A Final Note

When JoAnn Falletta came to the Long Beach Symphony as music director in 1989, the orchestra was taking its first steps after a near-death experience with bankruptcy. Its artistic and community outreach accounts also seemed nearly tapped out, and the organization was better known as a poster child of the late ‘80s failed-orchestra era than as a viable, exciting musical entity.

The Juilliard-trained conductor concludes an 11-season tenure as music director of the LBS with a farewell concert tonight. She leaves an orchestra consistently in the black financially and nationally known for its commissioning of new works, to devote more time to her new orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic.

The Long Beach Symphony today is closely tied to its community through education and outreach programs and partnerships with local organizations. Two years ago, Falletta and the LBS made their first CD, a disc of water-themed music privately produced (but now distributed by Albany) in association with the opening of the Aquarium of the Pacific.

The concert tonight is a similar venture. The program, marking a collaboration with the Long Beach Museum of Art, lists orchestral blockbusters with an art theme: Respighi’s “Botticelli Triptych,” Martinu’s “Frescoes of Piero della Francesca” and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in Ravel’s orchestration. This program will also be recorded.

Earlier this week, Falletta discussed the concert and her decade in Long Beach.

Question: Let’s start on the artistic side. After 11 years, how has the Long Beach Symphony changed musically?

Answer: I think that the biggest challenge was that the Long Beach Symphony was not a full-time orchestra. My goal was to forge an orchestral sound for the symphony, despite meeting only once a month. We have managed to create a kind of identity, a kind of personality for the orchestra that I think is astounding.

Q: In terms of programming as well as performance standards, what do you feel were your most important accomplishments?

A: The increased presence of American music was something I felt very strongly about. The result was a commissioning program, where we have had an American composer create a new piece for us every year. At first that was a little uncomfortable for our audience. But we persisted, and I think we have actually changed how our audience views new music.

In our effort to incorporate unusual repertory, we have been able to expand the last five or six years on a program called Musical Bridges to reach out to the various constituencies in Long Beach. That has led us into collaborations with the Cambodian community, the African American, the Iranian, the Latino communities.

Q: Are there any areas where you have regrets?

A: My biggest regret is that our audience--which has been strong, we always have full houses--is still only a small part of Long Beach. I would like to see a series of free concerts for the public to reach an even wider constituency.

One of the ways we have done that, and I’m very proud of it, is through the school concerts. We now reach 55,000 Long Beach students every year, and I really sense a difference in the young people because they get this consistently every year. But on an adult level, I think there is more that the symphony can do.

Q: On the business side, you came into a fairly troubled situation. That seems to have changed dramatically. How was that accomplished?

A: I came in at the right time, because the symphony was turning around from a very dark time. It was poised to go forward. I had the help of a wonderful board and staff in slowly growing the organization, making sure the financial health mirrored the artistic health.

The orchestra has been in the black all this time, with growth and with a lot of risk taking. We certainly have not taken the tried-and-true, Mozart and Beethoven route. That has paid off in Long Beach viewing its orchestra as a unique entity, an orchestra that has a mission, a vision, a personality. There is a sense of pride that the Long Beach Symphony is not just another orchestra.

Q: What challenges face your successor?

A: It has been an incredible 11 years of artistic growth and success. Now the challenge for my successor will be to find his or her own voice, and a new way to go forward. The Long Beach Symphony is not thinking about rapid growth, so the challenge is to keep the orchestra fresh and stimulated within the restrictions of where we are and who we are--and those are not artistic restrictions, but more financial and logistical restrictions.

Q: Next season, each of the five candidates to succeed you will conduct a concert. Do you have a role in the selection process?

A: No, not at all, and I think that is for the best. Often successors need to be very different from their predecessors, and I think it is good for the orchestra to make its decision based on other voices.

Q: As a music director, you have worked with a wide range of regional orchestras. Do they share common challenges? Advantages?

A: There are almost always financial challenges, and that’s because most regional orchestras do not have the benefit of an endowment, like the major orchestras do, so they are forced to raise money from season to season. I think endowments are really key to long-term symphony survival.

The great positive aspect of regional orchestras is that since they are not so large, they can be more flexible. Regional orchestras are responsive to their community, and are small enough to make quick changes, to restructure and to rethink as needed.

Q: This season has also been your first in Buffalo, N.Y. How does the situation there compare with Long Beach?

A: Buffalo is a full-time orchestra, with a much longer season. Having more weeks does give you more flexibility about incorporating new repertory into a season. The sense of tradition and the tie to Europe is also much stronger in Buffalo, this sense of being a great orchestra for decades and bearing up this mantle of responsibility.

Q: When you began here, female conductors, let alone music directors, were still relatively rare. Has that changed much?

A: It has changed, though not dramatically. When Long Beach hired me, I remember thinking that it was very open-minded of them, because at that time there was only one other woman working as music director of a regional orchestra.

Now for Buffalo, it is risky too. Maybe that tracks the development in 10 years of how orchestras think about women. It has not been very rapid, but I think there are definitely more young women going into conducting.

Q: We have talked about how the orchestra has changed. What lessons have you learned?

A: It is hard to assess how you grow as a musician, but I know that every time I have been on the podium with this orchestra, whether rehearsal or concert, I have learned something, and that is very rare. It has been a tremendously beneficial time for me.

They have freed me to be less concentrated on technical things and to be more concentrated on what the core of the music is. There is also something about the attitude here. The commitment to excellence is on the highest level, but with a lightness and joy--excellence is never a burden here.

* Long Beach Symphony, JoAnn Falletta conducting. Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, (562) 436-3203. Music by Respighi, Martinu and Mussorgsky. Tonight, 8 p.m. $11 to $52.