Youth Movement

Thanks to parents who had their priorities straight, I was lucky enough growing up on L.A.’s Westside to attend one of legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, not in New York but at a school auditorium in Beverly Hills.

The program included the final movement of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony, so-called because the composer instructs the musicians to leave the stage one by one as the ending nears. Bernstein’s challenge: keeping children’s rapt attention through an entire movement of the symphony. So before beginning, Bernstein turned and said, “Now, let’s see which one of you can count exactly how many musicians leave the stage.”

It worked.

Hands shot up afterward, and Bernstein called on a succession of kids practically bursting to get his attention. After several offered close guesses, this arts writer in the making gave what apparently was the right answer. All I remember is that the number was more than 50; more important, I had discovered how fascinating a classical music concert could be.

Elizabeth Stoyanovich, assistant conductor of the Pacific Symphony, was also lucky enough to experience Bernstein’s charisma firsthand, initially as an oboist at the Tanglewood Music Festival he directed in Vermont, then as a conductor in special classes he led at Fontainebleau, France. She owns the book version of the “Young People’s Concerts.” The video version has just been released, and it’s a treasure.

On Saturday, Stoyanovich begins the Pacific Symphony’s 15th season of family concerts. The six events, “String of Clues,” are underwritten by a $40,000 grant from Mervyn’s stores and take place at the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“Bernstein had a very special gift for communication,” Stoyanovich, 35, said. “He was brilliant; he was engaging; he had a way to explain very difficult things in a very clear fashion. His vocabulary, his intellect, his charisma, all those things are important today--you need to be engaging when you stand in front of an audience of young people.”

But how do you get young people fired up about classical music when you’re not Leonard Bernstein? That’s the task facing Stoyanovich and her peers involved in symphonic outreach and educational programs.

“There also has to be musical content in your program--you have to have something to educate them about. If it’s all fun and entertainment, that’s all they’ll go away with. If it’s all intellect, they’re not going to be entertained. It’s finding a balance.”

Stoyanovich hopes to find that balance, and keep the kids’ attention, with such orchestral adjuncts as a hand-bell choir, a modern-dance troupe and . . . Darth Vader.

Vader puts in an appearance and becomes a lover of classical music--will he be seduced by the dark keys?--during Saturday’s “Star Suspect” concert.

“All these things come into kids’ lives today,” the Foothill Ranch resident continued. “TV, video, computer. These are one-on-one activities--them and the machine. To go to a concert and be engaged with people on stage, that’s a new environment. We’re dealing with different children somehow, but somehow they’re the same.”

Emulating Bernstein, Stoyanovich plans to offer spirited commentary from the podium during each of the 45-minute concerts. But keeping in mind shorter, Nintendo-ear attention spans, the concerts (designed for ages 4 to 13 and their families) also have key differences than those of Bernstein’s day.

Certainly they’re more elaborate. The “String of Clues” series takes families on a private-eye’s musical escapades, in which audience members solve onstage mysteries and puzzles.

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The series also features a musical treasure hunt (non-prize-oriented) through the Performing Arts Center’s lobbies. Participants follow an expedition map to hands-on activities including an instrument “petting zoo”; a high-tech center with CD-ROMs, keyboards and computer music; interactive dance with colorful props; a storyteller’s theater in which children wear costumes and act out parts; and opportunities to meet members of the orchestra at a Musical Chairs station.

The intergalactic first program includes “Jupiter” from Holst’s “The Planets”; the opening of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” used in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”; music from John Williams’ “Star Wars” score; Michael Torke’s “Javelin”; and “Neptune’s Samba” by the conductor’s husband, composer Patrick Stoyanovich.

Irish Russian?

“Italian Serbian,” Elizabeth said.

Later programs are themed “The Christmas Caper” (Dec. 13); “Mysterious Madam” (Feb. 7); “Top Secret in Nature” (March 7); “Sleuth in a Caboose” (which includes the mambo from Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” April 18) and “The Nutty Detective” (June 6).

