When free dates turn up, some pop performers will be welcome. So far, though, the ‘no vacancy’ sign has been lit most of the time. : Classy Center Not Ready to Make Dates With Rockers : But a Few Evenings With Pop Will Be Welcome

With its second anniversary approaching, the Orange County Performing Arts Center still has plenty of room for Charles Camille Saint-Saens, but not a whole lot for Sting.

Thomas R. Kendrick, the Center’s president and chief executive, says there’s no conscious policy to keep out purveyors of postwar pop. He concedes, though, that the 3,000-seat concert hall, with its carpeting, wood-paneled walls and plush red upholstery, was built primarily to present performers from older, more genteel traditions.

When free dates turn up, Kendrick says, some pop performers will be welcome. So far, though, the “no vacancy” sign has been lit most of the time.

“We’re a cultural facility, not a pure entertainment facility. We’re committed to four major disciplines,” Kendrick said in a recent interview, ticking off opera, symphonic music, ballet and musical theater.

There are many venues for pop music in Southern California, Kendrick explained, and the Center was built specifically as a home for cultural events that had no major outlet in Orange County.

“The people who built the Center, and the people who give money to cover the operating costs, if you’re asking them for several million dollars a year to run it, then they don’t expect it to be a pop entertainment facility,” Kendrick said.

For Kendrick, those people count. The pop industry is a commercial enterprise that runs on profits. But the private, nonprofit Performing Arts Center relies on donations to make up the difference between operating costs and income from ticket sales. Opera, ballet and symphonic music need an economic crutch because of their high staging and personnel costs. This year, the Center’s projected deficit to be filled by fund-raising is about $4 million.

However, Kendrick said, the Center shouldn’t be perceived strictly as a high-cultural preserve.

“We want to provide as broad a range of culture as we can, and I certainly believe that pop is part of the culture,” he said. “We have no limitations on what we might present. We’re not engaged in censorship. We are looking for the artists with a classic reputation, and there certainly are classic artists in the pop field.”

So far, jazz has been the main non-classical musical offering: 12 big band and contemporary jazz shows have been held to date, with three more scheduled through the end of this year. The Pacific Symphony has brought in several pop figures as guest performers, including Jose Feliciano, Chet Atkins and Ray Charles.

The number of regular concerts by performers from the postwar pop tradition--a melting pot of interrelated and overlapping styles that includes country, folk, rock, blues and rhythm and blues--stands at exactly one: a show by country singer Johnny Cash on Jan. 19.

The possibilities for pop music at the Center probably will expand in the near future, according to Kendrick. This year, he said, the hall has reached its full booking capacity: 260 performance dates, with the remaining days of the year taken up by rehearsals and setup time for the more elaborate stage productions. But Kendrick projected that 1989 will bring an additional 20 to 30 open dates in which pop shows conceivably could be programmed.

“The regional (cultural) groups have had some rough bumps, and I think they will cut back their programming,” he said.

If more dates in fact fall open, the future of pop music at the Center will hinge on two questions:

-- Will major pop performers visiting Orange County be willing to play a 3,000-seat concert hall when, for half the year, they have the option of bigger paydays at the county’s two large outdoor amphitheaters?

-- Will the Center shun rock? Kendrick was noncommittal when asked whether he would be willing to book rock acts that appeal to a mature audience.

Los Angeles promoter Roger Shepherd says he has his sights set on bringing pop into the Performing Arts Center, if he can get around the constraints of the availability of the hall and the willingness of artists to play there.

“I’d love that place. I think it’s perfectly situated,” Shepherd said. “There are acts that should play the Performing Arts Center because of the ambiance and the setting. But historically, they go for the amphitheaters, because of the amount (the amphitheaters) can pay.”

Shepherd said he approached the Center soon after it opened with proposals to book jazz-pop performers George Benson and Al Jarreau and comedian Rodney Dangerfield.

“The deals the building was willing to cut were all very fair, and they were very helpful,” Shepherd said. “It was always a positive experience. The only thing that prevented these dates from coming through was the success of the theater itself (in already having filled its schedule with classical programming and musicals).”

Shepherd mentioned Sting, Bruce Hornsby & the Range (both of whom recently played at the Pacific Amphitheatre) and Tracy Chapman as pop-rock acts he thinks would be well-suited to the Performing Arts Center.

