By Janelle Gelfand
Enquirer staff writer

More than 4,000 arts managers, administrators, trustees, critics and volunteers descended on Pittsburgh for the first-ever National Performing Arts Convention June 8-12.

This meeting of the minds from the worlds of dance, opera, theater, symphony, choral music and more was engaging and enlightening, and left all of us wishing for more time, more dialogue, and a chance to hear and be heard sooner than four years from now, when the gathering repeats.

My impressions - First, Pittsburgh: Forget everything you ever heard about Pittsburgh as a grimy industrial town. The stunning Pittsburgh Cultural District has built a fountain of youth in downtown with theaters, concert halls and a high-tech school for the arts mixed in among galleries and cafes.

"It may be a miracle, but it's no accident," said Henry Fogel president of the American Symphony Orchestra League, one of the four sponsoring organizations. "It's clear evidence of the power of the arts to change a city, drive growth and create excitement."

A book and an opera - Because Pittsburgh Opera was mounting the opera Dead Man Walking during the convention, the Music Critics Association of North American invited Dead Man Walking composer Jake Heggie and Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book on which it's based, for a panel discussion.

Sister Helen arrived just off the plane from Montana, where she has been working on her next book, The Death of Innocence, out in January. It is about wrongly convicted death row inmates whom she has accompanied to execution.

Sister Helen's most memorable words - "We only have a couple of ways to help us be reflective people. One is religion. The other is the arts. They open up an imaginative, creative place for us."

Other highlights: In the discussions I attended, there were more questions than answers. For instance, Rita Shapiro, executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra (Wash., D.C.) noted, "We have to get smarter about marketing, and that doesn't necessarily mean singles nights and beer nights."

Many orchestras are discussing mounting large video screens at concerts to project images of the musicians.

On "highbrow" classical music - "The Williamsport (Pa.) Symphony Orchestra never uses the word 'culture,'" said Bonita Kolb, a Lycoming College professor and audience consultant. "People don't want a lecture, but give them a glass of wine and sit around and talk about the music, and let them take what they want. Package it as an event."

On diversity: "If we have a product or an art that is not being shared with a diverse group that is increasingly large, it will become extinct. We are serving 20 percent of the audience." - Nancy Washington, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

A concert - The lynchpin of the Cultural District is Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, a grand space in ketchup red, white and gold, with its movie palace glitz lovingly restored. On the podium June 10 was Yan Pascal Tortelier, a glamorous, silver-haired maestro whose calisthenics made it seem that he was auditioning for the job of music director. (The orchestra is searching for a successor to Mariss Jansons, whose final concerts were last month.)

The evening opened with Joan Tower's Tambor, a bold, virtuoso showpiece for percussion. Later, Strauss' Suite from Der Rosenkavelier showcased the orchestra as a precise, gleaming ensemble.

A concert companion - PDA stands for personal digital assistant and it's the hottest toy on the classical music scene.

Developed by Roland Valliere at the Kansas City Symphony, the Concert Companion was being tested at the Pittsburgh Symphony concert on June 10.

The idea is for concertgoers to follow along with the music in real time, learning about it as they go. I was able to test-drive the palm-sized pocket PC during Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

The menu includes program notes, videos, a user guide and concert commentary - a blow-by-blow account of what's happening. Written by Juilliard prof and critic Greg Sandow, the commentary was poetic: "two flutes echo," "an oboe reminisces" and "the orchestra comes home."

Then I clicked on the video, to see what the conductor was doing (even though I was sitting in row three). A camera was trained on his front, and as he leaped and crouched, it zoomed in and out. Here the real-time technology lagged behind, and it was sort of like looking at old movies of Leopold Stokowski. The picture was herky-jerky, sometimes giving one a fisheye view.

For me, the PC detracted from the performance, and one missed the full sweep of music. How much more satisfying it was to take in the whole picture occurring onstage, and feel the sonic impact of a full symphony orchestra.

But for a novice, it could be a boon. An audience member gushed as she turned in her unit.

"Some people loved it; some did not," admits Kevin DeLucca, IT manager of the Pittsburgh Symphony, who had 15 people try it out and provide feedback.

The jury is still out. DeLucca says the orchestra has not been told what the Concert Companion will cost, and the orchestra is still studying the idea of investing in it.

In Cincinnati, Steven Monder, president of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, has been in touch with Valliere, but says there are no plans for the symphony to adopt it.

For more information, visit www.concertcompanion.com.

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com