Baton Rogue : Fabio Mechetti, who conducts in Washington, Florida and Rio, goes wherever the music takes him. This week it’s Costa Mesa.

Music requires sacrifices, everyone knows. But does it have to cut into your golf game?

“My handicap used to be 15,” conductor Fabio Mechetti said recently. “It’s now 30. Par for the course varies from 82 to 120.”

Mechetti was describing the effects of his busy conducting schedule in a phone interview from Jacksonville, Fla., before leading the Pacific Symphony on Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

He began his first season as music director of the Jacksonville Symphony in September. His contract there runs four years.

Meanwhile, he’ll continue as music director of the Spokane, Wash., Symphony, a post he’s held since 1993, and the Rio de Janeiro State Theatre, where he has also recently taken over.

“It’s been a busy year,” he said. “I’m doing a lot of flying. Before all these appointments happened, I already had commitments in Europe and here in the United States.”

Home for him and his wife, however, is Spokane.

“We’re just here for this concert,” he said. “We will spend seven weeks here. It’s a transitional year.

“Rio is just during the summer. The seasons are inverted [in the two hemispheres], which is the reason why I’m able to go back and forth like this. But it’s been cutting out all my golf time.”

Born in Brazil, Mechetti, 42, is the latest in long line of family musicians. He is the son and grandson of opera conductors in Sao Paulo. His great-grandfather was an organist in Lucca, Italy, and was a classmate of Puccini.

Tracing the family tree back further, you can find a Mechetti who was a music publisher who printed works by Beethoven and Schubert.

“It is a privilege to be associated with a musical family,” he said. “What that gives you is a perspective on how hard the profession is. I already knew how difficult was the personal challenge of upholding the art and surviving as a musician. It’s still very hard to do financially.

“But when the call [to music] is higher than your reason, then, of course, you have no choice but to pursue that.”

As a child, Mechetti sang boys’ roles in opera.

“When you’re that young, you have to be a boy soprano,” he said. “But my instrument was piano. Probably in my mid-teens, I started leaning more toward conducting.”

He studied conducting at the Sao Paulo University and Conservatory, then went to the Juilliard School in New York for a master’s degree, which he finished in 1981.

He had high praise for the school.

“Juilliard may have been the only school that keeps an orchestra just for the conducting students,” he said. “I don’t believe in the ‘mentalist’ approach. You have to conduct a real orchestra, not a couple of pianos or a small ensemble.”

Still, Brazil supports music in a way the United States doesn’t, he said.

“Music is a part of regular education in the public schools there, and things like that. Tickets are cheaper than they are here because all the theaters and the opera are government-sponsored, which allows ticket prices to be very reasonable.

“That allows young people to go to concerts. The average age of the audience is under 40 in Brazil. Here, it’s over 50. That’s a positive thing.”

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He also will get more chances to conduct opera in Brazil, where he retains citizenship even though he has lived in the U.S. for the last 18 years.

“In this country, you have to chose one or the other,” he said. “Opportunities to conduct symphonic music are much greater right after school. That’s why I’ve been doing much of it. Also, the time commitment in opera is more than I can afford at this point. That’s why the job in Rio is so appealing, to do opera in a more regular setting.”

But American corporate support gave his career its initial boost.

“When I left Juilliard in 1984, there was basically only one avenue available at that time, the Exxon Arts Endowment,” he said. “It used to fund a program to support professional orchestras in the United States having assistant conductors. . . .

“It was a wonderful way to break into the business. That was my door to professional conducting.”

From Juilliard, he went to Spokane, where he spent a year as assistant conductor at the Spokane Symphony. While there, he won a National Endowment for the Arts Award for Best Educational Programming in the United States.

“The program brought together the symphony, dance groups, the civic theater and the opera,” he said. “Kids’ artwork was projected onto the walls. The theme was a circus. The kids had been told what the theme would be beforehand. It doesn’t sound so unusual now, but it was then.”

He then served for four years as associate director of the National Symphony in Washington.

In Costa Mesa, Mechetti will conduct Copland’s “El salon Mexico,” Barber’s Violin Concerto (with Elmar Oliveira as soloist) and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony.

“This is the start of Copland’s 100th anniversary,” Mechetti said. “I have worked with Elmar before. It will be good to work with him again. And the ‘Pathetique’ is an audience favorite.”

* Fabio Mechetti will conduct a Pacific Symphony program of works by Copland, Barber and Tchaikovsky on Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $10-$50. (714) 556-2887.

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Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.