Hometown Symphony a Source of Civic Pride : Popular Orchestra Is Music to Carson’s Ears

Symphonic music doesn’t appear to be a tough sell in Carson. In fact, it’s more like a love affair.

When the Carson-Dominguez Hills Symphony Orchestra plays at Cal State Dominguez Hills, there aren’t a lot of empty seats in the 467-seat University Theatre the 70-member orchestra calls home.

“We are very, very well-received,” said Alyce Bledsoe, a businesswoman and executive director of the 160-member symphony association that promotes the orchestra and raises $15,000 a year to help support it.

That affection extends to a billboard that overlooked California 91 this summer, proclaiming: “Carson Salutes Its Symphony.”

The city provides much of the orchestra’s $50,000 annual budget, while the university supplies performance space, equipment and technical help. “It’s a fine example of town and gown working together,” said longtime conductor Frances Steiner, who has been on the university’s musical faculty for 21 years.

To city officials, the orchestra is a city treasure.

Backed by Mayor

“We’re very, very proud of it and have supported it for a long time,” said Carson Mayor Kay Calas, herself a concert-goer and symphony association member.

A new season of free performances gets under way tonight at 7 at the university, with two young women soloists--winners of the orchestra’s Young Artists Soloists Competition--on piano. They will perform Liszt’s “Hungarian Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra” and the first movement of the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto. The other major work at tonight’s concert is Tchaikovsky’s second symphony, the “Little Russian.”

The orchestra--a community ensemble running the gamut from students to union professionals--will play three other concerts this season. There will also be the annual program for school children and the Fourth of July music-and-fireworks spectacular that draws thousands to the Olympic Velodrome on the university campus.

Steiner, who was a cello prodigy studying with Gregor Piatigorsky at age 8 and today is one of America’s few women symphony conductors, says the orchestra benefits those on both sides of the proscenium.

“The vast majority of our players are there for self-enrichment, playing very fine music and playing it fairly well,” she said. “The audiences are very appreciative and receptive, and people from the community have a wonderful opportunity to hear fine music close at hand and for free. We bring music to the people.”

Carson officials do not hide the fact that their enthusiasm for the orchestra is enhanced by the glitter it brings to a city that often gets more attention for political intrigue and industrial pollution--not beauty and culture.

“We are trying to get out of the junkyard image of Carson,” said Chuck Thonney, a member of the city Fine Arts and Historical Commission and its former chairman. “We want everyone to know we have a strong cultural program in the city, and part of it is the symphony.”

The California 91 billboard contributed to that. The idea originated with the city Public Relations Advisory Committee, and the billboard was donated by a Carson-based company. “A lot of people don’t associate Carson with a symphony orchestra,” said public relations committee Chairman Chuck Porter. “It is important that this type of music be heard and expanded in our area.”

Earlier this year, the city received an award for excellence in fine arts programming from the Pacific Southwest Region of the National Parks and Recreation Assn., a professional group. The Carson symphony was the first community orchestra to be honored. Jeff Thornton, a recreation director for the Navy and awards committee chairman, said the group believed the orchestra was a rare venture. He said city programs submitted for honors are usually “big art shows.”

Steiner and some of her musicians say the symphony continues to grow in quality and polish as it plays a variety of music from Duke Ellington jazz to the Handel oratorio “Judas Maccabaeus,” which will be heard Dec. 17.

Conceding that lighter music is always more popular, Steiner said she feels an obligation to audiences, students and her musicians to program solid symphonies and contemporary works.

“We are coming to the end of the 20th Century, and people should know the music of this period,” she said, adding that some get their first exposure to serious music from the Carson symphony.

Since it was created in 1973 with the merger of a small community orchestra and a chamber orchestra Steiner had begun on campus, the orchestra has attracted families of musicians to its ranks, and many students have remained with the group long after finishing school.

Said Steiner: “You can graduate from the university, but not from the orchestra.”