immigrants because of economic as well as cultural differences.

“We were in a poorer country,” said Le, 62, “and didn’t have the luxury of big orchestras.”

Many prefer cai luong, a form of Vietnamese opera, he added, and the young like pop and dance music.

But Le has been fostering appreciation for Western symphonic music since he immigrated here in 1975, he said, largely by writing compositions that combine both cultures’ traditions.

Critics argue that Vietnamese music shouldn’t be adulterated, he acknowledged, but he knows there’s interest in Western music among Vietnamese and believes his method is the best way of introducing West to East--and vice versa.

“I want to show the people that there are many ways of presenting a melody,” he said. “The Vietnamese audiences will enjoy the richer, fuller sound of the orchestra, which has a bigger range of dynamics and timbre [than Eastern music] and evokes different emotions.”

Members of the Pacific performed Le’s “Festival” at the recent workshop. The piece features an Eastern pentatonic (five-note) melody supported by harmony and tension, both exclusive to Western music.

The program included Vietnamese music played by local Vietnamese Americans on traditional folk instruments and an overture and short symphony by Mozart and Schubert, respectively.

The response was enthusiastic.

Bich Cao of Orange Hills brought along two of her teenage children.

“I like classical,” Cao said, “I can feel when the music is happy or sad. It’s my favorite.”

Lee Rayder of Irvine had been a symphony-goer when she lived in Kansas, but this was her introduction to the Pacific and certain theoretical concepts.

“That amuses me,” she said, “the idea of tension and resolve.”

One participant in last year’s program is deeply involved with Western music. Hye Kyung Lee teaches piano and plays piano and organ for her church in Irvine and is vice president of the California Music Teachers Assn.

Lee isn’t so sure she’ll buy a full-price subscription next season, however. She had some scheduling conflicts with her Thursday-night series--and it costs $2 to attend an alternate concert--and she would have preferred some of the offerings of other series.

But, Lee said, the program got her to her first Pacific Symphony concert. She liked what she heard, and she plans to return, if only to one concert at a time.

“The seats were very good,” Lee said, “and it was a very nice program overall. I like their children’s program too. I went to ‘Peter and the Wolf’ last December with a piano student.”

On paper, In Harmony’s first year wasn’t stunning. About 1,900 people attended the first, free concert, but only slightly more than 1% of those (21) bought discounted subscriptions.

Spisto isn’t daunted.

“It could be, that in three years we say, ‘It was great, but it didn’t work,’ ” he said. However, “when you’re targeting a general population, let alone a specialized one, a 1% return rate for our organization is good.

“The program is building, and I think there will be a cumulative effect. If we get a couple hundred subscribers out of this, I’ll consider that a success.”

Even if the goal isn’t reached, he added, “we’re creating a lot of good relationships in the community, whether people become regular subscribers, occasional ticket buyers or just more exposed to the sort of music we perform.”