Rachael Worby Puts the Popular in Pops

S tanding aggressively at the intersection of art and ambition are conductor Rachael Worby and the Pasadena Pops Orchestra. Founded in 1987 and no stranger to growing pains, the Pasadena Pops found an attractive venue at Descanso Gardens in 1994 and last season installed Worby as music director. This season, which opens with a Gershwin program Friday and Saturday, features twice the number of last year’s performances, and Worby says there is no reason why the orchestra should not soon be presenting 40 to 50 concerts annually and touring internationally. The immediate future includes plans for an indoor winter season and a CD.

Worby has been music director of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra in West Virginia since 1986, was music director for the Young People’s Concerts at Carnegie Hall for 12 years and was an assistant conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1984 to ’87. She founded the American Music Festival in Cluj, Romania, toured and recorded with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and earlier this month led the family concert at the Ojai Music Festival. Over a recent lunch, she discussed the opportunities and challenges of her work with the Pasadena Pops.

Question: What exactly is a pops concert, and why do you do it?

Answer: It’s really quite simple. I have been interested in deconstructing the notion of “concert” and replacing it with what I call an “event.” The experience begins the moment you step out of your car. The environment that surrounds you for the duration should be one to which you would like to return.

So when I took this position, it was on the basis of being able to create events--events that allowed for the idea that all great music is great music. There should not be any reason not to include Beethoven and Ellington, or [Aaron Jay] Kernis and Gershwin, on the same program.

I’m interested in the expansion of the ear and, ultimately, the soul, the internal spirit of each individual. I think people can walk away from events and feel inspired by sound.

Q: Not all of its practitioners are happy with the term pops, feeling that there is something disparaging or condescending about it. You obviously have at least an institutional commitment to the term.

A: I define pops as popular, and I don’t have any problem with making music popular. That’s my job, to make [New York minimalist] Aaron Kernis as popular as Beethoven. Or, in a different concert, to make the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as popular as the last movement.

Q: What sort of programming works? Do you have any favorite pieces, or any that you would not do under circumstances?

A: I try to create programs which open people’s imaginations. On our opening program is both the Gershwin everybody knows and the Gershwin few people know.

I love Mahler symphonies, and I can think of pops programs where the slow movement of his Fifth Symphony, for example, would work, or the “Rckert Lieder.” On the other hand, one year at Carnegie Hall I did Morton Gould’s arrangement of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” about 30 times, and I said I would never do it again. But then last summer, for my first concert with the Pasadena Pops and the orchestra’s first free concert, where we had to make a statement to a family crowd and interest them in our season, to get them to trust me, I did “Johnny” again.

Q: Outdoor summer pops concerts have a lot of competition. How do you distinguish yourself, or is the market so big that you don’t have to?

A: There are enough people to go around, and I don’t perceive that we are in direct competition with anybody else on this coast. I spend very little time looking at what other orchestras are doing.

Recently I went to “Lion King,” and I came out saying to myself, “Rachael, live with this 24 hours a day.” That’s my competition, not the orchestra around the corner. I also saw Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at Bellagio in Las Vegas; what a breath-taking experience!

When we did [Kernis’] “Musica Celestis” last summer, the audience was absolutely silent, entranced. Many of them have spoken to me about it and written to me, and I think some of them had that kind of experience.

I love the old Cirque du Soleil motto, “Invoke, Evoke, Provoke.” I have the hat, the T-shirt with it. When I first saw them [in 1987 at the Los Angeles Festival], I was stunned by the risks they were willing to take. I thought, “That’s it. I’ll take the risk. It’s worth it.”

I imagine an excitement that will thrill people. The experience of fine art is irreplaceable. I am sort of evangelical about that.

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* Pasadena Pops, conducted by Rachael Worby. Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Canada Flintridge. Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m. $15 to $55. (626) 792-7677.