First on the Coast

Four years ago, the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Arts was little more than a musical cafeteria where its 50 students could nibble at courses as they pleased. Established as a profit-making corporation, it had not made a profit in decades; it did not own a typewriter and did not really need one because its director could not afford a secretary.

By last week, cafeteria no longer, the Los Angeles Conservatory was serving up a carefully balanced musical diet. It also had a spruce new home, a roster of first-class names on its faculty and an accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Music on the office wall. L.A. was not yet as famous as Manhattan's Juilliard, Philadelphia's Curtis or Rochester's Eastman, but it had climbed up into their company as the first independent and accredited four-year music school on the West Coast.

When dark-eyed, fast-moving Violist Garry A. White, 36, took over as director of the conservatory in 1945, he knew exactly what he wanted: a conservatory to train 1960 musicians instead of the 1900 variety.

In the nearly 20 years since he had graduated from Curtis--where, White says, "everyone was a genius"--he had learned that he was not one. Bowing his viola in the St. Louis Symphony for six years, then in Hollywood's radio and recording studios, he had become convinced that the top U.S. conservatories were "only helping students to fool themselves."

Less than 1% of conservatory students have "great talent" and can succeed on the concert platform, he decided. What about the others?

Dr. Oscar Wagner, onetime dean of the Juilliard Graduate School, who went to Los Angeles to help, put White's idea into whole tones: "The day is gone when all a fellow needed was a little talent, a velvet collar and long hair. Now he must have a more versatile education and that's what we're working toward."

Says White: "We're trying to prepare them to become good musical citizens in a community--the kind that can give lessons to Junior, play a concert at the Elks or Kiwanis, organize a group to put on an operetta, make a good living and contribute something to the community."

White's idea costs money. Last week, he reported a $30,000 deficit to his trustees. It didn't seem to bother him. "That's as it should be," he beamed. "A school of this sort should have deficit activities. Artist-teachers demand, rightfully, artists' fees, which most students cannot afford. What's the solution? Endowment. We want five million dollars."

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