A Little Day Music

The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote that youth is a summer that sings in us for a little while and then sings no more.

What she didn’t write, however, is that the music of summer is never far away even for those in whom its melodies grows softer.

One hears it especially in the laughter of children who dash like sun sprites across green lawns, spinning and leaping to the overtures and arias that fuel their energies across a hundred summers.

What others can witness in their exuberance is the visuality of youth’s music, encompassing all ages in a singularity of spirit that in a way makes it more meaningful.

I saw it all on Sunday, youth, music, summer and movement, in a sheltered corner of Griffith Park. They coalesced in one of four free concerts offered each year by Symphony in the Glen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing classical music to a city that too often marches to erratic beats and discordant melodies.

I was attracted to it in the first place not because I am such a fan of Beethoven and Mozart, but because I think we probably ought to be. And I saw in the organization its commitment to children, teaching them to conduct, allowing them to sit on the stage so they can feel the vibrations of music, letting them leap to the crashing cymbals and soar to the violins.

Edna St. Vincent Millay should have been there.

*

Sunday was a perfect day for music. The morning mist lifted like a curtain raised across the stage of early afternoon just in time for the crowd to begin gathering in the old zoo area of the park.

The concert hall is an expanse of lawn in gently rolling terrain half-shaded by oak, eucalyptus and elm trees. Sunlight streaming through the branches casts mottled patterns of light and shadow across the grass. A stream lined with boulders runs through it.

A crowd of about 1,200, mostly families, came to hear the music of American composers from George Gershwin to John Philip Sousa. They brought blankets and folding chairs and picnic lunches and parasols in a celebration of summer that fit the sunshine and soft breezes of an Independence Day weekend.

“Classical music frees the brain from the tyranny of conscious thought,” Arthur B. Rubinstein said to me as we stood on the edge of the lawn a few days before the concert. He was quoting Sir Thomas Beecham, the internationally acclaimed British conductor, but clearly he believed it himself.

New York-born and a lifelong devotee of music, Rubinstein had the idea of bringing people’s concerts to L.A., a notion babied into creation by the late Ethel Narvid, onetime administrative assistant to former Mayor Tom Bradley.

Rubinstein came west to score movies and television productions, but he said as we strolled across the sloping lawn, “classical music was always in my heart. This gives me access to the music I love . . . and having kids here completes it. Concert halls scare them. They feel at home in the open.”

*

His enthusiasm revealed itself in the way Rubinstein conducted the 52-piece orchestra Sunday with a passion that matched the vitality of the audience itself, completing the connection of music and youth and a soft summer day.

Prior to every concert, he leads a junior maestro class that allows children to use a conductor’s baton themselves. He teaches them the language of the baton and gives each an Apprentice Conductor’s Certificate.

Rubinstein and Barbara Ferris, managing director of Symphony in the Glen, are seeking better ways to attract children from all races and ethnic groups. Two years ago, a concert was held in the largely Latino area of Hansen Dam, featuring the music of Latin American composers. Ten thousand attended.

“We’ve got to open the door to all the people,” Ferris said. “They all must feel wanted and welcome. It’s a way of helping us respect each other.”

It was food for thought on a day of oversized sun hats and summer dresses that flowed in the transient breezes of the lengthening afternoon.

In a perfect world, we would indeed respect one another, but the world isn’t perfect and neither are we. If music helps us get there, play on.

As I left, the softly wafting strains of Charles Griffes’ “White Peacock” were lacing the sweet air in ribbons of silk. A little boy chased a leaf caught in an eddy of wind, coordinating his dance of exuberance with the notes and rhythms of a tonal poem.

Youth, music and summer in L.A. It was perfect.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com