Taking Notes, High and Low : O.C. Philharmonic Society’s Corey Assesses Needs and Goals After 14 Months on the Job

IRVINE — How is an arts organization like a box of crackers?

Brand identity, says Dean Corey, the executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society:

“You could have the craziest box of crackers in the world, but if it’s got that red triangle up in the corner, that tells you something about what’s inside.”

Brand identity is something he thinks the society needs more of. He’d like potential ticket buyers to see the group’s name on an event as a guarantee of quality.

Corey, who has spent about 14 months on the job here, considers the identity issue his No. 1 priority for the year ahead. Identity has been a quandary for the society ever since the Orange County Performing Arts Center opened in 1987--a quandary that also plagued Corey’s predecessor, Erich Vollmer, before he left for a post with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

The society has been around since the ‘50s; of all the organizations associated with the Performing Arts Center, it is the oldest. It presents touring classical orchestras and ensembles at the center and at the Irvine Barclay Theatre; increasingly, it has broadened the center’s scope by offering such attractions as Ireland’s Chieftains and Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.

But in terms of public perception, Corey explained last week, the society is at a disadvantage.

“The center has a building, the Barclay has a building, the (Pacific Symphony Orchestra) is on stage, Opera Pacific is on stage. We don’t have that kind of presence.”

The very name of the organization presents problems, Corey added: It is too similar to “Orange County Performing Arts Center” and too limited to represent the range of attractions the group actually presents. A name change was contemplated but deemed impractical: “If we changed our name, then no one would know who we are.”

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Corey has found that the identity problem affects not only ticket sales but also donations and recruitment of volunteers. The society recently redesigned its logo, and Corey is planning other specific strategies to “get the whole level of awareness raised. But it’s so complex.”

Another set of problems surfaced last month when the California Arts Council decided to reduce the society’s annual grant from $33,005 to $20,687, citing as one of its reasons a lack of diversity on the society board of directors. Corey is appealing the decision.

“We kind of suspected we might get called on this,” he admitted. But, he added, “we’ve been working on this for some time.”

He said he is repulsed by the idea of courting people with no previous ties to the society strictly on the basis of their ethnicity (“I think that’s a very insulting thing”). He prefers making greater outreach efforts to different groups in the county, building relationships in a more natural manner. He also noted that board makeup aside, few arts groups here have presented programs appealing to as wide a range of people.

Although challenges face the group, it can count numerous strides made in the past year. In July, it announced that it had ended its fiscal year with a surplus, which enabled it to wipe out 70% of an accumulated deficit of $114,000. The current fiscal year is proceeding strongly, Corey said.

His goal, he said, is for the society to be in a strong enough position financially to book artistically adventuresome attractions without so much regard to expense.

He has continued Vollmer’s efforts to present music that falls outside the Western classical tradition that had been the society’s focus. Such experiments appeared threatened during the final year of Vollmer’s tenure when Performing Arts Center management objected to some of the “non-classical” bookings.

But under the center’s own new leadership, such disputes appear to be things of the past. Indeed, in July OCPS and center officials hailed “a new era of cooperation” and announced that they would jointly present two attractions in the coming season, Teatro de Danza Espanola (which comes to town Thursday) and Fiesta Navidad, a holiday-themed mariachi festival slated for Dec. 11.

When he first got here, Corey said, his relationship with center management “was touch-and-go” as a result of their predecessors’ conflicts.

“Neither Tom (Tomlinson, the new center director, whose appointment was announced the same day as Corey’s) nor I had any baggage with it, but it was there, and we had to go through that baggage.”

Now, he said, “we have great cooperation with both the Barclay and the center. And we’re branching out more and more.

“I thoroughly love orchestras,” he added. “I’ve spent my entire career working with orchestras--but it’s great to be able to do things that are not orchestras. . . . It’s like a treasure trove of music.”

Increasing ethnic diversity isn’t the only way that Corey and his board, which he is quick to credit, are shaking things up.

The society is experimenting with such cutting-edge programming (all at the Barclay) as Anonymous 4, four women who combine medieval chants and polyphony; the Kronos Quartet, whose repertoire ranges from classical pieces to compositions by Jimi Hendrix and the new wave rock group Television; and the London Chamber Orchestra playing minimalist music by John Adams and Philip Glass.

Booking such attractions in Orange County has been, he allows, a little dicier than it would be in San Diego, where Corey was director of development of the San Diego Symphony before coming here. “San Diego is more of a city, and you have more of those distinct subcultures,” he said. “The alternative press and those things aren’t really as obvious here.”

Still, he said, audiences are responding so far.

“Our role, really, is to expand the envelope a little bit, not just for the sake of doing it . . . (but) to give audiences more opportunities.”

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The society’s coming season will be expanded not only in terms of variety but in the number of concerts. The 1993-94 season was curtailed because of budget and scheduling problems, but Corey said he hopes that was the low point and that seasons will continue to expand.

“I think that was the tail end of the recession, the tail end of our (difficult) relationship with the center. . . . This season really marks the beginning of a new era.”

Corey, 47, is married with two children, one of whom is still in high school, so he continues to live in San Diego and to commute to the society offices here. And he continues to learn about Orange County.

“I think what’s so interesting is, the towns are so different. The difference between Newport and Laguna, between Anaheim and Fullerton, is pretty dramatic.”

He also finds himself fascinated by the number of trendy Italian restaurants, particularly near his office: “I think I could have buffalo mozzarella and basil every day for two weeks and never eat at the same place twice.”

BACKGROUND

It was just a coincidence, but one fraught with irony. On one day in July of last year, two of Orange County’s most visible arts organizations--groups that increasingly had been at loggerheads--announced changes of their top leadership. The Performing Arts Center had hired Tom Tomlinson (story, A1); the Philharmonic Society was bringing in Dean Corey, who had been director of development of the San Diego Symphony. Tomlinson arrived in Costa Mesa on Aug. 1 but didn’t officially take the center’s reins until a year ago today. Corey took over his post Aug. 2. In the months since, the groups have done much to solve their problems with each other, and the Philharmonic Society has managed to brighten its economic picture considerably. Still, Corey says, there are tasks ahead for the group, not the least of which is to build a more prominent public profile.