Generations in Concert

The maestro gives the downbeat, and the concertmaster--the maestro’s nephew--raises his bow. The principal cellist--another nephew--raises his bow. The stage manager and violinist--the maestro’s great-niece--raises her bow, and the harpist--the maestro’s niece--positions her fingers.

This is no mere orchestra. It’s a dynasty.

It all began in May 1938 when Ernst Katz, a young man who’d toured as a concert pianist from age 12, presented his own neophyte 30-piece Little Symphony orchestra in concert at a community hall in East Los Angeles.

The orchestra, later the California Youth Symphony and today the Junior Philharmonic of California, grew and prospered--with only one conductor, the indefatigable and perpetually enthusiastic Katz.

The only son of an immigrant (who brought his sewing machine from Russia and in 1923 founded the Golden Gate Hat & Cap Co. in Los Angeles), the maestro never married and had no heir to whom he could pass his baton. But his sister Silvia Greene, a former vaudevillian who was the orchestra’s first pianist, and her husband, Walter, solved that dilemma.

They produced Gary, now 49, lawyer and violinist; Terry, 46, president of the hat company and a cellist; and Lori, 43, who has an MBA in art management and plays the harp.

“If it weren’t for my family, I wouldn’t be here,” says Katz, who at “over 75” increasingly relies on the relatives to handle the logistics of the orchestra’s concerts, including the 62nd anniversary gala, to be held Wednesday at the Shrine Auditorium with 125 musicians and guest soloist Pat Boone.

Katz couldn’t have envisioned such an ensemble when he scrabbled together that first orchestra, moving the furniture out of his house to create a rehearsal hall, picking his young musicians up in his rumble-seated Chevy roadster so they’d keep coming back. To this day, the orchestra’s motto is “Give youth a chance to be heard.”

Musicians are chosen by audition and stay on average three to four years, although some stay longer and some alumni return. Today the Junior Philharmonic, though predominately youthful, includes musicians of all ages.

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For Katz and his clan, it’s a case of the family that plays together stays together.

And this family, with Uncle Ernst as patriarch, is as close as families get.

“The key is that everyone has to be an integral part of everything,” Lori says. “Everyone in this family wears half a dozen different hats, not to make a pun.”

Togetherness is a way of life. Family central is a family-owned building on Fairfax Avenue opposite Farmers Market that houses Gary’s law offices, the hat business and the Junior Philharmonic office. As youngsters, Gary, Terry and Lori lived under the same roof with their uncle and grandparents in a Fairfax area duplex. To this day, family members share each birthday and each holiday.

So was there ever any question that the younger generations would join Uncle Ernst’s orchestra?

None.

“There’s a picture of me at 1 year old sitting on a chair at the [Wilshire] Ebell,” Lori says. She’d attend concerts and rehearsals with her mother and grandmother, just as her daughters Victoria, 5 (who’s studying violin), and Natalie, 3, do with her.

Already, they talk of joining the orchestra.

At 10, Lori wanted to play the viola. But her mother, “who was a little more flamboyant,” she recalls, steered her to the harp. She’s glad.

“The harp is a fabulous instrument,” Lori says. “I love how it fits into the orchestra with the other instruments.” And, she adds, “you’re the only one. If somebody says, ‘That’s good,’ you know you did it.”

At 5, Gary remembers “sitting right near the concertmaster” when “I made the decision that someday I was going to play the violin and be concertmaster.” At 6, he studied piano with his uncle and, at 11, started violin lessons. At 13, he joined the orchestra.

A little favoritism, perhaps?

Hardly, he says.

“Others were admitted when they were 12. I couldn’t play well enough,” Gary says. Once accepted, he had to work his way up “from the back of the second violin section” to first violin.

Terry “played the piano for three weeks” before taking up cello at age 10. When he’d been a 6-year-old watching rehearsals with his grandfather (who’d buy the kids candy at break time), “the cello was right in front of me. I just liked the way it sounded.”

He too earned his stripes.

“It took me about seven years” to become principal cellist, he says.

Katz says he “never, never” pressured the youngsters to join his orchestra but, rather, “introduced them to music,” just as he’d been introduced as a boy. He remembers: “The first time I heard the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, I thought I was in heaven.”

“I guess,” says Terry, “if your uncle was a baseball player and you hung out at Yankee Stadium, you’d want to be a baseball player.”

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Gary laments cutbacks in school music programs.

“So much has been lost this last generation,” he says. “If we’d given young people the opportunity to play music, to listen to music, we’d have a different country today.”

