At 50, He’ll Prove You’re Never Too Old to Live Childhood Dream

As a boy of 7 or 8, he would stand in front of the full-length mirror in the family parlor and conduct the orchestra. From the adjacent living room, his parents’ phonograph would fill the high-ceilinged house with the sound of Gershwin or Rachmaninoff or Mozart, and the boy would begin moving to the music and waving his imaginary baton. Now, the horns. . . . Now the woodwinds. . . . Now, the percussionist. . . . And in those solitudinous moments, when he had the house all to himself and the world was his own, the boy would do what all great conductors do: He would thrill his audience and feed his own soul.

He never became a prodigy. He simply loved melody, loved how music moved him. And he knew he wanted it in his life forever.

And then he grew up. That 8-year-old boy from upstate New York was named Jon White and is now a management consultant living in Irvine. These days, he’s looking at a calendar that tells him he’ll be 50 next month.

Life is good for Jon, but on Saturday night it will get a whole lot better. And all because his wife, Hope, had this thought about a year ago: “At 50, everybody deserves to have a dream come true.”

Inspired, she began making phone calls. She wanted a symphony organization that would let her husband, as a 50th birthday present, conduct its orchestra. When she made her pitch to Dave Lewis, musical director of the Fullerton Symphony, he agreed. Sure, Lewis told Hope, maybe her husband could conduct a Sousa march or something easy.

On Saturday night, before its regular concert-going audience and more than 100 friends and relatives who are coming in from all over, Jon will stand before the 60-member Fullerton Symphony orchestra and conduct a 15-minute piece at the end of the program. Eschewing a traditional marching tune, Jon will conduct his own composition that includes elements of rock, jazz and classical music.

The concert, which Hope is underwriting, will begin at 8 p.m. in the Campus Theater on the Fullerton College campus at 321 E. Chapman Ave.

“I’m at the point where the nervous anticipation is at its very peak,” Jon says, as he and Hope prepare for an onslaught of weekend visitors. “Saturday night will be personal. I will be going out to play my music for people. I think my stage awareness--I won’t say stage fright--will be very high, but I will be in control because I really want the performance to be excellent.”

Before his business career took off, Jon performed in and directed community theater. He played in a high school rock band and later wrote music--both for his own enjoyment and for a children’s musical that was performed.

That is, he brings some talent to the concert hall. But he has never stood in front of a symphony orchestra. The closest he has come is to wave an imaginary baton at concerts he and Hope have attended, or to conduct to the car radio while he’s driving down the freeway, or simply playing conductor in his own home to recorded music.

Hope, of course, knows about that private passion. For her 40th birthday four years ago, Jon capped a humorous slide show of her life with an original song that, she says, didn’t leave a dry eye in the house.

Ever since that surprise birthday, she says, laughingly, the challenge became what to do for his 50th.

“You always hear about these dreams-come-true things,” she says, “where people want to play on a baseball team or something. I thought, ‘Why can’t he conduct?’ ”

When she told Jon last year that the Fullerton offer was on the table, she wasn’t sure he’d accept. “I was afraid he might be embarrassed or whatever,” she says. “You know how that artistic temperament is. When people have lots of talent, you have to really coax them into doing things.”

Jon took “about two seconds” to say yes. In the next breath, he decided he wanted something more challenging, and meaningful, than a march.

As the first 50 years of Jon’s life wind down, show time nears.

“I used to say in my early 20s that I didn’t want to get to 50 and have any regrets,” he says. Accordingly, he pursued his musical and theatrical urges until settling into the business of making a serious living. “The only thing that was still there was conducting. It wasn’t really a regret, but it was the one thing lingering. And it had been my first creative thought, before everything else. I never thought of fulfilling it, to be honest.”

Which is why Hope’s birthday present has touched him so, and why emotions will be riding high Saturday night. Jon says he’s ready, joking that his main concern is that his trifocals require him to tilt his head at an awkward downward angle so he can read the sheet music.

And so on Saturday night, it will come full circle for the upstate New York kid in the parlor now verging on 50. Jon White will be back where he started, back where he always imagined himself being: dressed in tux and tails, bowing to the audience, nodding to the first violinist, and then raising his baton to let the music--his music--fill the concert hall.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com