“When you bring a pop concert into that kind of building, there’s that air of culture about it,” Shepherd said. “You feel you are a part of a cultural event, as opposed to being in an arena on a folding chair on a basketball court. It gives the evening that extra wrapping on the package to make it appear something special. I like doing events that are a couple of steps above, when you go to an artist who normally doesn’t play (concert halls) and say, ‘Treat your fans to something special.’ ”

Executives from the region’s two other leading concert promotion firms, Avalon Attractions (the promoter for Irvine Meadows) and the Nederlander Organization (which runs the Pacific Amphitheatre), say they may be interested in bringing shows to the Performing Arts Center during their amphitheaters’ down seasons.

“As time goes on, I would hope we would be able to use it some,” said Alex Hodges, vice president in charge of Nederlander’s West Coast concert operations. “There are a lot of acts that should play there, especially in the winter months.” So far, Hodges said, Nederlander staffers “have checked with (the Performing Arts Center) once or twice” about possible pop shows, “but the availability hasn’t been there.”

Avalon Vice President Steve Rennie said his company hasn’t proposed any pop bookings to the Center’s management, “but that’s not to say we won’t.”

Louis B. Robin, whose Los Angeles-based Artists Consultants Productions brought Johnny Cash to the Center, said the show was only marginally profitable (a Center spokesman said it drew 2,200 ticket buyers). “I’d like to go back there, but with a sure thing,” Robin said. “It wasn’t worth doing (financially), but it did some pioneering.”

Any show brought in by an outside promoter would put the Center in a financially risk-free position: The Center would collect a guaranteed hall rental fee or percentage of ticket revenues, leaving the promoter to pay the performers and other overhead costs. Although the Center’s profit would amount to pocket change in contrast with its revenue needs, Kendrick said, the prospect of making a bit of money is one inducement to book popular music.

Actually, the Center is investigating the possibility of presenting pop--albeit middle-of-the-road pop--on its own, Kendrick said. The risk would be greater, but so would the profits, and so far, he has worked on putting together a series of attractions that might involve such performers as John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray.

For a pop schedule to succeed, Kendrick said, the Center will have to persuade performers that it makes sense to lower their usual fee to play in an intimate, appealing setting. At the same time, the Center will have to convince concert-goers that it is worth paying more. Kendrick thinks that for the twain to meet, ticket prices would have to be in the $30 range.

But while the Center is able to take some financial risk, Kendrick said, it isn’t willing to book any attractions that might pose a risk of damage to the building.

“If the people are going to jump on the seats and drop cigarettes on the carpet, we’re going to say no.”

Does that mean any mention of rock music will send up a red flag?

“Not to me,” Kendrick said. “But perhaps to board members. Your rock crowds have been used to amphitheaters where they can stand on seats and throw things on the cement. But we would only (refuse) an attraction where we would run a substantial risk of damage.”

In assessing that risk, Kendrick said, he would check with other upscale venues where a proposed act had played. “You collect a whole lot of information, then you use your instincts. A group that could be trouble in one period of time may not be trouble in another period.”

“Rock” in fact, has become a nebulous, almost meaningless label. Today, the rock umbrella enfolds everything from heavy metal, which would attract young and potentially unruly audiences, to such performers as Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Van Morrison, musicians of widely acknowledged merit and artistic ambition who appeal primarily to an adult audience.

Kendrick was asked whether Jackson Browne would be a suitable rock act for the Performing Arts Center. Browne, best known as an introspective balladeer, but with some inclination toward more boisterous rock, has won critical acclaim and a wide following among baby boomers since the early 1970s.

Moreover, his ties to Orange County (he went to high school in Fullerton) might make him more likely than most rock stars to sacrifice some potential earnings to play the county’s most prestigious venue.

“We’d certainly talk to Jackson Browne,” Kendrick said. “We’d have to do some research. But if you’re asking me, ‘Is Jackson Browne possible?’--obviously we’d consider Jackson Browne. You can get arguments on both sides.”

Rock has not been a stranger to America’s most prestigious concert halls. In the 1970s, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center staged shows by such performers as Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull and Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

“I don’t recall anything very serious (occurring at rock shows), and I’ve been here since the building opened,” said Gordon Jenkins, the Music Center’s booking manager. But with few open dates between classical programs, and with competition from a multitude of other, more economically attractive pop venues, pop and rock shows now are rarities there.

