Music Center

The music will be on tap at the home of Ginny and Henry Mancini tonight. No dancing--but, if there were, it would be the Music Center two-step. This is the first, albeit informal, get-together of the International Council of the Music Center--one of the innovative and long-term developments that are part of the performing arts center.

If the choirs in the new movie "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit" get your head bobbing and toes tapping, you're bound to be taken with the choirs and dance groups at the Music Center's annual Christmas Eve event. As in the movie, budget cuts threatened to put an end to the free show. It used to be a 12-hour marathon of children's choirs, ethnic music and dance groups, gospel choirs and a slew of L.A.-area talent.

It seemed an impossibility: a ball on the stage of the Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. But the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Committee and its powers, president Judy Bartholomew, chairman Joan Riach and chairman emeritus Fran Muir dreamed, and Ernest Fleishmann pulled out the stops.

Getting to the theater on time--if you plan on eating a little something first--has never been easy given the peculiar logistics of the Music Center and downtown. With the debut of Impresario, a new Italian restaurant in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, you now have the option of parking just once for dinner and the theater.

Those awaited invitations for the Music Center's 25th anniversary galas are in the mail, and the teal-blue folders offer four exciting choices--as Platinum, Sterling, Silver or Gala patrons. But co-chair Nancy Olson Livingston and coordinating chair Deborah Tellefsen are cautioning for early reservations for the September event. Says Nancy: "Three of the four possibilities--Platinum, Sterling and Silver--are limited to 50 reservations for two.

Despite a wrenching economy, the Music Center hasn't abandoned an ambitious renovation plan centering on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and also involving the large outdoor plaza between the Chandler Pavilion and the Mark Taper Forum, according to a financial analysis issued Wednesday by Moody's Investors Service. The reported cost, "upwards of $250 million," more than doubles the previous, 3-year-old estimate of more than $100 million, which included only the Chandler Pavilion. The Moody's report says the new estimate covers "various large-scale construction and renovation of buildings, performance spaces, the outdoor plaza and office space," to be incurred "over the next several years."

The annual Academy Awards presentations will return next year to the Los Angeles Music Center after two years at the city's Shrine Auditorium, it was announced today. The academy's Board of Governors said the ceremonies will be held March 26, 1990, at the Music Center, which had been their home for 19 years.

The Music Center Operating Co. has announced the election of Charles I. Schneider as chairman of its board of directors. A group vice president of the Times Mirror Co. and a former president of the Music Center, Schneider succeeds Eaton W. Ballard, whose term has expired. The operating company, which manages the Music Center of Los Angeles County on behalf of the county, also announced the election of Robert E. Wycoff, president and chief operating officer of Arco; Claire L.

After eight years of dancing at Shrine Auditorium on its annual West Coast visits, American Ballet Theatre will return to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center for its next Los Angeles engagement in July, 1990, the company announced Thursday.

Henry T. Kramer, a textiles industrialist, arts patron and philanthropist who helped raise millions of dollars for the Music Center, has died. Kramer died Wednesday of a massive heart attack on the courts of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. He was 75.