A Major-Scale Effort to Keep Music Alive in Schools

When Michael Kamen takes to the podium tonight to conduct the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, he’ll have more than music on his mind. He’ll be thinking about the future of music education in American schools.

Kamen’s concert at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater is a benefit for both the Young Musicians Foundation and his own Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. He will play selections from several of his own film and television scores; appearing with him will be comedian-actor Eric Idle, singer Julia Migenes and pianist Mona Golabek.

The Oscar-nominated, Grammy-winning composer co-founded (with actor Richard Dreyfuss and director Stephen Herek) the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation in 1996. Named after the movie about an inspiring high school music teacher, played by Dreyfuss, its goal is to provide and maintain musical instruments for youngsters whose own school programs cannot afford to do so.

Like the Young Musicians Foundation, which provides encouragement and recognition to gifted players through financial assistance and performance opportunities, the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations and private-sector funding.

“Raising money has never been an ambition of mine,” said Kamen, reached by phone at his home in London. “I try to keep my function as musical as I can. I love making music with kids and I love working with youth orchestras. That’s really what the concert in L.A. is all about.”

Kamen has conducted similar ensembles in Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix, Palm Beach, Fla., and at his own alma mater, the High School of Music & Art (now known as the La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts) in New York City. It was a visit to the latter, while on a press junket promoting “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” that convinced him to create the foundation.

“I was shocked to discover that the story of the film had come dreadfully true,” he said. “Music budgets were being slashed. They didn’t actually come out and fire teachers, but they didn’t hire new ones when a teacher retired. The curriculum suffered.”

He was shown a room filled with thousands of damaged, unplayable instruments. “Flutes wrapped around violins, wrapped around trumpets, wrapped around trombones. It was those dead instruments, and broken dreams, that inspired me to say, ‘We can do something about this. If we raise money to buy or repair instruments, the school board couldn’t very well turn that down. Why don’t we start a fund?’ ”

In the last two years, the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation has donated about $100,000 worth of emergency musical care to about 20 schools and six individual soloists in several states, according to Felice Mancini, director of development for the foundation. That much money pays for about 112 new or refurbished instruments.

Mancini, daughter of the late composer Henry Mancini, recently joined the organization. Her goal over the next year is to raise $500,000 and serve another 50 schools and 20 soloists. She’s already on her way: Her mother, Ginny Mancini, will present a check for $50,000 to the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation and another for $50,000 to the Young Musicians Foundation today.

“It’s not just a giveaway program,” Felice Mancini explained. “We make sure that the school has a budget for their music program, and that they’re going to take care of this instrument over the long term. Then they need to find a local retailer who will repair the instrument should it need it. So we try to involve the community as well.

“This is something that my dad would have been so proud of,” she added. “I know that if somebody hadn’t put an instrument in his hand when he was 8 years old, he would have worked in the Pennsylvania tin mines like his father did and the world would never have had the gift of his musical genius.”

Kamen is scheduled to conduct the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra in excerpts from his scores for “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Don Juan DeMarco,” “The Winter Guest,” “Brazil,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and the recent HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.” Idle, of Monty Python fame, is slated to perform “The Torturer’s Apprentice,” a mini-opera that he wrote with Kamen for “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Golabek will add Chopin to the mix, and Migenes will sing one of Kamen’s movie songs.

Kamen said that tonight’s concert is as much a consciousness-raiser as a fund-raiser. To that end, corporations are being asked to buy blocks of seats at the concert to be given away to local schoolchildren. He also praised the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, which he has conducted in the past. “They remind me of myself when I was that age,” he said. “And when I conduct them, I think I am their age.”

* Michael Kamen and Friends, tonight at 8, Veterans Wadsworth Theater, Veterans Administration Grounds, Brentwood, $8-$250. (310) 825-2101.