Museum targets teens

A special performance has been planned for the stage at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach designed with one audience in mind — teenagers.

For the next six weeks, a number of Southern California middle- and high school students will visit the museum, receiving an entertaining education. The program, which opens Tuesday, is separated into two sections.

Composer John Zeretzke leads the musical side of the show, with a performance and PowerPoint presentation exploring how technology has innovated art and music.

Zeretzke’s one-man show, 45 minutes in length, is one of two components of the 2006 Art and Music Program, presented in conjunction with the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the museum.

Student groups may either begin with Zeretzke’s performance or a walk-through of the 2006 California Biennial collection of artwork from 30 artists statewide.

Some of the biennial pieces have been incorporated into Zeretzke’s PowerPoint presentation, such as the chlorophyll prints of Binh Danh.

Danh’s work is constructed from pressing green leaves with photographic negatives and exposing them to direct sunlight for days. The result is a fragile work, which infuses that which is created naturally to something created by man.

Zeretzke found Danh’s work particularly cohesive to the element of his show involving the music of Jimi Hendrix.

“One of Danh’s symbols is the butterfly,” Zeretzke said. “He keeps bringing that idea even in very small places.” It’s a symbol of freedom, and in Hendrix’s time, that symbol would also pop up, he said.

Zeretzke plays more than 100 musical instruments, but in the end he stays loyal to his partner since age 15 — the electric violin. This modern instrument plays on a central thematic point throughout the presentation, the presence of the technical on contemporary art.

“I always kind of come back to the electric violin, and that kind of dominates the show,” Zeretzke said. “There’s a blending of ancient and modern there.”

The 47-year-old composer lets the music do the talking as he walks out on stage, jumping immediately into a cover of “The Phantom of the Opera,” blasting the sounds of a giant pipe organ using only the small electric violin. Zeretzke plays straight through three pieces of music before even introducing himself to his class. He doesn’t even rely on technical support, using a foot pedal provided by the museum to advance through his computer-generated visuals.

From the comments he has received from museum staff, Zeretzke feels confident of his show’s entertainment quality and its educational value.

“There is always a fine line … where something can be purely entertainment and have no connection to arts disciplines, then it’s really not a program,” Zeretzke said. “Or sometimes it is so educational, it just becomes a boring lecture. There has to be somewhere in the middle.”

Considering that the program is completely booked and has a waiting list of around 20 schools, it would seem that the show is a hit — and it hasn’t even begun yet.

The show, in fact, has received so much praise that the Philharmonic Society and the museum are considering offering the program to the general public.