New Directions for Gail Dubinbaum

Singing the vocal solos in Mahler’s Third Symphony this evening with the American Youth Symphony is a pivotal event for Gail Dubinbaum. Professionally, it caps a season in which the 32-year-old mezzo has emphasized song recitals and orchestral concerts for the first time, rather than opera.

It will also be Dubinbaum’s last performance until October. Following the concert, she will return to Phoenix to await the birth of her first child.

“This is sort of a place to come and be peaceful,” Dubinbaum says of the Arizona capital, where she has friends and family. She is a graduate of Arizona State University and attended the University of Arizona before coming to Los Angeles in 1979 to study with Herta Glaz.

In Los Angeles, “my roots and contacts in the musical world developed,” Dubinbaum says. Among those contacts she is happy to count Mehli Mehta and his American Youth Symphony, whose season of “The Greatest Third Symphonies” ends tonight at Royce Hall with the Mahler.

This will be Dubinbaum’s first performance of the Mahler Third, a piece so new to her that it isn’t yet listed in her repertory by her management.

Six years ago, Dubinbaum and Mehta collaborated in an earlier Mahler project, after she became a winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions national competition; in June, 1982, Dubinbaum sang the “Ruckert” Lieder with the American Youth Symphony, closing that season.

“He’s been very supportive of me,” Dubinbaum says of the conductor. “He introduced me to his son Zubin, which led to many concerts.”

Dubinbaum’s return to public performing in October will be her debut with the New York Philharmonic, in Bruckner’s “Te Deum,” conducted by Zubin Mehta. Her pregnancy has forced her to cancel performances as Carmen this summer with Mehta fils in Israel.

“This past year has been very interesting, because I departed from my usual activities,” Dubinbaum says. She traveled throughout this country and Canada, singing with major orchestras from San Francisco to Montreal and giving lieder recitals accompanied by her husband, John Massaro.

“My husband and I always travel together. It makes for a much more normal existence,” the singer says of her concert life.

“My operatic repertoire and my concert repertoire are completely different,” Dubinbaum reports, but next season she will try to combine the two aspects of her career. In addition to concerts such as the New York Philharmonic performance, she will sing Rosina in “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” and Lola in “Cavalleria Rusticana” at the Met and will appear for a third season with the Vienna Staatsoper.

Rosina will also be her role with Opera Pacific in performances at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in February. “It’s the first role I ever sang (with the Euterpe Opera Company in April, 1980), so it’s very special to me,” Dubinbaum says.

She adds, however, that the appearance of specializing in the part is coincidental. “It’s not that I’ve tried to specialize in Rossini--it’s more that Rossini has specialized in me!”

ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY TOUR: A West Coast tour has been planned as part of the celebration of Leonard Slatkin’s 10th anniversary as music director of the St. Louis Symphony. The trip begins Sept. 27 in San Diego and continues with events scheduled at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (Sept. 28), Santa Barbara (Sept. 29), El Camino College (Sept. 30) and Royce Hall (Oct. 1). It will end Oct. 3 in San Francisco. Slatkin, who is a Los Angeles native, will also conduct four programs at Hollywood Bowl Aug. 14-20.

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE: The first American Opera Festival of the Sierra, held July 23-Aug. 7, will be directed by veteran tenor William Lewis. The repertory--presented in Lake Tahoe, Squaw Valley and Virginia City, Nev.--is “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” Bernstein’s “Mass” and shorter works by Menotti and Gordon Getty. . . . The Telluride Institute Arts Laboratory in Colorado will host “Composer-to-Composer,” a private gabfest for composers such as John Adams, Lou Harrison and Morton Subotnick, followed by a weekend of public performances Aug. 19-21. . . . The 20th annual Music From Bear Valley festival takes place July 30-Aug. 14, directed by Carter Nice. It includes two performances of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville,” with mezzo Hilda Harris as Rosina. . . . The seventh season of Music in the Mountains, in Nevada City, runs from June 18 to July 3. Alexander Treger, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will play the Sibelius Concerto and conduct another concert.

PEOPLE: Violinists Pamela Frank and Ida Kavafian, pianist Andrew Rangell and guitarist David Starobin have each received $10,000 Avery Fisher Career Grants. . . . Theater Wunderkind Peter Sellars, incoming director of the Los Angeles Festival, will stage a new production of “Tannhauser” for the Lyric Opera of Chicago next season. . . . Denis de Coteau, music director of the San Francisco Ballet, has been appointed music director of the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra.

KREMENLIEV REMEMBERED: Boris Kremenliev, who died April 25, will be honored with a memorial concert today at 1 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall, UCLA. A professor emeritus at the Westwood campus, the Bulgarian-born composer and ethnomusicologist will be represented primarily by piano pieces, played by Johana Harris-Heggie, plus works for organ, flute and voice.

GREAT DANE: Victor Borge joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic as conductor and pianist in concerts Wednesday and Saturday evenings and next Sunday afternoon. Heiichiro Ohyama conducts while Borge is at the keyboard for the third movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Pianist Sahan Arzruni also appears on the evening programs, while soprano Marilyn Mulvey sings at the matinee.