An Up-Tempo Attitude

Conductor Barry Silverman looked at a map of South County and saw that something was missing: an orchestra.

So he founded the Aliso Viejo Symphony of Orange County in 1996. That fledgling group is about to finish its second season with a concert Friday at Lake Hills Community Church in Laguna Hills.

“We realized this is an enormous untapped area,” Silverman said in a recent phone interview. “The only other orchestra here is the Capistrano Valley Symphony, which is still going but more as a pops series in the summer and an occasional youth orchestra in the fall.

“My goal is to offer the South County a major symphony. We do not cut down on parts. For this concert, there will be a full complement of players. This orchestra will be slightly over 70.”

The concert will include Debussy’s “La Mer” and “Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune” and Saint-Saens’ “Organ” Symphony.

“One of our draws is that we’re right here, and we’re reliably in existence,” Silverman said.

The group grew out of talks he had with musicians he had worked with while teaching at several colleges.

“Over the years, many musicians talked about branching out and developing our own group outside of the college atmosphere,” he said. “So in August, a year and a half ago, with the support of the Aliso Viejo Community Assn., we put together a community orchestra. By the end of the week, we had 55 people who had agreed to do the symphony.

“We had nothing. No support. No money. But the musicians really wanted to continue and build something better than what we had done at the college.”

There are now 70 musicians, only 30 of whom are paid (union scale). The rest are volunteers. The orchestra includes amateur as well as former and current professional musicians.

“One of the great things about Orange County is that we have so many wonderful musicians from the East Coast who came here to retire and want to keep playing,” Silverman said.

“We have so much talent in the area that I have a waiting list of people who want to play for free. We’re paying people, but they’ve called up and said, ‘We’ll play for nothing.’ ”

The group gave its first concert in November 1996, playing works by Shostakovich, Respighi and Gershwin. That was followed by a Broadway program, which sold out the 1,200-seat Coast Hills Community Church, a Christmas program and a Fourth of July program.

Silverman said his programming is eclectic by necessity.

“We try to do one completely serious music concert each year. It doesn’t draw as well as the others. Pops is what draws audiences. So that’s what we do. We play from RCA’s top 100 list for major classical works because the musicians are anxious to play great works as well.”

Concert costs range between $10,000 and $14,000 for musicians, rehearsal hall and venue rentals and incidentals.

“The way we supported ourselves in the first year was by outside contributions, selling advertising in our program, and contributions orchestra members made themselves. Out of their own pockets, they gave us $6,000 that first year. They’ve done the same thing this year. Now that the orchestra has become better known, more people are contributing.

“I’m a good money manager,” he added. “I’ve known what we have and what we can afford because we can’t come out in the red. It’s been a tight line.”

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Silverman was a percussionist in the 1960s and ‘70s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Tel Aviv Orchestra, both under Zubin Mehta. He then taught at Chapman University in Orange for five years and at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo for 12.

“I’ve always taught,” he said. “That’s my first love. Now I’m teaching in the Capistrano school district as a music specialist.”

He lives in Tustin with his wife and their four children, who range in age from 5 to 27. “I do an awful lot of sports at night,” the conductor said. “I’m real busy.”

But that doesn’t mean he lacks big plans for his group.

“Just like the Los Angeles Philharmonic doesn’t just serve L.A., we, being a smaller organization, will serve all the cities of South County,” he said. “It’s easy to get to our concert halls. From San Clemente, it takes 15 minutes. From Irvine, 10 minutes.

“We’re going to have our first subscription series next year. I have secured all the venues and planned programs for the entire year. There will be four concerts on a season ticket--a night at the opera, two classical programs and one pops. I made sure we have enough money to do the next concert coming up. By next season, I expect we’ll have enough funds to do the entire season.”

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How much will that take?

“I’m hoping to have a real budget this coming year. Probably I need $80- to $100,000. That’s an incredibly low budget for a season. We can do it mainly because our volunteers make it happen. We’re just at the point where we’ve got some major corporate donors ready to come on board and we’ve applied for some grants.”

* Barry Silverman will conduct the Aliso Viejo Symphony of Orange County in music by Debussy and Saint-Saens on Friday at 8 p.m. at Lake Hills Community Church, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills. $10-$12. (714) 731-8079.