The Ambassador’s Fine-Tuner : Director David Hulme deals with a host of problems, from sudden cancellations to fund raising.

David Hulme, Ambassador Auditorium’s new performing arts director, was faced with a dilemma. Pianist Andre Watts, due to open the 1990-91 season, had canceled because of shoulder pain. Merely postponing the opening six days to present an already scheduled recital by Swedish baritone Hakan Hagegard posed another difficulty: Hagegard’s performance was to start at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29--not long after the close of Yom Kippur.

“The concert might obviously cut out a certain group, but it is after sundown,” said Hulme, an ordained minister who has spent most of his life in service of the Worldwide Church of God, sponsor of cultural events at Ambassador Auditorium. “It would never be the church’s intention to offend anyone in any way. I do hope this is not a problem.”

Soothing ruffled feathers. Dealing with cancellations and delays. Counterprogramming against competitors. It’s all in a day’s work for an arts presenter, who must gauge box-office trends and line up talent as much as three years in advance.

Hulme, 44, in charge of programming, communications and public relations at Ambassador Foundation, will present 100 performances of classical and “popular musical” entertainment this season. Although Hulme has no formal musical training--he says his musical ambitions are satisfied vicariously by his three children, all pianists--this hasn’t stopped the tall, elegant Britisher.

“Musical temperament alone is not a guarantee to run a successful performing arts series,” he says in his large offices overlooking the fountains and greenery of the Ambassador complex in Pasadena. “You need someone who also is a generalist with administrative ability.

“This is a business venture and there’s a lot of public relations and advertising involved. But my staff are musically trained and this makes a difference,” says Hulme, who took over as director last year from 13-year veteran Wayne Shilkret, who became general manager of the Hollywood Bowl.

The Ambassador concert season receives a $1-million subsidy from the Worldwide Church of God (annual budget of about $200 million), Hulme says. But with artists’ fees skyrocketing, he anticipates for the first time in Ambassador’s 15-year history that outside funding will be sought with corporate and patron sponsorships.

In his view, these escalating costs should not be passed on to subscribers: “I can’t see charging $50 to $100 a seat. The audience would ask if the artist is worth it,” he says.

Hulme, a jazz buff, also plans to expand the three-concert “Sounds of Genius”’ jazz series, and launch a jazz festival next summer that he believes will attract a different crowd from the Playboy Jazz series and “service the multiplicity” of jazz interests ranging from big band to fusion.

Hulme also wants to stretch the country music category and broaden the big band series that attracts an older audience and, by Hulme’s calculation this year, is expected to sell out.

Hulme estimates that more than 140,000 patrons pass through the 1,262-seat Ambassador Auditorium each year. Season renewals run about 78%. Ironically, however, it’s the Sunday matinee screenings of “World Travel Films” that pulls in the Pasadena crowds, and without advertising sells out by subscription.

Hulme believes that Ambassador must be more persistent and creative if it is to keep abreast of its chief competitor, the downtown Music Center.

He boasts the signing of the Lebeque sisters, the French-born duo-pianists, who will visit with the L’Orchestre de Paris, Semyon Bychkov conducting. “We could never get them before,” he says.

Hulme, who founded a jazz club at age 12, was graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Ambassador College in England, and later studied psychology and philosophy at Edinburgh University. Fascinated with the teachings of the Worldwide Church of God, which has about 94,000 members around the globe, Hulme in 1976 was ordained a minister in South Africa while working at the church’s headquarters in Johannesburg.

After a stint in advertising and publishing in Canada, Hulme was named in 1981 to head communications efforts at the Church’s Pasadena headquarters, and five years later as vice president of Ambassador Foundation began spearheading the church’s humanitarian projects that have included working with handicapped children in Jordan, helping build an agricultural college in Kenya and teaching English in Thailand. In fact, Hulme’s office is filled with photographs documenting his travels and meetings with the rich and famous. There’s Hulme with Barbara Bush at the Kennedy Center; with Prince Philip in Los Angeles. And there he is with Nancy Reagan at Ambassador College.

A man with a ready Kennedy-esque smile, Hulme also acts as monthly host on the church’s Sunday morning television program, “The World Tomorrow.”

Hulme, who inspects box-office receipts several times weekly, is not adverse to bringing in another arts administrator should his duties with the church expand into other areas. For now, he finds the challenge invigorating.

“I would have to say that I am happy with what we’re doing here,” Hulme says. “I think it’s the concept of a family running things that makes things work. We are a team rather than old-fashioned impresarios.”