Lori became a harpist who has played at weddings, on cruise ships and for former President Reagan, at a Christmas party at his office in 1997 (“the highlight of my professional career,” she says). Married to TV producer Neil Gordon, she has cut back to spend time with their daughters but finds music “puts a balance in life.” With her arts management degree, she was the obvious choice to coordinate the annual anniversary gala.

Gary says he “knew at 12 that I was going to go to law school and become a lawyer. I also knew I was going to be a musician.” He had planned a career in politics but, after testing the waters, “found more harmony in music.

“It’s also the music that keeps me in law,” he adds. “So many of my friends from college are burned out after five or 10 years” in practice.

Katz boasts: “Gary never missed a rehearsal while he was taking the bar exam”--which he, nevertheless, passed on his first try.

For Terry, who handles family investments along with running the family hat business, Wednesday evening orchestra rehearsals are “a respite. . . . It’s like a weekend in the middle of the week. There’s no beepers, no cell phones. I don’t even bring a watch. That’s the pleasure.”

Gary’s daughter Debra Marisa Greene is a 16-year-old high school student who has studied violin since she was 10 and who joined the orchestra when she was 12.

“I’m the third generation,” she says, “and that really inspired me. And I love it.”

She’s also the stage manager.

“I work hard,” she says. “I direct people how to set up, put the music in the holders, call people, put files in the computer, send out postcards, put stamps on the postcards. . . .”

To Debra, the best part of this musical dynasty is the “sense of family. We’re such a family. We travel together, we eat dinner together. I don’t know many families that do that.”

Although Gary and Felice Greene divorced when Debra was 6, she says she has “the best of both worlds”--shopping and movies with her mother, concerts and museums with her father. And she’s often his companion on Princess Cruises, where he presents “Here Comes the Judge,” a lecture series involving an entertaining legal case with the audience as jury.

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This is a family of super-achievers. Gary, Terry and Lori were elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor fraternity--Lori and Gary at UCLA, Terry at USC. They say success was always expected of them.

“There was never any pressure to succeed,” Terry says, “but there was pressure to be a good citizen, and, by being a good citizen, you can easily be successful. It wasn’t puritanical, but there was no nonsense--no drinking, no drugs. And there was complete freedom of thought and freedom of expression. No one ever told us to play an instrument, which schools to go to, which careers to choose.”

“Our parents and my uncle set a wonderful example,” Gary continues. “They sacrificed a lot to be with us. They never hired a sitter. And they not only showed us the right way, but gave us the opportunity for music and education.”

“Our mother was completely devoted to the family,” adds Lori, recalling that Mom raised three children while working full time in the hat business.

Terry says everyone was surprised when, having earned an MBA from USC, he eschewed the corporate life for the hat trade.

“ ‘Hats?’ my friends asked. ‘Who wears hats?’ ” But soon the success of “Urban Cowboy” in 1980 ignited a cowboy hat craze, and “I think we were supplying all of Japan with cowboy hats.” The company also made hats for Madonna and Michael Jackson and the men’s hats for the film “Titanic.”

For this family, music is both a joy and a way of giving. Through the years, Katz has dug deep into his pockets to keep the orchestra going. The orchestra gets no government grants, which Katz dismisses as “socialized music,” and there is no fund-raising auxiliary. The operation relies largely on Katz’s not inconsiderable charm and his ability to barter and cajole. The concerts, six to eight each year, raise money for charities, but no proceeds go to the orchestra and, Katz takes pride in saying, he’s never taken a penny.

Katz puts it this way: “You have to leave more than footprints in the sand when you leave this earth.”

The family--including the recently widowed Silvia--has moved from Fairfax to Beverly Hills, except for Katz, who lives in Malibu. But the kids have flown the nest only figuratively. Lori talks of the pleasure of having had an adult-to-adult relationship with her parents, “a peer relationship, rather than a caretaker relationship.”

“Being very close,” Gary says, “spending time doing the right things together, gives us a high level of satisfaction, which is something you can’t buy.”

Ask if it ever gets a bit too cozy, and everyone replies in unison: “No!” The best part, says Terry, is that “we’re 100% loyal to each other.”

No one talks about the possibility that Katz might retire--including Katz, who doesn’t believe in it. Terry recalls his father, who died in December.

“He was 82,” Terry says. “He worked until his last day. You don’t retire. You just go on.”

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The Junior Philharmonic of California’s 62nd anniversary gala takes place 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Shrine Auditorium, 665 W. Jefferson Blvd., L.A. Admission is free, but tickets are required. Information: (323) 272-3667.

* Beverly Beyette can be reached by e-mail at beverly.beyette@latimes.com.