Eclectic Orange Is Looking Up After 1st Festival, Official Says

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County hopes eventually to scale performing arts Everest with its Eclectic Orange Festival.

For now, with the returns just in from the festival’s inaugural run of diverse, sometimes genre-melding performances at five county venues, officials say they have established a satisfactory base camp.

The festival, which ranged from dance and opera to classical music, multimedia theater, world music and even rock ‘n’ roll, offered 17 different productions, accounting for 25 performances, over 6 1/2 weeks ending Nov. 16. Attendance totaled just over 20,000, yielding box office sales of $500,000, the society announced Tuesday.

Dean Corey, the Philharmonic Society’s executive director, said ticket income fell about $20,000 short of projections. Still, “we’re very pleased” that it laid a foundation for future growth. The goal over the next few years, Corey said in a prepared statement, is to make Eclectic Orange “the most anticipated cultural event in Southern California.”

The budget for the first Eclectic Orange was about $1 million, Corey said. Donations will have to cover about 50% of the cost, which he said is the norm for Philharmonic Society presentations.

Booking is well underway for the next two Eclectic Orange festivals, Corey said. “We’ve got a lot of pots on the stove.” The first announced dish on the 2000 festival menu is the U.S. premiere of “Soon,” a drama about apocalyptic religious cults by film and theater director Hal Hartley. Previously seen at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, it includes choreographed movement and an electronic music score, Corey said.

The inaugural Eclectic Orange offered two world premieres--Kronos Quartet’s rendition of a piece by Burhan Ocal and a multimedia linkage of Leonard Bernstein’s “Poetry of Earth” lecture with the National Symphony Orchestra’s performance of its subject, Stravinksy’s “Oedipus Rex.”

The promised eclecticism extended to a night of roots-rock music at the tiny Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim. The venues included the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Irvine Barclay Theatre and the Santa Ana High School auditorium. The Pacific Symphony and Irvine Barclay Theatre joined the Philharmonic Society as presenters of some of the performances.

Corey said he is weighing whether to spread out the festival over a longer time period or to condense it. One lesson learned the first year, he said, was “to split it up more [and] not to put on too many similar things at the same time.”

Performances of “Poetry of Earth/Oedipus Rex,” “Voices of Light: the Passion of Joan of Arc” and Elgar’s Third Symphony fell within the same week and may have satiated the public’s appetite for classical music, Corey said.