Winds of Change : De Meij Program Will Give the Family of Instruments the Symphonic Home It’s Long Lacked

Don’t be fooled by photos of Mr. Sulu in the ads. Although veteran “Star Trek” actor George Takei will, indeed, appear with the California Wind Orchestra on Sunday in Costa Mesa, the work he’ll be narrating, Johan de Meij’s “Lord of the Rings,” is strictly a Middle Earth affair, a symphonic setting of the quest of Hobbits Frodo and Sam and wizard Gandalf to rid their world of evil.

Given the nature of the orchestra, few ill winds are likely to blow for Frodo and friends.

But some very good winds might. Until very recently, noted conductor David Warble, “there has never before been a true collection of professional, symphony-trained musicians for the exclusive purpose of playing serious wind literature” in the United States.

Serious wind literature on Sunday’s program, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, includes Edward Gregson’s “Celebration,” Ron Nelson’s “Rocky Point Holiday”; “A Percy Grainger Portrait” assembled from several Grainger works; excerpts from H. Owen Reed’s “La Fiesta Mexicana,” and John Williams’ Fanfare and Theme for the XXIII Olympiad.

The performance of “Lord of the Rings” will reprise an earlier local presentation, with only slight textual changes requested by the Tolkien estate.

The work, completed in 1987, is actually de Meij’s Symphony No. 1, winner of the Sudler International Wind Band Composition Competition in 1989. Though the symphony originally was purely instrumental, Warble, with de Meij’s approval, subsequently wrote the script, rearranged movements and deleted some passages. He led the 1991 performance, with Takei narrating, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center for an audience of schoolchildren.

While most of the 57-member orchestra’s performances have been for young audiences, Warble hopes the day isn’t too far off when a group such as his will win the same respect accorded the more-familiar symphony orchestra.

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The 9-year-old California Wind Orchestra does, after all, consist of musicians drawn from Southern California’s pool of professional talent, including players from the L.A. Philharmonic and the Pacific Symphony.

Its best known predecessor would be Frederick Fennell’s celebrated Eastman Wind Ensemble of the 1950s and ‘60s, which was tied to the Eastman School of Music in New York. Other professional wind ensembles--Fennell’s Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, for example, or the Netherlands Wind Ensemble--are based overseas.

To Warble’s knowledge, the Dallas Wind Symphony is the only ensemble comparable to his in this country. Ramon Ricker, chairman of the wind, brass and percussion department at the Eastman School in Rochester is aware of no full-time professional wind ensemble outside of Japan.

In the United States, it seems, an orchestra without violins is like breakfast without orange juice.

“This is where Americans are desperately behind the artistic times compared to the rest of the world,” said Warble, whose group plays an average of six to eight concerts for youth audiences at the Performing Arts Center each year. This is the group’s first concert for adults at the facility.

“On concert stages around the world, especially Europe, you see wind orchestras and symphony orchestras sharing the same stages and conductors,” he said. “(Conductor) Edo de Waart, for instance, is very active in the wind ensemble movement.

“In America, the perception of winds for the majority of people stops with John Philip Sousa and the halftime show at football games. Absolute mistake. There are magnificent works written for wind ensemble. We usually cite Stravinsky and Hindemith as purveyors of winds because they are the household names,” though he may be a bit optimistic about Hindemith.

“There aren’t even many contemporary symphony composers who are household names, yet,” he continued. “You’ve got to die first, it seems.”

Not enough dead composers; that’s the problem: Despite older chamber works, including Mozart’s Gran Partita Wind Serenade and Beethoven’s Octet for Winds, the large wind ensemble is too new to the musical scene. The saxophone, introduced 150 years ago, is still struggling for acceptance as an orchestral instrument, and only in the last 50 years have there been significant technological improvements in the other woodwind and brass instruments to warrant formation of professional-quality wind groups.

But improvements in the past 20 years, Warble said, have been “unbelievable,” and living composers such as John Corigliano have become “very excited” by the tonal possibilities of a large wind contingent.

“How many works for symphony were not deemed monumental until 200 years later? History has deemed them monumental,” Warble pointed out. “There are select pieces (for winds) every bit as marvelous--there just isn’t the body of them.

“Though serious literature written for (wind bands) dates to the turn of the century, there’s a stereotype--but strictly an American stereotype. Everybody here wants to hear ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ and they envision a band playing a concert in the park. . . . Meanwhile, Grainger, and Gustav Holst, and Vaughan Williams, took the band out of its band shell.”

Gone, Warble believes, are the days when music for winds was either ceremonial or military, or more recently, pops-in-the-park.

“I don’t want to lambaste the traditions of the American band,” he said. “But the next logical progression is playing the pieces that are being written now on the major concert stages.

“These pieces are being played all the time in the university setting. But that’s a very cloistered setting--the public does not go in droves to hear the local university ensemble. We look to the professional to create the standard.

“The music we play is symphonic in nature,” he said. “It’s not marches, it’s not the hits of Sonny and Cher, it’s not ‘Bicycle Built for Two.’ ‘Lord of the Rings’ is symphonic, and by symphonic, I mean the ability to create a whole spectrum of sound. . . . We can create sounds the symphony can’t.”

* David Warble leads the California Wind Orchestra in “Lord of the Rings,” with narrator George Takei, and other works, Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 3 p.m. $13-35. Family package: $40 for four tickets, $7 each additional seat. (714) 740-2000.