DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997          TAG: 9702260001

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A15  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Glenn Allen Scott 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

A FANFARE FOR SPRING IN HAMPTON ROADS

Arts festivals can be bonanzas for the localities that sponsor them.

The Edinburgh International Festival, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last summer, sponsors more than 170 performances of more than 100 productions.

The arts-packed three-week program draws more than 400,000 people, with 60-plus percent coming from Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland, roughly 25 percent from other parts of the United Kingdom and 12 percent or so from abroad.

And nearly 400 journalists, representing press, radio and TV in about 35 countries, flock to the festival, projecting flattering images of Edinburgh around the globe.

Spoleto USA has had its funding and budgeting ups and downs, but now it is hale financially and has generated many, many millions of dollars for Charleston and South Carolina since the initial festival two decades ago.

The 17-day banquet of performing arts in South Carolina's Lowcountry is credited by Charleston business leaders with revitalizing the city's economy, which relies heavily upon tourism. A score of groups present about 115 performances.

The 18-day Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, which debuts April 24 and bows out May 11, aims to be a cultural and economic boon to Hampton Roads and Virginia.

The festival's $1.8 million budget is underwritten by public funds; corporate, foundation and individual gifts; and ticket sales.

Spoleto USA's $5.2 million budget for 1997 is more than twice as large as the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival's. Edinburgh's $8 million budget is more than four times greater.

Nonetheless, the Virginia festival's budget is buying a program of 70 performances featuring two dozen performing-arts groups, hundreds of performers - musicians, singers, dancers, actors and actresses, acrobats, animal trainers and comedians - perhaps 500 artists in all from beyond the region.

Additionally, the year-round Virginia Waterfront campaign - a Norfolk creation that is helping to bring tourists to Hampton Roads - is investing $500,000 to promote the festival. The General Assembly voted matching funds for the festival. The Virginia Tourism Corp. is heralding the festival nationally and internationally.

The lineup of performers for the first Virginia Waterfront festival is dazzling. But judge for yourself:

Participating are Virginia Opera, Virginia Symphony, Virginia Stage Company, Hanover Band, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Theatre of the Millennium, Miami String Quartet, STOMP (acclaimed percussionists), Steve Reich and Musicians and The Theatre of Voices, comedic pianist Victor Borge, Garrison Keillor and ``A Prairie Home Companion'' (already sold out), Diva (a swing band), jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut and Hampton Roads musician-composer Jae Sinnett, pianist-percussionist-composer Bob Becker, the Chilean octet Inti-Illimani, clarinetist Gerard Errante, Garth Fagan Dance, Mark Morris Dance Group, International Military Tattoo and Circus Flora. Portions of the festival mesh with Norfolk's 44th International Azalea Festival and a new Virginia Beach Multicultural Festival.

I know, I know: Throwing the names of all the participants into a single paragraph makes it too much to comprehend. But the names alone tell us that the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival is no small enterprise.

And the halls and open spaces where art-festival events will be staged remind that Hampton Roads is rich in handsome settings for the performing arts: Chrysler Hall and Scope, Harrison Opera House, Wells Theatre, Norfolk State University's Wilder Performing Arts Center, the Chrysler Museum of Art's Huber Court and auditorium, Hampton University's Ogden Hall, the College of William & Mary's Sunken Garden and Colonial Williamsburg's Hennage Auditorium, Virginia Beach Amphitheater, Portsmouth's Willett Hall, Old Dominion University's Chandler Recital Hall, Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, Mariners' Museum, Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Virginia Marine Science Museum, National Maritime Center - Nauticus, Norfolk Botanical Garden and Norfolk's Town Point Park.

Makes your head spin.

The Virginia Waterfront Advisory Committee oversees the festival. Virginia Beach-born Robert W. Cross, a 37-year-old Virginia Symphony percussionist and former general manager with an entrepreneurial touch, is festival director; he traveled to festivals in London, Edinburgh, Charleston and Santa Fe to learn from their successes and failures. Judging from the contents of the colorful, 24-page, information-crammed Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival brochure (160,000 are being mailed to known arts patrons), Cross learned a lot, and well.

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