Organ Is In the Blood of Soloist

Andrew Arthur was a cathedral choir boy--or rather a “chorister,” as the English put it--when he heard the sound that would change the course of his life.

“I fell in love with the organ,” Arthur said in a recent phone interview prior to the opening Sunday of the 21st annual Baroque Music Festival Corona del Mar, where he is guest organist.

“I took it up at 15 and have been playing it ever since. I always wanted to be a professional musician. I just didn’t know if it would work out.”

Ever since, in his case, is not that long. He’s only 26.

Arthur was born to a musical family in Southend on Sea in Essex, the closest resort to London, only 40 miles east of the capital.

He studied music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he held the organ scholarship from 1994-97, following a year as Organ Scholar at Canterbury Cathedral.

He has played on numerous CD recordings for ASV, Griffin and Priority Records. He also has given recitals at Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral and has toured with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardner.

His performances at the Baroque Music Festival are his first dates in Southern California, but he has been a regular at the Carmel Bach Festival for the past two years. He will go back to Carmel in July after his Orange County dates and several Los Angeles-area recitals.

He will be playing throughout the week, and he will have a special showcased event in a solo recital at St. Michael’s on Monday.

In keeping with the themes of French and Italian music for this year’s festival, he will play music by Nicolas de Grigny and Francois Couperin, plus Bach, Buxtehude and a few other German composers--and works by John Blow and Henry Purcell “to bring some of my home music.”

Andrews plays on a four-manual, cathedral-size organ with 68 stops at his home church, All Saints Church, Margaret Street in London, which is also home.

“This is a much smaller instrument,” he said. “It’s an incomplete instrument at the moment. It’s supposed to be a three-manual instrument, but the stops for one manual have not been put in.”

But a coupling mechanism allows “a huge amount of flexibility. You can get quite an imaginative sound out of it.”

* Organist Andrew Arthur will play in the opening concert of the 21st annual Baroque Music Festival Corona del Mar, Sunday at 4 p.m. at St. Michael and All Angeles Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive. He will also play a recital at the church on Monday at 8 p.m. The festival will continue with chamber music programs Wednesday and Friday at 8 p.m. at Sherman Library and Gardens, 2645 E. Coast Highway, and conclude at St. Michael’s on June 24 at 4 p.m. Tickets: $25 for programs at St. Michael’s (except for the Monday recital, which costs $10); $30 for concerts at the Sherman Library and Gardens. (949) 760-7887.

Ballet Program Features Alums of Summer Project

All four choreographers represented in the Ballet Pacifica program today at the Irvine Barclay Theatre have one thing in common: They have all been participants in one or more of the Irvine company’s annual summer choreographers project. The program was started in 1991 by artistic director Molly Lynch to create new works for the company.

Not all the workshop pieces--which are presented as works in progress at the end of the two-week program--are taken into the main subscription series. But those that are usually receive fuller production values than what they got earlier.

The choreographers for the 2001 workshop will be Susan Hadley, Jacques Heim, Manard Stewart and Dominic Walsh. Their new works will be danced July 28 at South Coast Repertory.

Hadley is an Ohio-based dancer formerly with the Mark Morris Dance Group. Heim founded the Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theater in 1992. Stewart is a former principal dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet. Walsh is a principal dancer with Houston Ballet.

The concert today at the Irvine theater, 4242 Campus Drive, will showcase the work of David Allan, Jamey Hampton, Rick McCullough and Robert Sund at 2:30 and 8 p.m. $20 to $24. (949) 854-4646.

6 Recitals Open to Public at Chapman’s SongFest

As part of the sixth annual SongFest program, dedicated this year to “Espana and Songs from the Americas” (June 20-30) and “French Song and Opera” (July 1-11), there will be six recitals open to the public.

All except the last will take place in the Salmon Recital Hall at Chapman University, 1 University Drive, Orange. The final concert will take place at Chapman’s Memorial Hall. Single admission to the first five recitals is $8. (The last one is free.) Admission to the whole series is $25. Information: (714) 997-6781.

The public may audit the daily master classes for $10 a class or $25 for the whole day. (Space is limited.) Information: (949) 824-7844.

The recital series:

* Thursday, 7 p.m.: “Spanish Songs and Zarzuela”: Concert and Lecture, with a demonstration of the new Alfred publication: Spanish Theater Songs”: Rene Aravena, baritone; Twyla Meyer, pianist; Linda Vega, flamenco dancer.

* June 23, 7 p.m.: “Americans at Home and Abroad”: Songs in English, Spanish and Italian by American composers Martin Amlin, John Harbison, Libby Larsen, Roberto Sierra and Stravinsky. Judith Kellock, soprano; Rosemary Hyler Ritter, piano.

* June 29, 7 p.m.: “The Americas”: American and Spanish Songs. SongFest participants with narration by Martin Katz.

* July 8, 3 p.m.: “Histoires d’une Liaison”: A Journey of French Song: Brandon Velarde, baritone; Graham Johnson, piano.

* July 10, 7 p.m.: “A Tour of France”: French opera and Song: SongFest participants with direction and narration by Graham Johnson and John Hall.

* July 22, 4 p.m., Memorial Hall: “The Rhythm of Life”: Songs by young artists (15 to 21) in the training program.