Among other nicely appointed concert halls in the region, the 3,100-seat Terrace Theatre in Long Beach shies away from anything harder than middle-of-the-road pop, according to Mike McSweeney, its director of marketing. On the other hand, the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles has played host to such historic rock concerts as the Talking Heads shows that were captured in the acclaimed film “Stop Making Sense.”

The Wiltern, a 2,300-seat Art Deco theater in Los Angeles operated by rock promoter Bill Graham, has been programming a good deal of thinking-persons’ rock and pop, including recent shows by Sting, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.

At Avery Fisher Hall in New York City’s Lincoln Center, recent performers have included Santana and B.B. King. Over the years, “we’ve had a lot of pop and rock,” said Delmar Hendricks, booking manager for the 2,738-seat hall.

But those bookings, too, have fallen off in recent years because the increasingly elaborate sound systems and staging of rock shows often require a full day to set up. Rehearsals of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra usually occupy the hall during the day, Hendricks said, ruling out rock productions that require lots of setup time.

“I think the only time we got into trouble (with rock) is when we had Jimi Hendrix here (in 1968) and the audience was very destructive,” Hendricks said. After that, “we just were more careful in checking with other venues” before allowing rock bands into Lincoln Center.

Carnegie Hall also has had a wide range of pop and rock bookings over the years, although veteran New York rock promoter Ron Delsener said the 2,804-seat hall’s fee structure and sound characteristics make it ill-advised for acts with powerful sound systems. Folk-rock figures such as Leonard Cohen and John Prine have made recent appearances. Tracy Chapman, one of the hottest current folk-rock performers, is scheduled to play the 97-year-old hall in November.

In Boston, the 4,000-seat Wang Center for the Performing Arts, a lavishly restored vaudeville-era theater, weaves about 15 rock and pop shows a year into a schedule given over largely to theater and dance. The hall has booked some harder-rocking acts, including R.E.M., Dire Straits and Simple Minds.

“We’ve had very well-behaved crowds in here. There have been no problems, just an occasional disruptive drunk teen-ager,” said Janis Lippman, the center’s assistant manager. “Other than that, we’ve been very fortunate.”

At the 110-year-old Cincinnati Music Hall, according to manager David Curry, a cautious booking approach toward rock has made room for such acts as the Kinks and Bruce Hornsby & the Range but has kept out proposed shows by R.E.M., George Thorogood and Tom Petty, among others. “If we have any doubts, we pass on it” in order to protect the hall’s ornate decor, Curry said.

A survey that could have some bearing on the future of popular music and other programming at the Performing Arts Center will be undertaken in the coming weeks when hired consultants survey area residents about what sorts of offerings they would like to see at the Center.

The survey will involve telephone interviews with a sampling of 800 people--a mix of regular and occasional Center patrons, as well as county residents who never have been inside the hall.

The survey won’t specifically ask whether respondents want more popular music, according to Jill Bensley, vice president of Harrison Price Co., the Torrance-based economic consulting firm that is helping Center officials plan for possible expansion into a multihall complex.

“That would be putting words in people’s mouths,” she said. Instead, the survey will be open-ended. “There will be questions that say, ‘What’s missing? What would you like to see more of?’ ”

Early next year, Harrison Price is scheduled to deliver a report concerning the need for additional theaters at the Center in the coming decade, the sort of programming that should be considered, and the potential cost of expansion.

To Kendrick, the best of all possible worlds would include a second large concert hall akin to the existing Segerstrom Hall, plus a smaller recital theater. Kendrick said that sort of expansion would remove most of the scheduling constraints that so far have limited pop presentations at the Center.

Although the Center’s excursions into popular entertainment have been limited, Kendrick thinks they have been significant enough to dispel the notion that the Center is a closed shop when it comes to pop.

When the Center departed for the first time from its core disciplines and booked comedian Jay Leno for a concert in 1986 on New Year’s Eve, “we had some surprise in the community,” Kendrick said. “It seemed a good way to get some new people in to take a look, and to signal to the community that this wasn’t some sort of ivory tower. The last thing in the world we want to do is sound as if we’re looking down our nose at pop.”

But, he said, “we’re taking it slow. The big problem for us is economics and dates, so we can’t go fast. But I think it shows that we’re open to it and we’re interested in doing more.”