Eclectic Orange Festival: Will It Bear Fruit?

The curtain goes up Saturday on the first Eclectic Orange Festival, but whatever happens, it won’t be the last. The Philharmonic Society of Orange County is already deep in plans for the next two years, and beyond.

“We are thoroughly committed,” says Dean Corey, executive director of the society, which has presented performing arts groups in Orange County since the 1950s. “We are getting next year pretty complete, and the real lollapalooza should be 2001.”

This inaugural effort opens with a program matching beloved American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade with the acclaimed male vocal ensemble Chanticleer in “Anna Madrigal Remembers,” a new piece by San Francisco-based composer Jake Heggie on a text by “Tales of the City’s” Armistead Maupin.

Hard on its heels comes “Short Trip Home,” a “newgrass” crossover project that combines classical violinist Joshua Bell with Nashville cats, including Edgar Meyer, who is both a classical and a country bassist.

Other events of the six-week, 17-program festival include a rockabilly “American Roadhouse” experience, the collaboration of Turkish percussionist Burhan Ocal and the Kronos Quartet in a new work, a multimedia production of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio “Oedipus Rex,” the West Coast premiere of Mikel Rouse’s TV talk-show opera “Dennis Cleveland,” and the belated Southland debut of period instrument champions Les Arts Florissants in a semi-staged performance of Henry Purcell’s “King Arthur.”

“Everybody leads rather eclectic lives these days,” Corey says, “and this is an eclectic celebration of the choices we have. Our programming has been fairly eclectic the last several years, and it seemed reasonable that the festival should contain some of the same elements. We also have a tremendous audience mix. Put this together at sites in Orange County and you have Eclectic Orange.”

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But do you then have just a boldly touted catchall for any and every touring show coming through?

“There are different ideas about what a festival should be. Many people think of something like the Garlic or Strawberry Festival, but there will be no booths with funnel cakes at Eclectic Orange,” Corey says. “Diversity is part of our idea of a festival, but thematic threads run through it as well. This year it is the relationship of words and music, and artistic collaboration.

“The Armistead Maupin piece on the opening night is one example. The ‘Oedipus Rex’ is a great one. There is also ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,’ where the Johnny Mercer songs that play such an important role in the novel are sung, and ‘King Arthur,’ Purcell’s great setting of John Dryden’s poetry. There is a lot of interplay of words and music.

“These are also examples of collaboration in performance, as are the concerts featuring Ocal and Kronos, and [flamenco guitarist] Paco Pena and [Chilean roots specialists] Inti-Illimani.”

Corey would not mind if all eyes were on Orange County in the fall, but he is also determined to send something out beyond its borders.

“For 46 years the Philharmonic Society has pretty much taken other people’s stuff and brought it here. We want to return the favor and send out our own projects. We will try to do something new every year.”

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This year the major home-grown production is “Oedipus Rex.” Under Corey’s direction, the video of Leonard Bernstein’s famous Harvard lecture on the Stravinsky work has been edited down and graphically enhanced as a concert preview cum “virtual” performance art introduction to the work itself, which will be played by the National Symphony and soloists conducted by Leonard Slatkin, with animated supertitles translating the Latin text.

“The traditional orchestral concert has been played in the same format for the last 100 years,” Corey points out. “We’re in a different age now, and a lot can be done utilizing technology to make the trip to the concert hall worthwhile for people who think that they have it all at home already on CD.

“This is a concept we have developed here. It actually puts the focus on the music itself--purists will be the most excited,” he asserts confidently. “A lot of a masterpiece like this can go by you. This is opening a door to a fuller experience; at least, that’s what we want it to do. New audiences hear the music with a new ear.”

Deepening audience appreciation of the arts is one goal of the festival, according to Corey.

“The festival format enhances this impact, and it gives people a chance to compare and talk. There is a tendency to attend more [events at a festival] than over the course of a subscription season. When we presented the nine Beethoven symphonies last May, festival fever really caught on.”

Corey also hopes that the concentrated energy of a festival will jump-start the rest of the Philharmonic Society season.

“Sometimes it seems to take two months for people to really get into it,” he says. “We had talked for several years about presenting a West Coast edition of the New Wave Festival from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and we’ve seen the synergy and excitement at Edinburgh [Scotland] and other festivals. That evolved into the idea that we would do our own.

“A lot of this is getting audiences to take a chance, to trust us. Culture is not inherited today, or forced on us by the previous generation. We choose what we want to hear and see.”

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The audience’s ability to choose is a key element that Corey returns to again and again: choice not only when it comes to a variety of offerings but also in the way they are sold. Although some of the events in the festival are part of other series--the Philharmonic Society’s own as well as those of their partners the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the Pacific Symphony and the Orange County Performing Arts Center--the festival itself has not been packaged in subscription bundles.

“The old [packaging] model from the ‘70s, where we would take four or five concerts and slip in a couple we could not sell any other way, does not work any more. Our subscription sales have slipped 25% to 30% over the last 10 years, but our single tickets have sextupled. And when we let people pick their own packages, they come up with the wildest combinations.”

While optimistically waiting to see how this festival will unfold, Corey is also immersed in coming projects. He has another video/concert idea in the “Oedipus Rex” mold developing, and says that the next festivals will deal more with the millennium, reflecting on the past 1,000 years and looking to the future.

“We’ve thought a lot about this, but finally you have to just start doing it. It will become easier. Right now we are walking down a grassy field. Next year there will be a faint path and in five years it will seem like a paved road. It will be interesting to see how much festival synergy develops this year.”

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The Eclectic Orange Festival opens Saturday with Chanticleer and Frederica von Stade at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, and concludes Nov. 16 with Les Arts Florissants at Santa Ana High School Auditorium. Ticket prices range from $15 to $75. For information call (949) 553-2422, or view https://www.eclecticorange.org.