What a New Hall Could Mean for O.C.

The recent news that the Segerstrom family has tentatively agreed to donate land for a new theater to expand the Orange County Performing Arts Center, now consisting of Segerstrom Hall and Founders Hall, raises some questions for local arts patrons. Times staff writer Chris Pasles asked key presenters of music and dance--OCPAC president Jerry E. Mandel; Janice Johnson, president of the Pacific Symphony Assn.; and Dean Corey, executive director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County--what a new facility might hold.

Question: First of all, does the community need the expansion?

Jerry E. Mandel: We can’t deliver the mission of the center without building a [second] hall. That mission is, first, to bring the very best world performers in classical music, opera, Broadway, dance and jazz, and, second, to do everything we can to nurture the regional groups and make them grow.

There’s a contradiction there, because we don’t have enough time in the current center to do both of those as well as we would like. We don’t really have the capacity the L.A. Music Center has or Lincoln Center or the Kennedy Center. . . .

If you go to any of these, you see there are a number of halls running. That’s not what we have here. There are things we can’t do now because we don’t have the time.

Q: What exactly would be built? A new concert hall or a small multipurpose hall?

Mandel: That is not absolutely certain yet. If we build a concert hall--and I stress the word “if,” although personally I hope we do--we would certainly see that being used for the Pacific Symphony, for some one-act operas, for modern dance and for Philharmonic Society concerts and recitals. We will not [hang] scenery, but certainly you can put a set up or minor staging. But the key would be the acoustics.

Q: How would a new facility affect programming?

Janice Johnson: It opens up so many more avenues for [the Pacific Symphony]. We’re really looking forward to more dates being available. We could play on the weekends. Sure, it’s going to be a challenge, but boy, the opportunities it’s going to bring are just mind-boggling.

But this all has to be nurtured. It will probably be a good seven years before we perform in that hall. We would probably open with triple concerts and a classical series of 12 programs. [Currently, the orchestra does 10 pairs of classical concerts, plus a pops series, a family series and three “classical connection” concerts of shorter programs with introductions.]

Dean Corey: There are a lot of things we could present, especially if [the new hall] doesn’t exceed 2,000 seats. Recitals, chamber orchestras, the bigger-name chamber orchestras which maybe are too expensive for a small hall but maybe not quite big enough for [the 3,000-seat] Segerstrom. World music. New music. There’s a variety.

We could possibly do multiple dates of some events. Now, we seldom do more than one.

It would be better for us if it were a multipurpose hall. A lot of world-music attractions and some of the contemporary things really require some production values. If you’re strictly in a concert setting, you’re more limited. But I understand the concert hall [would] have some production amenities that will help remedy that. It will be very suitable for events that are not strictly concerts. Actually, we’ll take what we can get.

Q: What would be left for the center’s existing Segerstrom Hall?

Mandel: When major orchestras come in, like the Vienna Philharmonic, we would certainly do them in Segerstrom Hall. The center itself will begin an orchestra series that would go in there.

Q: Wouldn’t such a series compete with the mission of the Philharmonic Society?

Mandel: We won’t compete with them. We also won’t compete with the Pacific Symphony. [Our series] will be carefully thought out and not large, but of high quality. There’s room for all of us.

Secondly, of course, opera and dance will be there. The center intends to bring in at least one major national-international opera company a year. [There might be] some Pacific Symphony pops concerts in there on occasion, some that would draw bigger than 2,000.

Of course, there will be longer runs of Broadway shows, clearly. This community needs Broadway shows running three or four weeks [in Segerstrom Hall], rather than one week. Our problem is now, we could get better product if we had the time [there]. I get opportunities all the time to do wonderful shows if we could get more time.

Absolutely we have the audiences. I believe right now, I could run three to four weeks easily. What stops us now is that people don’t come because they can’t get good seats. We will start to do two-week runs next season.

Then we would do very, very high-end pop acts like Tony Bennett, and high-end Latin singers that should be coming in.

Q: Assuming that the center can raise an estimated $100 million to build the new facility, won’t the local groups have trouble finding money to support their new programs?

Johnson: We’ve got a bedrock of support that goes on year after year. People who love classical music--that’s our foundation now. To raise the next $1- or $2 million that we would need to expand, yeah, that will be hard going.

Of course, we’ll have to have some kind of agreement with the center of what our role will be in that hall, how it will be run, even the rent. You can’t bankrupt the symphony and have a symphony hall.

Corey: I don’t think we’ll be too overly impacted by their fund-raising. We’ve been able to expand up to 48 events from the low- to mid-30s a decade ago. We have that capacity. We might have to staff up if it looks like something we can sustain.

Q: What about competition with the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and Disney Hall in Los Angeles, which is scheduled to open in 2001?

Johnson: In classical, we haven’t felt any competition so far. But Cerritos’ pops series has hurt us. The center’s pops programs have hurt us, too. There’s just too much stuff out there. But with classical, we’ve had a pretty good track record, with 69% of our budget coming from ticket sales.

Corey: We have a good relationship with Cerritos. . . . But Cerritos doesn’t have the audience we have here for classical concerts. But we’ve been at it a longer time.

Disney Hall is another factor to consider here. Certainly it will have an effect on all the arts organizations. There will be lots of people clamoring for seats. We’ll all feel its effects.

Mandel: We don’t compete with Cerritos. It’s a different kind of hall than ours. It’s smaller. It doesn’t have the acoustics we do. It doesn’t do a full opera. It doesn’t do a lot of symphonies. We don’t go after the same people. And as The Times has written, we’re the only place in Southern California that you’re going to see world-class dance.

Q: What happens when the thrill of the new hall is gone?

Corey: There’s always the curiosity factor of a new hall. People have to get into the new seats. That lasts a season or two. When people get more used to it, that falls away. It was catastrophic for us when that happened [at Segerstrom Hall]. But then, especially, the economy also dropped. We were stuck with more product than the public could bear.

Q: Could that happen again?

Corey: Classical music takes a lot of time to produce and promote to make it successful. But we’ve been at it a long time.