What’s Not Happening at the Pavilion

In the fall of 2003, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale will depart from Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for Walt Disney Concert Hall across the street. They’ll leave nothing behind except about 100 open performance dates.

Exactly what will fill the gap at the venerable flagship of the Music Center of Los Angeles County is unclear.

Most performing arts centers book their seasons at least a year in advance, but the Chandler’s new impresario, the Music Center’s board and staff, has nothing firm lined up to go with the eight productions, totaling 60 to 65 performances, that the Los Angeles Opera expects to mount during its 2003-2004 season.

Center officials say that they have a few prospective bookings in the pipeline but that they will not make any deals until September at the earliest. After nearly 40 years as a low-profile functionary--a landlord, primarily, and a sponsor of educational programs--the Music Center is trying to reinvent itself, and its leaders say they don’t want to rush, even if that means some dark nights at the 3,197-seat Pavilion.

Staffers at the center have known for years that they would need to become programmers, not just caretakers, at the downtown complex that includes the Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and soon Disney Hall. But they say that an ongoing cycle of internal restructuring has made it hard to keep a single-minded focus on reinventing the Music Center as a performing arts presenter.

Even now, acknowledges Andrea Van de Kamp, chairwoman of the center’s board, it can’t go full speed ahead as an impresario because it lacks a leader who can play the part. Center President Joanne Kozberg, who is in charge of day-to-day operations, announced her resignation in April but is staying until her replacement is found. Kozberg has won respect for making a single, more streamlined unit out of an unwieldy management structure that, until her arrival in 1999, had consisted of two entities with separate staffs. But her background is in government and administration, not in booking performers and enticing a ticket-buying public.

In contrast to the Music Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic says it is set to import at least 50 concerts in addition to its 100 or so annual performances at Disney Hall. (The Music Center also will be able to present at Disney Hall when it isn’t occupied by Philharmonic programs; those dates will be limited in the first year.)

“We will have an enormous spectrum that will establish the Philharmonic as the leading presenter on the West Coast of classical music and related genres,” said Deborah Borda, executive vice president and managing director of the L.A. Philharmonic. “The message is, ‘Come on down,’ ” she said, doing a pretty good P.T. Barnum while withholding details until a planned Nov. 21 announcement of the programming schedule for 2003-2004.

The Music Center’s pronouncements about the future of the Chandler are, in contrast, the soul of circumspection. “I think we need to be extremely cautious in booking,” says Van de Kamp. “If we ended up with some dark time, I would be disappointed but not crushed. I would rather do it right.”

Doing it right, Van de Kamp says, means booking events diverse enough to make all communities in a polyglot, multiethnic region feel invested. “We can serve aging gray hairs or be thoughtful and get the kind of diversity and intensity we want the center to represent.”

Kozberg and Karen Schmidt, the Music Center’s director of booking and presentation, emphasized that they are still in a planning phase that has involved consulting with experts, collecting community feedback and mulling the financial implications of being an impresario.

“If we shortchange the planning process, then we’ve shortchanged ourselves for the long term,” says Schmidt, who held another administrative position at the center before moving into her current job two years ago.

The Music Center will say that it is looking to major dance companies, children’s entertainment, ethnic festivals, comedy and holiday shows as possible attractions. Rock ‘n’ roll will be welcome--although the center would simply collect rent while letting experienced rock promoters take the risk. It worked like a charm in October when the concert producer Goldenvoice brought the Icelandic rock chanteuse, Bjork, to the Pavilion. Schmidt says the show sold out in 12 minutes, even though it fell on a Monday. Broadway musicals were a staple at the Chandler from 1964 to 1987 under the aegis of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. But don’t look for them to return. It would be up to Center Theatre Group to initiate anything theatrical at the Pavilion, Music Center officials say.

Gordon Davidson, the theater group’s artistic director, says he is not looking to expand its reach beyond the Ahmanson, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, a 320-seat house tentatively scheduled to open in Culver City in 2004.

“There may occasionally be something we want to present for a limited run, but it’s not going to be the mainstay of what we do,” he said.

Richard Owens, the Music Center’s vice president for advancement, says it has a $9-million endowment for programming; $2.5 million of that is earmarked for dance. The goal, Owens said, is to keep the $9 million intact while spending only the yield--about $450,000 a year, assuming the targeted 5% investment return. Like all nonprofit arts presenters, which seldom expect to cover costs at the box office, the Music Center also will be seeking donors for specific events.

The Music Center began gearing up for its future as a presenter in 2000 when a volunteer group, the Center Dance Assn., formed to help plan and fund the importation of dance companies.

With available dates scarce at the Pavilion, major dance attractions often have skipped L.A.; a well-regarded series at the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa has picked up some of the slack. The Music Center’s dance support group has more than 100 members and has raised about $1 million, says its founder and chairman, Liane Weintraub.

The Music Center has used the last two seasons to put a toe in the water as a dance presenter, bringing in four companies: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Twyla Tharp Dance, Complexions and American Ballet Theatre.

“So far we’ve done well,” says Schmidt. “We’ve hit our numbers and we’re thrilled.” The Music Center expects to bring in three more dance companies next spring: Pilobolus Dance Theatre and the L.A.-based Diavolo Dance Theater at the Ahmanson and the Joffrey Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Judith Morr, the chief programmer at the Orange County center, said she and Schmidt have discussed jointly presenting two or three dance attractions at both venues during 2003-04 and 2004-05.

The Music Center may be late to the dance in booking for 2003-04, but it won’t necessarily be a wallflower, says Bob Fogelgren, director of programs and administration for Dance/USA, a national service organization based in Washington, D.C.

“National companies will lock in engagements many years out, but they have flexibility,” he said. The Music Center “should be able to develop a significant season. When you have a chance to perform at a major center like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, many companies will try to do that.”

All events at the Pavilion, starting a year from now, will revolve around the opera’s plans.

The company must now spend 25% of its allotted preparation time setting up and taking down scenery and the L.A. Philharmonic’s acoustic shell so that the Philharmonic can rehearse or perform on the same day the opera is using the hall. A year from now, says Edgar Baitzel, L.A. Opera director of artistic operations, opera-goers will see better-rehearsed shows that will benefit from greatly increased time for technical elements such as lighting design.

Better quality, in the opera’s grand strategy, will lure more subscribers, attract more donors, and enable it eventually--but probably no sooner than 2008--to expand its seasons to 12 productions and 90 to 100 performances, Baitzel says. Such growth, he estimates, would require a budget increase from the current $35 million to nearly $60 million. Until then, the opera expects it will need 32 weeks a year in the Pavilion for set-ups, rehearsals and performances, divided into four eight-week periods. Baitzel says the opera informed the Music Center of that timetable more than seven months ago. In keeping with their cautious approach to programming, center leaders say they will wait until next month, when the opera must submit its official schedule for 2003-2004, before they make any booking commitments.

What they come up with will begin to forge a new identity for the organization and for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“If you’re a presenter you need a personality, a vision,” says Deborah Card, executive director of the Seattle Symphony, who spent 14 years as an executive for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra before moving north in 1992.

Following through on the promise of a multiethnic embrace will be crucial, says Shelton g. Stanfill, a former Music Center president who left in 1996 for his current post as president of Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center.

“To me, this is the most important decision that the Music Center has made in order to secure its future,” Stanfill says. “It has to--as all of us do--diversify the ownership of these institutions, and that means diversifying the programming. They have to find a real great presenter-programmer.”

Times staff writer Chris Pasles contributed to this story.