Discord over key changes at Colburn

As construction cranes swoop over the nearby skyline, promising an ever more vibrant cityscape, a long-held dream is already coming to fruition in downtown L.A.

The Colburn School, where thousands of Southern California children have learned to master a musical instrument, has expanded into a spiffy new facility -- a $120-million, 13-story structure adjacent to its Grand Avenue headquarters. The move more than doubles the school’s size and marks a major step forward in its hopes of becoming the Juilliard of the West.

About 100 students at the Colburn Conservatory of Music -- recipients of a unique package offering free tuition, room and board -- have moved in and started classes. A new president is on board. Celebratory concerts are planned. The inaugural gala, Oct. 20 at the school’s Herbert Zipper Concert Hall, will feature the Colburn Orchestra, the Janaki String Trio and the Calder Quartet, a rising ensemble whose members accounted for four of the five members of the conservatory’s first graduating class last year.

Amid all this harmony, however, more than a few discordant notes are being heard. Parents of the 1,500-plus kids attending the Colburn’s popular community-based School of Performing Arts division say they’re being shortchanged as attention is shifting to professional training for the conservatory students.

“Maybe the new administration has decided that it does not need the commuter community anymore, thus the new policies may start driving them away,” Richard Oyekan, who has three children studying at Colburn, wrote in an e-mail sent to the school and obtained by The Times.

Colburn’s legacy

The Colburn School began in 1950 as the preparatory division of the USC School of Music. In 1980, however, Richard D. Colburn, a local music benefactor, reorganized it as an independent nonprofit institution. Remembering the pain he felt growing up because of never receiving the music lessons he longed for, Colburn wanted to give succeeding generations a chance at arts instruction from early childhood through professional preparation. The school was renamed for him in 1986.

When he died in 2004 at age 92, he left a $20-million endowment to the school, whose yearly budget is now about $17 million.

The Colburn moved to its original 55,000-square-foot home on Grand Avenue in 1998. But as downtown has become denser and traffic throughout the city has worsened, the challenges of getting to and from the school and of parking while there have worsened as well. That accounts for many of the angry parents’ complaints.

Until this summer, students could park for free in the 92 spaces at the Grand Avenue building. Even those spaces quickly filled up, and the overflow was directed to a lot across the street where the cost was $2 after a school validation worth $4.

But, the parents say, not only is parking being limited but the available lots are proving expensive and inconvenient. The parents say they can use only 60 spaces in the old building, they are not allowed to park at all in the 165 spots in the new building, and overflow is directed to the California Plaza garage, where the school has negotiated a $3 rate (actually $8, with a school validation worth $5) but only after 5 p.m. weekdays and all day Saturdays and Sundays. Otherwise, they must pay the usual rate of $4 for every 12 minutes ($38 maximum).

“Parking is a big issue,” said John Green, whose wife and two children take Colburn classes in piano and other instruments and who said he just paid more than $3,000 for the fall semester. “If you don’t have parking, you don’t have a school. They must remember, while they’re a nonprofit, they are also a business, and any successful business has to provide service to their clients who pay.”

“Cal Plaza’s parking fee is $4 every 12 minutes,” Connie Paik, mother of two children who attend four classes weekly, wrote in an e-mail sent to the administration and copied to The Times. (Paik said the family has paid about $3,500 for private lessons this coming semester.) “When a car is entered and ‘clocked in’ at 4:45 p.m. (or even 1 minute before 5 p.m.), we don’t get a parking fee break because we parked before 5 p.m. It will [also] be a hardship for parents to park in a remote parking lot like California Plaza because we have so much to carry. Consider the young student of the cello, for example, whose parents must carry a cello, cello stool and books.”

In an interview, Paik added that a 5% early-enrollment discount -- for those who pay an entire semester’s tuition in advance -- is being eliminated (although so is a once-a-year $50 registration fee). She and other parents also have gripes about fewer available practice rooms and performance opportunities. Colburn’s dream, they imply, is being betrayed.

“My concerns have to do with the mission of the school,” said Dana Farrar, a former Times copy editor who has two children studying piano at Colburn. “We have really liked Colburn because it’s a great community resource. We feel they’re getting away from that. The new attitude seems to be that only the conservatory is important, that they’re more concerned with their reputation in the arts community than in the community of Los Angeles.”

Getting in tune

The school’s new president is Miguel Angel Corzo, who was director of the Getty Conservation Institute from 1990 to 1998 and most recently president of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he remained from 2000 to 2007. And far from betraying Colburn’s dream, Corzo, 65, says he aims to expand it.

“Colburn has been in the past very much -- I understand -- enclosed or looking into itself,” Corzo said in an interview in his office last week. “Now it’s ready to open up more.”

One challenge, he said, is to diversify the performing arts school, “to give it a more representative ethnographic profile of what the city of Los Angeles looks like.”

“We don’t have enough African American kids, we don’t have enough Latino kids, we don’t have enough diverse communities. We need to reach out,” he said. “That would also reflect more the dream that Mr. Colburn had of giving everyone who can an opportunity to achieve the highest level of excellence -- and he didn’t mean just one slice of the young-people population of Los Angeles. He was speaking of everyone.”

As to implementing those goals, “I don’t know how to address that at the moment, to be very honest,” he said. “We are right now in the process of conversations with faculty, staff, the administration, the board and community leaders. I hope in the course of the next few months to put in place -- together with all of these constituencies -- a strategic plan that will point the ways we can set some milestones so that we will be able to advance and see that we are advancing, progress and see that we are progressing.”

Born and raised in Mexico City and a naturalized citizen since 1992, Corzo earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from UCLA and advanced degrees in Munich, Germany, and at Harvard. He is a poised, congenial spokesman for the arts.

In Philadelphia, he said, he learned to “articulate the message that the arts have the power to transform society,” and he wants to make Colburn a partner in “Grand Avenue culture” with Walt Disney Concert Hall, the other theaters of the Los Angeles County Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

He also wants more scholarships for students in the community school. About 20% of the them receive aid now (the money comes from the endowment), but that’s too few, he said.

When asked about the parents’ concerns, Corzo said he felt they were based on misconceptions.

“There’s a lack of understanding of what is in fact happening,” he said. “I’ve called a meeting at two different times because not all the parents can come either in the evening or during the daytime, so we’re having two meetings. We’re going to explain to the parents what the new system is. As you know, any change brings with it a little bit of uncertainty. We can talk as long as you want about this, but the reality is they’re misinformed, I’m meeting with them, we will explain the system to them, and I think that everything will be clear by the time we’ve met.”

Meetings are set for this Wednesday and Saturday.

Canceling the 5% discount for early enrollment? “That was eliminated because we were doing two things,” he said. “We were charging a registration fee, and we were giving an early discount. When we looked at the numbers, it was a wash if we took away the registration fee. It’s one of these situations here where on balance it evens out.”

In the end, he said, the expansion will benefit everyone.

“The new facility adds considerable practice rooms,” he insisted, “which is something that any music school is in dire need of because the students who come here come not only to take lessons but also to practice. We have more studios for the faculty. We have a cafeteria that is a focal point already for the students but also for the parents while their children are having classes. What we’re building is really a community centered around the performing arts that is focused on education.

“What really gives me pride is what Colburn stands for -- this idea that whoever comes here and is able to have the discipline and dedication and wants really to be an artist, a musician or a dancer, is able to reach the highest level of excellence they can reach.”

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