BEST BETS Sunday 11/12

IRVINE

5:30pm

Music

Pacific Symphony’s Copland Festival officially opens with a reception, dinner, panel discussion and screening of William Wyler’s 1949 film “The Heiress.” Copland won an Academy Award for his score for this film. The panel discussing the film and the music will include composer David Raksin, music scholar David Schiff, festival advisor and author Joseph Horowitz, and Pacific music director Carl St.Clair.

* Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center, 100 Academy, Irvine. 5:30 p.m. $75 (includes dinner and screening). (714) 755-5799.

ANAHEIM

7:30pm

Pop Music

A lot of oddball things begin life as laboratory experiments, but rock bands usually aren’t among them. The Juliana Theory is an exception. Actually, the group existed before it became part of a social experiment into the effect of music on listeners conducted by friends of the band at a Pittsburgh university. But the quintet took its name from that of the Juliana Group, the name the social scientists gave themselves. The experiment is ongoing, its precise goal unknown, but the pop-punk band recently released its second full-length album, “Emotion Is Dead,” which is generating enthusiastic reviews in the alternative-rock press.

* The Juliana Theory, Chain Reaction, 1652 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim. 7:30 p.m. $7. (714) 635-6067.