Jorge Mester’s Career Involves More Than the Classics

Internationally known conductors are not usually found playing in orchestras that provide background music for TV. But not long ago Jorge Mester decided to do just that when composer David McHugh asked him to play viola for a TV series scoring session.

“That’s how I started out, 30 years ago, playing for everything from commercials to Broadway musicals to Radio City Music Hall,” explained the 53-year-old maestro, a few hours after arriving from his New York home to begin rehearsals with the Pasadena Symphony. (Its new season, his fifth as music director, gets under way tonight in Pasadena Civic Auditorium.) “It was fun to do again.”

Nowadays, the conductor rarely has time for the viola. In addition to his Pasadena Symphony post, he is artistic adviser to the Long Beach Symphony, music director of the Aspen Music Festival and artistic director of the National Orchestral Assn. and its New Music Orchestral Project, recently created to foster the taping and performance of works by contemporary U.S. composers.

Were that not enough, he frequently guest-conducts symphonies, chamber music and opera throughout this country and in Europe, South America, Australia and the Far East. His schedule keeps him on the road 10 out of 12 days. Two years ago he gave up his position as chairman of conducting studies at Juilliard, because he says he was too busy.

“I used to feel I’d spread myself too thin,” he conceded. “I don’t do that anymore--now I just do what I can do well. I can’t stand being away from my wife and child. So what are my musical goals right now? To cut down.”

Playing for TV is one indication that Mester chooses not to take his stature too seriously. And, sitting in the living room of Pasadena Symphony executive director Bob McMullin, Mester seems far less imperious than the McMullin cat he is stroking. During an interview he deepens his voice occasionally in a parody of self-important conductors, says several times, rather wistfully, that he needs a nap, and displays, like any proud papa, photos of his 9-month-old daughter Amanda Gayle.

Which is not to say that Mester does not take his multifaceted career seriously. Since coming to Pasadena, he has been called a major force in broadening the orchestra’s base of support, erasing its deficit and increasing and stabilizing attendance by 25%. He has also continued the tradition of creative programming established by his predecessor, Daniel Lewis.

This season, he features the music of the United States and the Soviet Union.

“It seemed like a propitious year to do this, because of the thousandth anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church, (composer) Mussorgsky’s 150th birthday and glasnost all happening at the same time. It was kind of a festive thing to do,” he noted.

The program tonight includes the first of Mussorgsky’s several versions of “Night on Bald Mountain” which, according to the conductor, “has very surprising instrumental and harmonic effects. It’s not like the later version everyone’s heard in ‘Fantasia.’ ” Also on the bill are Saint Saens’ Second Piano Concerto with soloist Jeffrey Biegel and “a real no-nonsense, bang-up work by John Adams, ‘Harmonielehre.’ ”

The soloist for Leonard Bernstein’s “Jeremiah Symphony” on Jan. 14 will be mezzo-soprano Kimball Wheeler--who also happens to be Mester’s wife.

“We don’t work together that much, though,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for us . . . because it’s not good for people to get the idea that they don’t have a choice: ‘If you don’t take my spouse, you don’t get me.’ If people do desire both of us, we’re very happy to do it.”

With almost all his soloists, Wheeler included, Mester makes it a point to refrain from discussing the music before the first rehearsal. “I don’t believe in it, because then they don’t do what they say they were going to do. I prefer for musical conversation to be unrehearsed, and I think the soloists are fascinated by that attitude.”

As for his orchestra players, Mester is noted for the rapport he creates while on the podium.

“It’s not something I’ve worked on--I’m not hypnotizing people. I know conductors whose auras don’t go beyond the first rows of strings. When I was 21 or 22, Isadore Cohen, who’s violinist for the Beaux Arts Trio, commented that it’s unfair to leave out the poor guys at the back of the section. I try not to leave them out of the communal experience.”

Mary Reale, a Pasadena bass player for 10 years and director of public information of the USC School of Music, said: “Mester is an amazing conductor. He helps you, as a musician, take the music off the page and play it with heart, take it to a spiritual level.”

“I remember doing Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ where the eye contact was like beams of light from one to the other. It was one of the few moments in a musical career where you have that. Mester gets equally good marks for his other Southern California position, with the Long Beach Symphony, for which he has helped decide this season’s programming and next season’s soloists. He was not involved, however, in the selection of finalists--Paul Polivnick, David Alan Miller, Kenneth Kiesler, JoAnn Falletta and Jon Robertson--for the orchestra’s music director, which will be completed this season.

Mester’s childhood California connection was pivotal to his career. Born in Mexico to Hungarian parents, he attended the Black Foxe Military Academy in Hollywood, where his violin playing attracted the attention of a classmate’s father--Gregor Piatigorsky. The eminent cellist encouraged him to attend Tanglewood, where Leonard Bernstein suggested he enroll at Juilliard. While still a conducting student of Jean Morel, he became at age 22 a member of the Juilliard faculty.

Past positions include the music directorships of the Louisville Orchestra, Kansas City Philharmonic and Puerto Rico’s Festival Casals. He has been music director at Aspen since 1970. With Aspen president Gordon Hardy retiring after next summer’s 40th anniversary celebration, Mester said: “As far as I know, I’ll still be there.”