Jazz Puts Mandel’s Mind at Ease at OCPAC

You’d think a War Room would be the last place a person would go to find peace.

But it is here at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, in this lavender and coral room plastered with architectural design schemes, that center President Jerry Mandel goes to distance himself from the pressures of a job that can keep him running 24/7.

Known to performing artists as Chorus Room E, the triangular chamber banked with mirrors and bright makeup lights has been turned into a meeting place--the War Room, as insiders call it--where visionaries and technicians go to discuss plans for the center’s $200-million expansion.

About nine months ago, it also became Mandel’s sanctum sanctorum, the private space where, for about an hour and a half each workday, he unwinds as he practices jazz on his shiny tenor saxophone.

“The room is at once relaxing and exhilarating,” said Mandel, who had doffed the jacket of his dark pinstriped suit to play a few bars from Gershwin’s “Summer Time.” “Playing jazz clears my mind; I come out refreshed,” he said. “But the [makeup] lights get the adrenaline flowing. It’s a chorus room, after all, and you can almost see 30 people getting ready to go into a show.”

Each afternoon, Mandel sets out from his first-floor office, sweeps through the lobby to the private backstage entrance and then descends the staircase that takes him to the show-poster-bedecked corridor lined with the center’s dressing, wardrobe and chorus rooms. “I walk that path, see all of those posters signed by cast members, and it really gets me going,” he said. “The closer I get [to the War Room], the more I have the feeling that this is what the center is all about. It feels like a show is about to go on at any moment.”

With sheet music and a stainless-steel pitcher of water on hand, Mandel begins each session in the acoustical-ceilinged room with a “practice plan.” He turns on the lights, plays his scales and chords and then launches into one of his jazz improvisations.

“To get maximum reduction of stress, it’s important to use a relaxing experience the same way each time,” he said. “You can’t play unless you’re absolutely concentrating. Within two minutes, everything that was on my mind is gone.”

Ann Conway can be reached by phone at (714) 966-5952 or by fax at (714) 966-7790.

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Try This at Home

Need a respite from work and worry? Create your own getaway. Here are some elements of a retreat:

* Space. Find a spot that you enjoy and promise yourself some quiet time there.

* Sounds. Surround yourself with auditory sensations that you can control, such as music, trickling water, a sound-of-nature tape or silence.

* Lights. Although Jerry Mandel retreats to the bright lights of Broadway--OK, Costa Mesa--you might find it restorative to relax by a gentler light. Try candlelight. Or replace your bright light bulbs with soft pink.

* Comfort. Wear loose clothing, drop into a cushy piece of furniture and keep what you need--beverage, snack, book--within easy reach.

* Scents. Gardenias can flood a room with nostalgic fragrance, while night-blooming jasmine lends a sense of the outdoors, even if your retreat is on the third floor of a high-rise.

* Taste. A cup of your favorite tea or a healthful fruit drink can add flavor to your break time.