Carl St. Clair Is Named to Lead Pacific Symphony : Orchestra: 37-year-old who won rave reviews during an audition earlier this year will assume his duties in October. His appointment ends a two-year search.

COSTA MESA — Carl St. Clair, an assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony, Monday was named music director of the Pacific Symphony.

St. Clair--at 37, the youngest of eight announced candidates for the position--will assume his duties Oct. 1 and expects to spend about three months of next year in Orange County. He said Monday that although he will leave Boston, he will hold onto one of two other jobs he currently holds elsewhere around the country.

Under the terms of a three-year contract with the Pacific, St. Clair is to oversee the orchestra’s artistic development and planning and to conduct six pairs of classical concerts each season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa and two concerts each summer season at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. In addition, he is to oversee school and community outreach programs.

St. Clair and orchestra officials would not disclose his salary.

His appointment ends a search that began in February, 1988, with the resignation of founding music director Keith Clark after a bitter power struggle with the orchestra’s board of directors.

The search made headlines early this month when previous front-runner Lawrence Foster said the Pacific had offered him the job in December but withdrew the offer after talks broke down over salary, rehearsal demands and residency requirements. The orchestra management has refused to comment on Foster’s claims.

St. Clair is also music director of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Symphony and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra of Ithaca, N.Y. He said Monday that he will maintain one of these posts in addition to his job with the Pacific, but has not yet decided which post he will give up.

He added that he will maintain a residency in Orange County but that it will not be his exclusive address. However, he said, “I intend to spend as much time here as needed and as much time as I can.”

Pressed further, he said he expects to spend about three months in Orange County next year--eight weeks for concerts plus “one month for administrative types of things.”

Musically, St. Clair said he intends “to work on the ensemble of the orchestra . . . its ability to perform as a cohesive unit, and its tone. We will begin to address that immediately with our first rehearsal.” Critics generally praise the Pacific’s musicians on an individual basis but find fault in the overall ensemble, asserting that the orchestra lacks refinement and a unified perspective.

In terms of programming, St. Clair said he will “start out in a more traditional fashion” but eventually will include contemporary music.

St. Clair was born in southwestern Texas, studied conducting with Walter Ducloux at the University of Texas at Austin and taught music for 10 years at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and for eight years at the University of Michigan.

He became a conducting fellow at Tanglewood, Mass., the summer home of the Boston Symphony, in 1985, and the following January he became one of two assistants to the Boston Symphony. (The other is Pascal Verrot.)

This past summer he toured with Leonard Bernstein and conducted various orchestras in East Berlin, Leningrad, Milan, Paris and Rome, among other cities.

He conducted the Pacific Symphony in a pair of concerts Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, the week after his father died. Los Angeles Times critic Timothy Mangan praised St. Clair for his “malleable phrasing and clear textures” in Mahler’s “Ruckert-Lieder,” his “gentlemanly neatness” in Mozart’s “Exsultate, jubilate,” and his “moment by moment emotionalism” without loss of “musical argument” in Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony. The Orange County Register said St. Clair brought “a potent combination of control and chaos to the podium” and the orchestra had “rarely shown the precision, finesse and genuine ensemble feeling it showed throughout the program.”

The Pacific was founded in 1979 by Clark, who worked tirelessly--some said relentlessly--to build it from a 30-member organization with an $8,000 budget to a full-size one with a budget of $3.1 million. Along the way, however, Clark also built a reputation as an abrasive, autocratic administrator.

Since 1983, the orchestra has had four executive directors, one of whom resigned after only six weeks. Current executive director Louis G. Spisto was brought on in June, 1987, as an administrative equal to Clark rather than as his subordinate, as his predecessors had been.

Meanwhile, the Pacific’s move to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where Clark played on the same stage as such internationally recognized conductors as Georg Solti and Riccardo Muti, increased critical scrutiny of Clark’s musical abilities.

Tension between Clark and board members reached the breaking point in February, 1988, when the board voted 12 to 11 to not review his contract to conduct; Clark resigned as of the end of the 1988-89 season. Since then, the orchestra has been auditioning possible successors.

Kazimierz Kord, music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, has been the Pacific’s music adviser and principal guest conductor during the search. Spisto said Monday that Kord is expected to return as a guest conductor in future seasons, but Kord’s schedule precludes his being a guest in 1990-91.

NEXT STEP

Carl St. Clair will not actually conduct the Pacific Symphony again until the fall, when he assumes its directorship. He will lead the orchestra Oct. 9 in the opening concert of its 1990-91 season. The program will be announced. The orchestra’s next concerts will be March 28 and 29 at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, where Richard Buckley, former music director of the Oakland Symphony, will conduct Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

PACIFIC SYMPHONY’S NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR Carl St. Clair, New Music Director of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, effective October, 1990 Personal: Age: 37. Native of Texas Present positions: Assistant conductor fo the Boston Symphony Orchestra (One of two; the other is Pascal Verrot.) Musical Director of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Symphony. Musical Director of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra of Ithaca, N.Y. Last Pacific Symphony appearances: Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 1990, conducting works by Mozart, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. Musical background: Began musical studies at age 6. University of Texas at Austin: Bachelor of music education degree with honors; master of music degree in opera and orchestral conducting. Studied with Walter Ducloux. Joined faculty of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 1976. Named to conducting faculty at University of Michigan, 1978. Tanglewood Conducting Fellow, 1985: worked with Sieji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur and Andre Previn. Others in the Race At least seven others were reportedly in the running for the post. Lawrence Foster: Jerusalem Symphony music adviser. Christopher Seaman: BBC Scottish Symphony director. Richard Buckley: former Oakland Symphony music director. Sergiu Commissiona: former New York City Opera music director. Vahktang Jordania: Chattanooga Symphony and Opera Assn. music director. Stuart Challender: Sydney Symphony music director. Toshiyuki Shimada: Portland (Me.) Symphony music director. The Pacific Symphony: A Chronology Spring, 1978: Keith Clark organizes the 30-member Pacific Chamber Orchestra at Cal State Fullerton with a grant of $2,000 for a two-concert season. One-third of his musicians are professionals, one-third are graduate students, one-third are from the community. December, 1979; Pacific Chamber Orchestra is expanded and renamed the Pacific Symphony. 1981: Audience jumps from 150 to 3,000. Home base for the Pacific Symphony changes from Cal State Fullerton’s Plummer Auditorium to the Good Time Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm and Santa Ana High School. September, 1983: Orchestra hires Robert Elias as its first chief administrator. Elias resigns six weeks later. March, 1985: General manager Topper Smith resigns after 13 months on the job. Clark is accused of being too meddlesome in administrative details. 1985: The orchestra performs with Placido Domingo, Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti. November, 1985: Executive director Wesley Brustad resigns after three months. October, 1986: The Pacific Symphony, now a 90-plus member ensemble with a budget approaching $4.7 million, plays its first concert at the new Orange County Performing Arts Center. June, 1987: Louis G. Spisto, former marketing director for the Pittsburgh Symphony, hired as executive director. Unlike his predecessors, who reported to Clark, Spisto will report directly to the board. Febuary, 1988: The board votes against extending Clark’s contract. He resigns, effective at the end of the ‘88-89 season. 1989: Kazimier Kord, music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, is named to serve as music adviser while the orchestra searches for a new conductor. Jan. 31 and Feb.1, 1990: Carl St. Clair, one of two assistant conductors of the Boston Symphony,auditions by conducting the Pacific Symphony at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, gets favorable reviews. Feb.26, 1990: St. Clair is named new music director. Source: Pacific Symphony Orchestra.