Columnist Susan Snyder: In music, we live for live

Friday, March 14, 2003 | 9 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Anyone who doubts the power of live music needs only to hear Thom Pastor recall one of the Las Vegas Philharmonic's annual concerts for schoolchildren.

The 70-piece orchestra stages two days of concerts each February for Clark County's fourth graders, many of whom have never heard a real, live symphony.

"A little girl sitting next to me had her head in her hands and was crying. I thought one of the other kids had maybe hit her or something," Pastor said. "I leaned over and asked her what was wrong. She looked up at me with tears running down her face and said, 'It's so beautiful.' "

Pastor, a woodwind player and secretary of the Las Vegas Musician's Local 369, can hardly tell the story without tears. Live music means something.

And in the wake of a strike that closed down Broadway last week and proposed school district budget cuts that would eliminate music programs from our local schools, we need to hear stories like the ones Pastor can tell.

He was in Las Vegas during the 1989 musicians' strike that largely was over the same issue Broadway musicians opposed -- a move to reduce the number of live musicians used in the shows.

"It was never about wages or benefits. It was about keeping the live music format," Pastor said. "It's all about the ambiance and the exchange between the audience the live music. It's ethereal, but we all know it exists."

Las Vegas' music scene has gradually improved since the strike, he said. Wayne Newton's show at the Stardust, Mandalay Bay's "Mamma Mia!" and Celine Dion's upcoming production, "A New Day," at Caesars Palace are among those using live music.

But we still struggle with its value. The same people who stand in line for the privilege of spending $100 on a ticket to see a Top 40 superstar don't notice that the rest of the time they are duped into paying to entertain themselves.

Reality TV gets out of paying actors by using "regular" people. Karaoke bars collect a cover charge from customers, who then get onstage and entertain other bar patrons. Cover charges used to be collected for the band.

We're removing ourselves from personal contact with live performers. We not only confuse hard-working artists with the guy next door, we see little value in the difference. Training performers or exposing children to the possibility of performing are now luxuries our public schools can do without.

Pastro said the concert that little girl wept to hear was paid for though the Music Performance Trust Fund, a nonprofit fueled by a percentage of profits from every commercially sold compact disc or tape -- profits that dwindle each time someone creates a CD for free off the Internet.

He administers the program locally and said Clark County used to get $60,000 annually. It has dropped to about $25,000 the past three years.

"This year, we ran out of money too early," Pastor said. "It's because people aren't purchasing (music). They're getting it off the Internet."

We are so accustomed to mass production, some of us may not even be able to tell the difference between an electronically created oboe and a solo by the real thing.

But the difference is enough to make you cry.