Passing the Baton : Symphony in the Glen offers kids a chance to conduct, bringing music to a new generation.

Every child who attends Symphony in the Glen’s Sunday concert will be given the chance to touch classical music in a way they might never have before. Arthur Rubinstein, the orchestra’s music director, is prepared to teach hundreds of children how to conduct--with their very own chopsticks standing in for a director’s baton.

“I’m not trying to breed a generation of conductors,” says Rubinstein, who helped found the orchestra in 1993. “My idea was, if you have kids who aren’t playing instruments, there’s no way they can experience this music at that age on a personal level.” But, he added, “every kid can get excited about conducting music. It gives them direct access to being involved with the music.”

A half-hour before the main show starts in Griffith Park, a few children who have completed the workshop will be given the chance to conduct a young string quartet that will play a reduction of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” the featured attraction at the orchestra’s second-to-the-last concert of the season. Their names probably will be pulled from a hat, but all of the maestros in training will receive workbooks on conducting and the Prokofiev piece.

This is all a prelude to the main event, when Symphony in the Glen, a 40-piece professional orchestra, performs “Peter and the Wolf”--narrated by Ed Asner--and other selections. Rubinstein says he originally conceived of the concert as a program of music about children in peril, and Rossini’s “Cinderella Overture” is a remnant of that idea. When some pieces needed an orchestra larger than the symphony, he turned to Tchaikovsky’s “Suite No. 4,” which he calls a “wonderful homage to Mozart,” and Bartok’s “Romanian Dances.”

“Peter and the Wolf” is performed during the second half of the concert, when the children are ready to nestle in and listen to the whimsical story that features musicalinstruments playing the parts of the characters--Peter, the wolf, a bird, a duck, the hunters, a cat and a grandfather. Asner was chosen to narrate because “we felt he would give that mysterious weight, that favorite-uncle kind of flavor to the story,” said Barbara Ferris, the orchestra’s managing director.

“I believe the children have to relate to the person narrating the story,” Rubinstein added. “They will relate to Ed Asner like gangbusters. He’s a surly uncle up there telling the stories. I’m sure it’s not going to be all sweetness and light.”

Of the music and story, Rubinstein said it “touches everybody on an almost primal level. It is some of the most glorious music ever written. It’s a magical combination.”

The concerts have evolved into a mini-festival, where families show up ready to picnic and experience classical music with their children. In the first years the concerts were presented, they moved from park to park around Los Angeles. The orchestra then began using Griffith Park for each of the season’s four concerts because it was easier for people to find them, Ferris said. The goal, which is at least another season away, is to use Griffith Park as home base, then stage repeat concerts in outlying areas where symphonic concerts aren’t usually staged, she added.

Between 1,200 and 2,000 people are expected to attend Sunday’s concert, and organizers will be ready to accommodate 300 children at the conducting classes. Since not everyone shows up at once, the children are cycled through in groups. “It’s sort of organized chaos,” Ferris said.

One of the side rewards of teaching the children about classical music is how it benefits their parents. “A whole generation hasn’t kept pace with classical music,” Ferris said. “They are now very curious, and they feel they missed out. A wonderful thing happens when the parents work with their children. They really learn together--and they don’t have to tip their kids off that they don’t know much about it.”

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BE THERE

“Peter and the Wolf,” narrated by Ed Asner and performed by Symphony in the Glen, Griffith Park, near the carousel at 4800 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles; Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m.; preconcert children’s conducting classes begin at 1:30 p.m. Free parking with shuttle service to concert site. Free, but canned food will be collected for charity. Call (213) 955-6976.