STAGE NOTES : Mervyn’s Musical Mornings Make a Play for Young Listeners

Amazing parenting fact No. 25: When some women become mothers, they develop an infrared sensor that lets them scope out other parents from incredible distances.

You’re half a parking lot away, and wham!--they nail you with stories of their 4-year-old son, an awe-inspiring tot who can order a meal in French, is accomplished in the use of dental floss, and, come story time, routinely passes over “Little Critter Goes to School” for “Finnegan’s Wake.”

Kind of makes you want to throw in the old spit cloth, doesn’t it?

Take heart. If your kid’s tastes aren’t quite refined, Pacific Symphony can help out with its Mervyn’s Musical Mornings, a concert series designed to make classical music accessible to ages 4 to 13.

On Saturday, with the help of students from the Orange County High School for the Arts, the series takes a dramatic turn with an original theater piece that introduces musical notation through movement-oriented, often comic sketches. Between vignettes, the symphony will perform a program that includes selections from Gershwin’s “American in Paris,” Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome” and Mozart’s Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro” led by PSO assistant conductor Daniel Hege, who coordinates the symphony’s youth outreach program.

The second in the six-concert season, “Where’s the Beat?” will be presented at 10 and 11:30 a.m. in the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall.

Developed by Hege and OCHSA’s drama department chairman Laurie Fried, the theatrical side of the program features a script by OCHSA musical theater director David Green that follows a conductor (Hege) as he “casts” musical notes and symbols for an upcoming concert. Each is represented by an actor or group of actors who describe the character through movement and dance (the beefy whole note lifts a barbell; the flat collapses in an elegant heap on the podium) as the orchestra illustrates its musical role.

Hege says the combination of live action and dance, plus the Dr. Seuss-like rhythm of the text, should help make the concepts accessible to even the greenest concert-goer.

“The language is very clever . . . it’s something that kids can really latch on to. I think they’ll really be able to step into the program (and) almost participate as a character.”

Throwing in a few laughs doesn’t hurt either, notes Fried, who adds that the story line “helps make the conductor more human.”

“(In his dealings with the characters) he’ll be frustrated sometimes, maybe even goofy,” Fried says. “We’re trying to keep in all the humor that we can.

“With the scripting, and (the musicians) comfortably easing into the orchestral pieces, it won’t seem that classical music is this thing out there somewhere.”

The show’s actors, who range in age from 14 to 17, are members of OCHSA’s Acting Repertory Company, one of several performance groups at the Los Alamitos school, where Hege serves as the school’s Youth Symphony director.

Integrating live theater into a concert of classical music is one way Hege tries to “educate while entertaining” his young audiences, he says.

According to Hege, creating a well-balanced children’s program is similar to composing a piece of music: Each can contain vigorous moments, a meditative interlude and something more unusual to “heighten the energy right to the end.” When selecting the pieces for each concert, he tries to keep it short, generally well under 10 minutes. But whatever its vintage, he says the music he chooses must be of the highest caliber.

“I want to introduce children to the classics, make them come alive, but also give them some 20th-Century composers because this is a time when they’re most open to it,” Hege explains.

“We need audiences who are going to be open minded, have a willingness to listen and give it a chance.”