Chamber Festival Success Is Music to Ventura’s Ears

The organizers of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival have binders packed with pie charts, bar graphs and surveys to prove that their “little festival that could” is a great success after just five years.

But true to the upcoming festival’s reputation for world-class music and small-town hospitality, they’d rather make their case with stories.

They remember last year when a Ventura family invited a quartet from Mexico City and their families to go sailing. And speaking of boats, a concert and yacht cruise in 1997 had people frantically trying to pull strings at City Hall for the $100 tickets.

Karyl Lynn Burns, the festival’s executive director, can still see a row of men at the San Buenaventura Mission moved to tears by a Mendelssohn octet and a downtown shop owner jokingly complain that out-of-town concert-goers had bought up all his jewelry.

That’s not to say that every story about the chamber music festival is a success story. “Nocturnal Combustion,” the festival’s first midnight concert, was probably also its last.

“We had a ball at that concert . . . what few of us were awake,” said Burns Taft, who has been the festival’s artistic director since its inception in 1995.

“We always do a few experiments,” said Burns, “and most of them work.”

In fact, the whole shebang was an experiment. The festival’s founders--people like Taft and Ventura cultural affairs division manager Sonia Tower--could say they knew “the region’s signature cultural event” would be a success from the first string quartet and wine-and-cheese reception.

But truth be told, they didn’t know what to expect.

“It took us all by surprise,” Tower said. Now, “there’s a wait list for the board of directors. How does this happen?”

What happened--from an initial city investment of $15,000--was a festival put on largely by volunteers that celebrates the intimacy of chamber music in historic and architecturally interesting settings throughout downtown Ventura--and has an economic impact on the city of at least $700,000.

The event, held over two spring weekends, attracts more than 5,700 attendees, plus several thousand schoolchildren through its outreach program.

“We’re one of the few cities where our growth has not obliterated our downtown’s historical identity,” Taft said. “It’s an ideal venue for art and music.”

Now, with the fifth chamber music festival kicking off Thursday, six events are sold out--but plenty of other seats are still available--and organizers expect the bar graph of total ticket sales to continue its steep climb in 1999.

If ticket sales show the same growth as they did last year, the festival will have more than tripled its orders in the last three years.

Particularly encouraging for Ventura’s tourism boosters, the largest increase in ticket orders last year was from concertgoers who live outside Ventura County.

It is statistics like that--combined with those small-town stories--that have prompted organizers to call the event “the little festival that could.” Those numbers may also indicate that the chamber music festival is helping to spread the city and tourism bureau’s gospel that Ventura is more than just a freeway sign on the way to Santa Barbara.

Kate McLean, president of the Ventura County Community Foundation, has heard “sophisticated” Los Angeles residents marvel at what they discovered after the chamber music festival drew them to Ventura.

“Once they get here, they just love the shops and the ocean and the quaint inns,” McLean said. “It really has brought them to see the city in a different light.”

The festival’s quick success and growing reputation present what Tower calls “a good problem.” To use a phrase familiar in Ventura County these days, should there be growth control for an event that highlights intimate music? At some point, the feeling of virtuosos-up-close could be lost in a sort of sonorous sprawl.

And another growth problem: With a $400,000-plus budget and volunteers putting in almost 4,000 hours each year, can Venturans work any harder on their home-grown festival?

One solution to these “good” problems would be to lengthen the festival, even spreading its offerings into a year-round schedule. As it is, the event is already a busy two weeks. Merchants have asked that the schedule be loosened to give visitors more time to explore Ventura--and spend money.

“If you have five of those [receptions] a day, people don’t go to the restaurants,” Burns said.

Other changes this year--1999’s “experiments”--include scheduling Ventura’s popular spring Eco-ArtWalk, which has attracted more than 5,000 people on its own, during the festival. A free violin master class is being offered for young string musicians, and the use of 600-seat Community Presbyterian Church will allow larger audiences at several of the festival’s more popular concerts.

A Monet painting on the cover of this year’s program alludes to “Musical Impressions,” the theme of this year’s 16 concerts and events, which range in price from free to $60. Ninety musicians--guest chamber ensembles, instrumentalists, vocalists and the festival’s local orchestra--will perform works by Debussy, Ravel, Brahms and Bach, among others.

Oxnard composer Miguel del Aguila is debuting a piece for violin commissioned for the festival. And a concert by Chanticleer, the all-male chamber choir from San Francisco, is sold out.

But there’s more beyond the music. Most concerts include receptions sponsored by area restaurants. That’s where Ventura has really shown its hospitality, organizers say, from volunteers wrapping ribbons around little poems on parchment to luminaria--candles in bags--lining the walkway of the mission.

That hospitality is true to chamber music’s tradition, where hosts would open their salons for guests to hear music.

“Chamber music always involves friends,” Taft said, “and that’s the way this festival has developed, with many, many amenities with every concert.”

Those touches--not the music--could be the draw for some people, or, Burns said, it could be the architecturally interesting venues or a friend putting in long hours on a concert.

“In many cases people come for all the wrong reasons, but they come,” Burns said, “and then they fall in love with the music.”

With the approach of the hoe-down gala that will open the festival, volunteers are making last-minute arrangements: A rose garden needs to be planted in time for a reception. Soups must be cooked at home for the visiting musicians. And someone needs to hang the festival’s banners from downtown lampposts.

“It’s like everybody getting together,” Tower said, “to put on the prom.”

Music to Their Ears

1998 Ticket Holders

From Ventura: 51.6%

From Ventura County outside Ventura: 34.2%

From outside Ventura County: 11.7%

Percent of Out-of-County from Los Angeles County: 75%

Percent of Out-of-County from Santa Barbara County: 14%

No ZIP Code recorded: 2.5%

From a Survey of 1998 Attendees:

Average number of nights visitors stayed in Ventura: 4

Estimated amount spent on Ventura hotel rooms: $16,012

Estimated amount spent at Ventura restaurants: $47,111

Estimated amount spent shopping at Ventura stores: $11,284

Average amount spent shopping: $44

Source: Ventura Chamber Music Festival Assn.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Festival OfferingsThe Ventura Chamber Music Festival opens Thursday and runs through May 9. Tickets are still available for the following events. Call 648-3146 for tickets and information.

Event: Appalachian Spring Fling

Time: 6 p.m.

Date: Thursday

Place: Olivas Adobe

Price: $60

*

Event: Muir String Quartet

Time: 8 p.m.

Date: Friday

Place: San Buenaventura Mission

Price: $32

*

Event: Bach & Brahms Spectacular

Time: 8 p.m.

Date: Saturday

Place: Community Presbyterian Church

Price: $24/$30

*

Event: Romero Guitar Duo

Time: 7 p.m.

Date: May 3

Place: San Buenaventura Mission

Price: $30

*

Event: Violin Master Class

Time: 3:30 p.m.

Date: May 4

Place: Church of Religious Science

Price: Free

*

Event: Magic of the Violin

Time: 8 p.m.

Date: May 6

Place: Church of Religious Science

Price: $26

*

Event: Shanghai Quartet

Time: 8 p.m.

Date: May 7

Place: Community Presbyterian Church

Price: $21/$26

*

Event: Visionary Music

Time: 10:30 a.m.

Date: May 8

Place: Community Presbyterian Church

Price: $16/$22

*

Event: Culinary Impressions

Time: 5 p.m.

Date: May 8

Place: 3351 Telegraph Road

Price: $45

*

Event: Festival Orchestra Gala

Time: 8 p.m.

Date: May 8

Place: Our Lady of the Assumption Church

Price: $30/$34