January 12th, 2006

  Profile The Pacific Symphony’s music director, Carl St.Clair, is in love with music, claiming, “Music is my mistress.” He speaks about the subject with passion and joy. He embodies and reflects his love whether he is on or off stage.
Entering his 17th year with the Symphony, St.Clair is a recognized leader in the classical-music world. He has guided the Pacific Symphony to national prominence through his dedication to the performance of both commissioned compositions and masterworks by the classical composers. He will lead the orchestra as it embarks on its first international tour in March 2006. During the tour, the Symphony will perform in the great concert halls of Europe including Munich, Lucerne, Cologne, and Vienna.

The opening of the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, September 15, 2006, will be “a banner–raising evening.” St. Clair will conduct heroic music, like Gustav Mahler’s great compositional achievement, the beautiful Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Titan—a work that, in Mahler’s words, “grew overwhelming––flowing out of me like a mountain torrent.” It is the maestro’s intention to include this work on the program as a tribute to those who made the structure possible “so they will realize all their own heroic efforts in building this facility.”
Even as a boy, St.Clair was passionate about music. “At a very young age music became a partner in life, basically allowing me to dream and imagine things that in my humble upbringing in Texas were not available to me.” He would “create sounds on my piano and in my head. Music was a way for me to know who I was as a young boy and what I wanted to be when I grew up. I might not have had a dime in my pocket, but I had a dream…music and the powers and beauty of it were always in my head.”

St. Clair is a riveting conductor with his sweeping gestures––bending and swaying to the music––his left foot perched upward on his heel in such a way as to radiate his coiled tension. He is perpetual motion, tilting his head to meet the adagios, punctuating beats and rhythms with his baton to enunciate the allegros of the music. His arms seem disembodied, as if performing a musical pantomime of their own. He radiates the emotion he is experiencing. And if you catch him turned sideways you will see that huge grin of joy spread wide across his face. Most of all, St. Clair has a tight hand on the musicians who perform impeccably under his baton.
This maestro says that every day when he looks at scores and listens to music, he feels like he is “shaking hands with geniuses.” “What I need and strive to attain is an artistic programming balance. One week we may perform Tchaikovsky's Symphony # 6 in B minor, the Pathétique. It is riddled with deep, dark, elegiac emotions. The next week I need a Bolero or La Valse. I must have my palate cleaners. Then I might do a week of Russian music. I can’t continually draw from the same battery. Variety is crucial to me.
“The one thing artists have in common is a ‘career’ because what you do is not a job. Certain people work so they can have the type of lives they want. Artists have a life that they are compelled to live. They have a different emotional purging valve. We emote differently. We grieve differently.
“There’s not a wasted moment in anyone’s life if they are listening to music. What one learns through music and through the pursuit of music are life lessons. Learning music doesn’t come easily. You have to work at it. It presents a lot of challenges for the young. It teaches you how to take instructions––how to obey.”
Musician, conductor, raconteur, musical philosopher—Carl St. Clair believes that the eyes are the organ of the mind, the ears are the organ of the soul. “Music lies in the imagination and the creative part of the brain and the spirit—and they are vital to our life.”
Performances The Ballet Russe was founded in Paris in 1909. The two most famous names associated with that company are impresario Serge Diaghilev and the great dancer Nijinsky. These two geniuses altered the course of ballet forever. Many choreographers, costume and set designers, and musicians—Dali, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Picasso, Balanchine, Massine, Fokine, Debussy, and Matisse—were involved in much of the company’s impact on the dance and artistic world. Taken altogether they combined ethereal choreography, startlingly modern music, and original scene designs.
Recently Ballet Pacifica and the Newport Beach Film Festival co–sponsored the Orange County opening of this epic–scaled documentary––Ballets Russes. It is a collaboration by documentarians Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, who spent years gathering rare film clips and artifacts from early 20th-century archives and personal memorabilia. They have used a magical coupling of fading photos and blurry film to tell their story. Seen in the audience were Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner of Ballet Pacifica; George Zuritch, legendary Ballet Russe dancer, along with filmmakers Goldfine and Geller.
South Coast Repertory’s Hitchcock Blonde will open in its American Premier at the Segerstrom Stage on February 3. The play weaves three stories that all involve the legendary filmmaker who had an affinity for blondes. The 1999 plot line follows a lecturer and his student uncovering lost Hitchcock footage from an unknown 1919 film in a Greek villa, while the 1959 story finds Hitchcock himself as a character, working with Janet Leigh’s body double on the movie Psycho. It’s a funny and fascinating play that’s part theater, part cinema.
Postings January 15 marks the opening of Orange County’s largest dance school. Founded and directed by Gillian Finley, West Coast Dance Academy will offer instruction in ballet, jazz, lyrical, hip-hop, tap, musical theatre, and Pilates. Orange County dance-school icon Stela Viorica will join West Coast Dance Academy’s pre-professional ballet program as artistic associate, and dance industry leaders Molly Lynch and Alaine Haubert will be on the school’s master faculty.***Look for the Orange County High School of the Arts (OCHSA) to be featured in a performance at the Kennedy Center as part of the reward the school will receive as it has been named one of five schools nationwide with a Creative Ticket National School of Distinction.***The Laguna Playhouse has received a pledge of $5 million from Mr. and Mrs. James R. Mellor that is the largest gift in the history of the theatre.
Clad in black pants and tank top, with dreads tied in a ponytail, Tony Award–winning dancer Savion Glover remained on stage for two hours of non–stop ricocheting tap dance as he performed at the Irvine Barclay Theatre recently. There is nothing pedestrian about this artist. His feet seem to defy their original purpose. The amplified dance stage reverberates with the rat–tat–tat of his shoes. It is a hard–hitting form of tap. Whether it’s Vivaldi or jazz, Savion’s steady patter is a long distance from Fred Astaire or even Gregory Hines.
For the 5th consecutive year, Morton’s honored Candlelight Concert and Candlelight Encore underwriters and committee members with a special dinner event and silent auction––chaired by Sandy Segerstrom Daniels. Janice Agopian was chair of the silent auction. Invited guests included Joan Riach, Sally Crockett, Sandy McLaughlin, and Darrelyn Melilli.