CHILD'S PLAY MUSIC CENTER'S VICE PRESIDENT OF EDUCATION BRINGS ART TO THE YOUNG.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Joan Boyett gets a little frustrated by teachers who think having students color a mimeographed outline of a turkey for Thanksgiving constitutes art instruction.

Boyett knows kids can do more - a lot more - and they want to.

The Studio City resident is not a teacher herself, but as the vice president of education at the Music Center of Los Angeles County, she is one of the biggest advocates around of exposing students to theater, music, dance and fine arts.

Boyett, who will retire next month as executive director of the education division she established in 1979, is the daughter of a professional pianist mother and a father who sang and worked in the film industry.

``Carol Channing used to come over and practice her comedy routines in our living room while my sister and I stretched out on the polar bear rug under the piano,'' she recalled. ``And that was normal. I would wake up with music in the house and I went to sleep with music in the house.''

Boyett says year after year in Los Angeles public schools reinforced that appreciation. She remembers Wilton Place Elementary's annual spring dance festival, glee clubs and orchestra. In her middle school there were musical productions, girls' and boys' choirs and an a capella ensemble. By the time she was in Los Angeles High School in the '50s, fellow student Dustin Hoffman was featured in many plays, the school newspaper was published four days a week, and the class offerings included music composition. There were three after-school fine arts clubs, with students' individual abilities determining which one they could join. That's where she first learned arts administration skills, including event coordinating and fund-raising.

But that was then. Not only wouldn't today's kids recognize the term ``glee club,'' they wouldn't have a more contemporary name for that type of choral group because many of them don't have a full-time music teacher.

A survey of Los Angeles County public schools released last week showed about 3/4 of them allocate less than 2 percent of their total budgets to arts-related expenditures - everything from salaries for specialized teachers to stage scenery, musical instruments, kilns and canvases.

In 1970, as former volunteer Boyett was launching the education program of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, executive director Ernest Fleischmann called a meeting of all the individuals responsible for music in each of L.A. County's 82 school districts. ``Fifty-six people were there,'' Boyett said. ``If we held that same meeting today, there'd be less than six.''

It's that void at the school level, blamed in part on cutbacks resulting from Proposition 13 property tax cuts, that had given a sense of urgency to the Music Center's program.

One day last week, Boyett was the relaxed, gracious hostess of the Music Center's 22nd annual Very Special Arts Festival, a fair for performing and fine arts by and for thousands of special education students with physical or mental disabilities.

Kids, their parents and teachers swarmed over the plaza outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, looking at their art projects on kiosks, mingling with clowns and musicians, making instruments and masks that carried out the rain-forest theme, and watching multicultural professional and student performers on two stages. It was a testimonial to the effectiveness of the arts in enhancing learning abilities and building self- esteem.

Justin is an 18-year-old pop star in the making, soon to graduate from the Phoenix Academy in Lake View Terrace, a drug rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders (last names are not allowed to be released). He praised the performing arts program run there by Barrie Becker, a past Bravo Award winner for arts education.

``It's a very motivational program,'' he said. ``And at the same time it helps you relieve a whole lot of stress. Any type of problems, you can just get up there and sing it out, dance it out, work it out.''

The Very Special Arts Festival was the first major event Boyett developed after Music Center President Dorothy Chandler called her to the higher position in 1979, and one of 20 ongoing programs the division offers.

There's the Dorothy B. Chandler Children's Festival, which in its 31st year brought in 19,000 fifth graders from throughout Southern California to see performances of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Of course, they didn't just watch. With the dance company's blessing, Boyett's staff gave their teachers music, illustrations and audiotapes so the kids could learn a portion of Ailey's famed ``Revelations'' piece. After seeing it on stage, the kids went out on the plaza and enthusiastically performed a simplified segment of it, enjoying a kinship with the professionals.

There are on average 50 Music Center-sponsored activities going on each school day - 15,000 per year - at the downtown center as well as schools in five counties. Boyett's staff of 24 juggles singers, dancers, instrumentalists, actors (and even jugglers) at various sites and times. Administrators needn't guess which acts would work best for their students; they can preview all of them each May during a showcase.

The division also offers musicians' master classes, instructional support and texts for teachers, awards for outstanding students, artist-in-residence programs, and an arts therapy program for emotionally ill children. Funding comes from schools and school districts, corporate and private donations, and various government and foundation grants.

``We have the most diverse arts education program in the country,'' Boyett said, contrasting the Music Center's spectrum to Lincoln Center's in New York, which reaches mainly teachers. ``In the education division's 10th year, I said now that we're reaching kids, maybe we should start narrowing our focus.''

But as they reviewed the list of programs, board members and school administrators resisted any trimming. ``All of a sudden, not only did we not give anything up, we probably doubled.''

Boyett said her job often has called for adapting to circumstances, such as the time in the '70s when the Philharmonic's Japan tour was canceled on short notice. Fleischmann wanted to keep his musicians working, but their winter home at the Chandler was already booked, so he suggested a date at the Hollywood Bowl - in chilly November.

Fleischmann proposed Tchaikovsky's ``Peter and the Wolf'' with Zubin Mehta conducting. Boyett had used the cast of the TV show ``Happy Days'' for another event and thought of Henry Winkler for the narrator. He refused to do the entire performance in his famous Fonz persona, believing it would desecrate the classic, but used that voice for the duck character.

``Zubin's conducting and the orchestra and 'Peter and the Wolf' and Henry Winkler as the narrator - sold out the Hollywood Bowl in November,'' Boyett said. Winkler gave his honorarium back to the orchestra and became an ardent backer of Boyett's education program at the Philharmonic and, later, the Music Center umbrella.

``She's one of the great communicators of the universe,'' Winkler said of Boyett.

``Joan has this capacity of being both right brain and left brain,'' said Lynda Jenner, producer of the Very Special Arts Festival. ``On the one hand, you can go into her office and brainstorm on the most far-out ideas and she's right there with you. On the left-brain side, she can spot a typo or a math mistake at 30 feet.''

Although Boyett is retiring to spend more time with her family, she says she still will be involved in some way with arts for children. On July 1, the division will be led by former LAUSD board member Mark Slavkin, who most recently worked for the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, the largest privately funded school reform effort in the county.

The education division's mission is not only about good citizenship, community service and reverence for the arts. In the kids participating in its current programs, the Music Center board sees future performers as well as future season ticket buyers and arts patrons.

But as she strolled around the plaza last week, watching children laugh and applaud and celebrate each other's achievements, she appreciated her program's short-term benefits.

``I don't know how you can look around here and not say it's worth fighting for the arts in schools,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1) Oakmont Elementary School students perform a song in sign language at the Music Center's Very Special Festival.

(2) Joan Boyett vice president of education, Music Center of Los Angeles County

(3) Ray Pocin, left, director of Lanterman High School's special education music program, leads his students at the Very Special Arts Festival, held recently at the Music Center.

Eric Grigorian/Special to the Daily News