Mall Music Gets a New Definition

Beginning its fourth season next week with a busy schedule--three concerts in five days--the L.A. Jewish Symphony Orchestra, under its founder, Noreen Green, still performs in various, and unpredictable, venues.

“We don’t yet have a home,” says the conductor. For the season opening, next Sunday, the location is Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, when pianist Alan Gampel joins the orchestra in a revival of Leonard Bernstein’s still-vital “Age of Anxiety” concerto.

Then at 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, when the regular occupants of the Food Court at the Westside Pavilion are elsewhere and all the shops are closed, the orchestra, participating in a project called “Tikkun L.A.,” a Community Volunteer Day, will play the premiere performance of Aaron Zigman’s tone poem “Rabin,” inspired by and dedicated to the late Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin.

And the night before, as part of the annual L.A. County admission-free music performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the orchestra will perform a 45-minute concert with other community and professional ensembles.

Conductor Green explains that the Christmas Day performance came about through her connections to the volunteer community. Composer Zigman, who had just written his first major classical work, “was the impetus” for this premiere, she says, and “Rabin” is a piece she finds “an incredible job . . . “ with “beautiful melodies and themes . . . well-constructed and very, very moving.”

It is a programmatic suite in five movements for full orchestra. A longtime pop record producer, arranger, composer and keyboardist, Zigman, 34, began to write it during the television coverage of Rabin’s assassination two years ago. Best known for his record work with the likes of Natalie Cole, Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs and the Jets, Zigman says he has now taken on other classical projects, including a sonata for viola for a friend.

The L.A. Jewish Symphony Orchestra continues its subscription season with concerts at the Norman J. Pattiz Auditorium at Hamilton High School (with Dennis Prager narrating Schoenberg’s “A Survivor From Warsaw”), April 5, and at the Greek Theatre (with Theodore Bikel), June 7.

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REVISED CONCERTS: Changes loom in the winter-spring schedule of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The January and February events, both to be conducted by music director Jeffrey Kahane, remain as announced: On Jan. 30 and 31, with Kahane on the podium, the program will feature tenor James Taylor and hornist Richard Todd in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. Kahane will also conduct the Feb. 27 and 28 performances, when cellist Kathryn Price will play Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1.

The March concerts have been revised after the cancellation by guest conductor Iona Brown, who asked to be released because of doctor-advised reduced activity after surgery. Kahane’s program for March 27 and 28 now lists Dowland’s art-song, “If my complaints could passion move, Flow my teares,” with lute soloist John Schneiderman; Britten’s “Lachrymae,” with viola soloist Roland Kato; Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, with soloist Gary Gray; and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony.

The season closes with twin concerts, April 24 and 25, offering Kahane as both conductor and piano soloist, in a program of works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Crockett and Schumann.

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KALEIDOSCOPE SIGN-UPS: Applications are now available for the 10th anniversary edition of Dance Kaleidoscope, the annual regional dance showcase, to take place at venues around the city in July, principally at Cal State L.A. Written applications must be postmarked by Jan. 9. Forms and information are available from the Dance Kaleidoscope office at Cal State L.A.: (213) 343-5124.

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SFO EVENTS SET: San Francisco Opera has announced plans for repertory in the next two summers. In 1998, the company will mount a “Femmes Fatales Festival,” of three works--Berg’s “Lulu,” Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” and Bizet’s “Carmen”--at the War Memorial Opera House, June 6-July 2, with the offer of premium seating to the first U.S. performances of Rameau’s “Platee,” at UC Berkeley, June 10-13.

In 1999, SFO will present four complete “Ring” cycles. Wagner’s tetralogy will be performed four times between June 9 and July 3. Casting details are not yet available. Tickets will be offered first to subscribers of the “Femmes Fatales Festival.”

Tickets to the 1998 events will go on sale Jan. 12.

Information: (415) 864-3330.