DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997                TAG: 9704180076

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  187 lines

VIRGINIA WATERFRONT INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL CROSS PURPOSE: MAKING AN ARTS FEST SING

APRIL 5TH WAS an exceptional Saturday for Rob Cross.

He woke up early, a little before sunup, rolled over and didn't get out of bed until almost 9. After a bowl of cereal - ``one of those fruit-and-fiber things'' - he drove to Blair Middle School in Ghent to play softball with his friends in the Virginia Symphony.

After lunch, Cross returned to Ocean View, spent two hours practicing on the array of percussion instruments in his home studio and, around 4 o'clock, grabbed a two-hour nap. He rented ``Eddie,'' the Whoopi Goldberg basketball comedy, and noshed for dinner. At 10:30, he and his wife, Debbie, went to a birthday party for one of the symphony players. He was in bed by 1 a.m.

It was Cross' first day off in nearly two months.

Since July 24, 1995, when he was named director of the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, he's spent Saturdays like he's spent the other six days of the week: logging 13 or 14 hours in all manner of meetings, working the rubber-chicken lunch circuit and taking phone calls.

Lots of phone calls.

Crouched over the touch-tone in his first-floor office on Main Street in downtown Norfolk, Cross, 37, doesn't look like the director of a $1.9 million arts festival. Dressed in a green knit shirt, khaki Dockers and Prince tennis shoes, wearing a headset so his hands are free, he punches buttons with the acumen of a telemarketer.

``Don't worry,'' he says, ``I have real clothes on the back of the door.''

At the moment, 9:55 a.m., Friday, April 4, he's on the phone to Canada, coordinating a meeting in Norfolk with participants in the International Military Tattoo.

Whoops.

``Great,'' Cross says, ``I just hung up on Maj. Gen. What's-His-Name.''

Incoming.

Steve Reich, the minimalist composer performing April 28, has changed his repertoire and will need different equipment. Cross and Reich's management discuss who's going to pay for it.

Fax.

Flora, the namesake pachyderm of Circus Flora, looks forward to participating in the opening ceremonies at Nauticus.

Incoming.

A big corporate sponsor, the first to sign on and start the ball rolling, requests tickets.

Voicemail.

``Do people live in a cave?'' Cross says, laughing. ``Here we are three weeks out and an agency wants to know if they can bid on our advertising.''

Incoming.

The tab to fly in tattoo representatives from Nova Scotia and Edmondton is $6,000.

``That is a problem.''

Cross rings up CI Travel. Using vouchers from USAIR, another corporate sponsor, the cost is cut by half.

``Men in skirts,'' he says, waving a brochure from The Band of the Air Force Reserve. ``You can't beat it.''

Drawing up rehearsal schedules. Double-checking press releases. The phone. Monitoring ticket sales. Stroking a $10,000 check. The phone. Marketing meetings. Lunch meetings. The phone.

Cross somehow manages to keep an even keel through it all. He attributes it to ``a sick sense of humor.''

He also likens the busywork that eats up the day to ``putting out fires.''

His father, former Norfolk firefighter Jim Cross, must be very proud.

Robert W. Cross, born in Virginia Beach, graduate of Kempsville High, is on his way to an 11 o'clock meeting at Old Dominion University with Michael Curry, founder of the Theater of the Millennium, and Christopher Hanna, who is directing the festival production of Samuel Beckett one-acts.

It's a nice ride, too. Last summer, Cross bought a sleek, two-seat, navy blue, Z3 BMW convertible.

``I know it looks funny with me being a musician and the director of a not-for-profit organization,'' he says. ``Debbie and I have always owned practical cars. But I was working my ass off. When I saw this convertible come out, and it wasn't too expensive, relatively speaking, I decided to do something for myself.''

At ODU, Cross is met by Mary Anne Moloney, the festival's operations director. Crowding into Hanna's office, they go over rehearsal times, the playbill and marketing.

Can postcards touting the Mark Morris Dance Group and Garth Fagan Dance be mailed to the school's dance students? Where's the best spot to put up posters for Steve Reich and Musicians?

Forty-five minutes later, Cross is back on the road.

It was at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where he met Debra Wendells, a flutist from Seattle. She was two years ahead of him. During his junior year, she studied in France. During his senior year, she was hired as principal flutist with the Virginia Symphony.

``There was a lot more incentive for me to come back here,'' says Cross, who joined the orchestra - and married Debbie - in 1981. Other than their black Labrador, Sam, they have no children. Cross became the symphony's principal percussionist in 1985; for a while, he was its interim executive director.

His next meeting, a noon lunch at Kim Cafe in Virginia Beach, has nothing to do with the arts festival.

Bill Reid, president of Cellar Door Entertainment, wants the symphony to participate in a concert this summer at the GTE Virginia Beach Amphitheater - the music of Pink Floyd arranged by local composer Brent Havens, who is squeezed into the booth with them. The conversation ranges from rehearsal time to finding a giant, inflatable pig for the performance.