Stoyanovich came up with the themes, the marketing department the titles. A $25 membership in a new Orkidstra Club also entitles children to a backstage tour, an ice cream social, a birthday greeting from the conductor and “Clueing Into Music” postcards.

Some parents feel those are more than frills.

Tina Bernhardt of Irvine has been taking her children, Anton, 9, and Natalie, 8, to the Pacific Symphony family concerts for three years. She recently signed them up for the Orkidstra Club.

“The first thing we received was an autographed picture of the conductor and name tags they could wear to the concerts,” Bernhardt said. “They just thought that was really exciting.

“My daughter’s birthday was a week ago, and along with some others in the mail, she got a signed card from Stoyanovich,” she said. “When her father got home, she ran in to him saying ‘Dad, Dad, I got mail for my birthday.’ She’s in the second grade. ‘One card was really neat, Daddy, it’s from the conductor, Elizabeth Stoyanovich.’ She had her name down perfectly!

“My point,” Bernhard added, “is they feel the orchestra is people, people they’ve known, and people that communicate with them. It’s more on a personal level.”

Stoyanovich makes a distinction between the family concerts and a series of eight Pacific Symphony-sponsored youth concerts for which students are bused to the Performing Arts Center. The featured composer for the youth concerts this year is George Gershwin. Before each event, volunteers go to schools and help prepare the kids “emotionally and musically,” Stoyanovich said, by teaching them about Gershwin’s music.

The orchestra also offers an “In Harmony” series of community concerts in predominantly Latino, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean neighborhoods. These programs juxtapose ethnic music--often chamber music played by neighborhood musicians on ethnic instruments--with Western classical music. After the performances, Stoyanovich and Pacific Symphony composer-in-residence Frank Ticheli discuss the music.

Stoyanovich takes great pride in such efforts.

“The creative staff at PSO is so wonderful to work with,” she said. “There were three orchestras in this country recently cited [by the American Symphony Orchestra League, last year] for having the strongest educational program, the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Pacific Symphony Orchestra. That says something.”

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The Pacific Symphony isn’t the only local organization with music-education programs.

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County, although it is a concert presenter rather than an orchestra, has a huge educational program that this year includes concerts by the Orange County Youth Orchestra (for fifth-graders) and performances in March by Ukraine-based Odessa Philharmonic (for grades 6-12). Students will be bused to the Performing Arts Center for both.

Philharmonic Society programs reach more than a quarter of a million students each year. Other county musical organizations also have outreach programs.

Stoyanovich led the Cincinnati Symphony’s outreach concerts and youth orchestra for three seasons before joining the Pacific Symphony in a post that historically has lasted two to three years. She’s in her second season in the position, which also entails directing two training orchestras, the Pacific Symphony Institute at Cal State Fullerton and Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra at Orange County High School of the Arts in Los Alamitos.

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A substitution as conductor for one of the Pacific’s subscription concerts at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in July garnered her favorable reviews. She hopes her next position will be an assistantship at a more prominent orchestra.

Stoyanovich has two children, 1 1/2 and 3. ‘They come to the concerts,” she said. “They’ve had music in their lives since the moment they were born--even before, when I was pregnant.”

Reaching them and the thousands of other kids in her audiences is what she finds most exciting about her career at present, she said.

“I get to meet some of the children backstage,” Stoyanovich said. “The most rewarding part is making that connection and seeing that in so many cases there is a connection beyond the concerts. That this is their culture, a fiber in the fabric of their life and not just something that happens one time a month.”

BE THERE

“Star Suspect” opens the Pacific Symphony’s family concert series Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Elizabeth Stoyanovich conducts. Concerts at 10 and 11:30 a.m., musical treasure hunts at 9 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., respectively. $12. Children under 14, $10. (714) 740-7878 (Ticketmaster).