Forward Thinking : St.Clair, Forsyte Build on Past Success as They Look to a Diversified Future for the Pacific

Don’t be surprised if the Pacific Symphony--Orange County’s only major professional orchestra--rolls out two birthday cakes to start its new season tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

One would be for the Santa Ana-based orchestra itself, which was born 20 years ago.

The other would be for Carl St.Clair, who begins his 10th-anniversary season as the orchestra’s music director with performances of Mahler’s massive “Symphony of a Thousand,” so named for 1,000-member strong orchestra and choir that played its 1907 premiere.

Actually, St.Clair will be leading “only” about half that many as the Pacific Symphony combines with the Pacific Chorale, three other choirs and eight soloists.

It’s a fitting choice in that numbers are a significant part of the first St.Clair decade.

He is the second music director in the orchestra’s history, taking over the group founded in 1979 by Keith Clark.

The orchestra’s budget has grown from $4.9 million just before he arrived to $8.2 million now.

Ticket revenue has jumped from $2.5 million to $4 million.

Fund-raising has more than doubled, from $1.3 million to $2.9 million.

But even more than numbers and money, St.Clair’s story is one of music.

St.Clair, whose current contract runs through 2001, has conducted the world premieres of nine works, as well as six West Coast or Southern California premieres.

The Pacific’s composers-in-residence have turned out seven new pieces of music for the orchestra under St.Clair, many of which were heard across the Southland through the orchestra’s live concert radio broadcasts, which began in 1992 and continue today.

He and the orchestra have made three CD recordings for Koch International Classics and Sony Classical, and more are on the way.

He has led several major U.S. orchestras (including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, and the Boston and Philadelphia orchestras) and regularly conducts in Europe and South America.

Glamorous? Of course.

“But,” St.Clair was quick to point out Monday over lunch at a Laguna Beach hotel, “I’m never happier making music than I am with my orchestra. After nine seasons, they know me well. They know my musical taste, and I certainly have a wonderful feeling for them and about them.”

Much of what the orchestra does isn’t quite so visible to the public. Here, too, St.Clair can take much of the credit for the orchestra’s efforts to spread his passion for music on as many levels as possible, according to executive director John E. Forsyte.

To help train young musicians, the orchestra established the Pacific Symphony Institute at Cal State Fullerton in 1993 and the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Los Alamitos one year later.

Reaching Out to Youth, Staying Within Means

Educational programs have mushroomed during St.Clair’s tenure. An Anaheim-based Music Masters program, created by the orchestra in 1993 to teach schoolchildren to play instruments, has doubled the number of schools it serves. The Class Act program, a music-eduction program started in 1994 that pairs musicians from the orchestra with music students, has expanded to 30 schools from 20 this year alone.

And all this has happened without breaking the bank. The orchestra has had a balanced budget for the last eight seasons.

“We have 12 different education programs,” Forsyte said over coffee earlier this week. “The lion’s share of them was initiated through Carl’s energy and concept.”

This is not to say there aren’t areas for improvement.

“More than anything, we deal every season with how to work in the acoustical environment that we live in,” St.Clair said. “Even after 10 years, every time we come into [Segerstrom] Hall for the first time, it’s a shock. And the hall is still better than where we rehearse [in downtown Santa Ana]. So that is one of the things that has provided a hurdle in our [musical] development.

“I’m not making excuses. We’re very proud of the center. I wouldn’t be here without the center. Neither would the Pacific Symphony and the way we hear it today. It is just simply a fact that comes with that house.”

The orchestra has been successful, St.Clair said, because the orchestra and and the community “have grown in a step-by-step way. That is a very important situation and not often [found] in every community.

“We’re here,” he said, “to build traditions and to build a musical heritage in our community through careful programming and educating them without it seeming like a lesson.”

Another challenge the orchestra is working to turn to its advantage is geography.

“We don’t have the benefit of a city identity,” Forsyte said. “We’re not the Chicago or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh orchestra. There’s no other orchestra like us in the country--not a single symphony that has a county identity, that serves 30-some different municipalities and that has to serve such a diverse collection of municipalities, both geographically and stylistically.”

To make the county as a whole feel ownership of the orchestra, it will have to “go beyond just the two primary venues that we have, Irvine Meadows and the center,” Forsyte said, “and start reaching into the neighborhoods of the county to get the orchestra out and exposed to a variety of audiences.

“Our hope would be [to develop] a North County site and a South County site, and then, I think, in addition to that, some chamber-music efforts.”

The Future Is Orchestra’s to Shape

That dovetails with St.Clair’s vision of the Pacific as a possible prototype for the orchestra of the 21st century.

“I think it’s a mistake to just say, ‘We want to be the Cleveland Orchestra’--or the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony--because I’m not so sure that those kinds of orchestras can be created anymore,” he said. “But I will say we’d like to be the quality of those orchestras. Yes, of course. That’s our goal, that’s what we’re striving to be.

“But we have an ability to formulate our future in a way that could be a completely new hybrid and could be the trend for the orchestras of the future.

“There will be things open to us that aren’t open to us now,” St.Clair said, “like a chamber-music series, a baroque series, all kinds of things--even a contemporary-music ensemble.”

That diversity figures to be needed as much as wanted as the Pacific is called upon to give more concerts than ever in a new concert hall scheduled to open at the Performing Arts Center within the next five years.

“I have no doubts that this hall is going to be a crown in the artistic life of Orange County,” St.Clair said, “and that people are going to revel in a way they have not felt since the center was built.”

* Carl St.Clair will conduct the Pacific Symphony in Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. today and Saturday. $10-$50. (714) 755-5799.

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A Sound Note

The Pacific Symphony has grown substantially since music director Carl St. Clair arrived 10 years ago.

Budget

1989-90: $4.867 million

1999-2000: $8.227 million

Ticket Revenue

1989-90: $2.529 million

1999-2000: $4.032 million

Fund-raising

1989-90: $1.317 million

1999-2000: $2.940 million

Source: Pacific Symphony