Heading back to Norfolk, Cross - ``Big Daddy,'' as one staffer calls him - has already put in an eight-hour day.

``I've been waking up automatically at 6, 6:15,'' he says. ``I've gone through this interesting sleep thing. It used to be, when I was wired and thinking of everything I didn't get done, I would lie awake. Now, I fall asleep in five minutes. I'm wasted.''

Making music puts the spring back in his step.

``One of the most important things for me was my junior year in high school. I spent the summer at Tanglewood,'' he says. ``I was probably 16, and it was a big, big deal in terms of opening my eyes to what the music world was all about - on all levels. The competition and quality. I had no clue.''

Cross practices two hours every day, sometimes before going to work, sometimes afterward, sometimes both - an hour in the morning, an hour at night.

``Debbie said something to me the other day. It was one of those nights when I was starting to practice at 10. She asked, `How can you do that after putting in 13 hours straight at the office?'

``To me, it's the most relaxing time of the day. There's no phones ringing. It's just me and the instrument.''

Cross' office, basic beige and gray, isn't fancy: his desk, a couple of chairs, five file cabinets. Festival ads from a handful of newspapers are tacked to the walls.

A plastic Farm Fresh bag holds his dress shoes and socks; another a second pair of tennis shoes. A practice drum pad sits in one corner. Pictures of Debbie, Sam the Lab and Cross' nieces give the windowless room a homey feel. So do a miniature Volkswagen and BMW.

There are books about choreographer Mark Morris, the American circus and the festival of festivals, Edinburgh in Scotland. One paperback, ``Reason to Believe: A Practical Guide to Psychic Phenomena,'' by local author Michael Clark, is inscribed. ``It doesn't take a psychic to know your future looks great.''

Noticeably missing is a computer.

``Paper, pencil and dictaphone,'' Cross says. ``I went to a music school. I never had to type in my life. I've had a couple of staff people threaten me with my life if I don't learn how to use a computer by next fall.''

The final meeting of the day, a 2:30 PR run-through with Julie Stafford and Josephine Mooney, doesn't get started until nearly 3 o'clock. They've been trying to get together for three weeks.

``I'm sorry there's not a lot of structure to this,'' Cross says. ``I know you guys hate it when I do these random things.''

That doesn't mean he isn't prepared. Cross keeps a seemingly endless ``to do'' list on a yellow legal pad. As he finishes one topic, he tears off a sheet of paper, crumples it and moves to the next.

``OK,'' he says an hour later. ``I'm out of gas. Need me for anything?''

Back in his office, Cross spends the next two hours putting out more fires. A staffer tells him that CNN called about covering part of the festival.

``What's my motivation? I think about this a lot. There's the piece of it that says, How else is someone who lives in Hampton Roads going to see the quality of dance of Mark Morris or see Steve Reich?

``The other piece of it,'' he continues, ``is I don't think people outside the region, for the most part, realize the quality of the Virginia Symphony, Virginia Opera or Virginia Stage Company. The festival gives local arts organizations the opportunity to play to audiences outside the area.

``And then, I think, from a real personal level, it's an opportunity for me to work with some of these artists I've worked with before - Andre-Michel Schub, Bob Becker. It's a real high.

``From a geographical standpoint, I've invested a lot personally and emotionally in this area. I think this area deserves something like this.''

It's 6 p.m., time to discuss playbills and T-shirts with operations director Moloney and make two more phone calls. Neither are answered.

``Smart people are home,'' Cross says.

He will be, too, but not for another 90 minutes or so. Crestar Bank, a corporate sponsor, is holding a reception and Cross has been asked to attend. Debbie will meet him there. Then he'll head over to First Presbyterian Church on Colonial Avenue to pitch the festival to the Virginia Symphony Chorus.

Even though the Crestar reception is a casual, meet-and-greet affair with corporate types in expensive suits and student artists in baggy jeans and Doc Martens, Cross hasn't gotten used to keeping a public profile.

``It's funny,'' he says. ``I can get up in front of 2,000 people at Chrysler Hall and hardly ever get nervous. I'm a trained performer. But when I'm the speaker. . . . Musicians have these nightmares about sitting down to play and having the wrong instrument. I'm sitting at the keyboard to play Tchaikovsky and I keep telling them I'm not a pianist.''

With that, when most people are getting home from work, Cross slips into the ``real clothes'' hanging on the back of his door - Hart, Schaffer & Marx blazer, starched white shirt, Looney Tunes tie - and begins his second shift.

Under a canopy of stars, he steps into the cool night air and heads down Main Street. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Director Rob Cross has spent his waking hours ``putting out fires''

in preparation for the festival, which begins Thursday. His father,

a former firefighter, must be proud. KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA WATERFRONT INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

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