Grant Doubles School Classical Music Program

A nationally respected arts-education program has received a $500,000 grant to promote classical music in the county’s public and private schools.

Pacific Symphony officials announced Thursday that the award to the orchestra’s educational outreach effort, “Class Act,” will double the size of the program from 10 to 20 schools and will help support its youth concerts for elementary school students at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The program will serve about 17,000 students, said Louis Spisto, the orchestra’s executive director. The number of youth concerts will rise from six to eight per year.

The grant, given by Los Angeles philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., will be paid over five years at $100,000 annually, Spisto said.

Class Act received national recognition as an exemplary educational program last June from the American Symphony Orchestra League.

The program includes classroom music lessons, evening chamber ensemble performances for children and their families and an educational focus on a “composer of the year.”

Spisto said the outreach operation will be renamed the Frieda Belinfante Class Act Program at Ahmanson’s request. Belinfante, who died in 1995, is a former resident of Laguna Beach.

In 1954, she founded an orchestra of freelance musicians which evolved into the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, now a concert presenter.