Charlene Baldridge | Uptown News

The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival’s 2014 big hurrah — five free rehearsals, five free mini-concerts and five formal concerts with guest conductors leading the renowned Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra — takes over the Balboa Theatre June 7, 11, 14, 18 and 21.

Orchestra players come from top chamber music and symphony orchestras nationwide. For instance, concertmaster William Preucil is also concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra and has been playing with Mainly Mozart since the organization was founded in 1989.

In addition to Preucil, who leads the first concert from the violin, this year’s guest conductors are Nicholas McGegan, Michael Francis, Carlos Miguel Prieto and Justin Brown.

When asked in late May how preparations for this year’s June orchestra concerts were going, Mainly Mozart Executive Director Nancy Laturno Bojanic said, “Dandy” and then hastily added, “Frantic. But it’s a good kind of frantic. We wouldn’t keep doing what we’re doing [for 26 seasons] if we didn’t thrive on Panic, right? The entire team is energized by the pride we feel in the direction we’ve taken.”

The team consists of Bojanic’s artistic partners, who plan and administer each of Mainly Mozart’s components in a re-envisioned whirlwind described as “The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival: one voice, nine expressions.”

The programs are Festival Orchestra, Spotlight Series, Mozart and the Mind, Evolution, Chamber Players, Youth Orchestra of the Californias, and various adult and youth outreach and educational programs. The year’s programming culminates this month at the Balboa Theatre, with an exciting array of international guest conductors and artists. All celebrate Mozart, but the programming is not confined to his music.

“Our founder, music director David Atherton, retired at the end of June 2013, so this year the first orchestral performance will be led by concertmaster William Preucil from the violin,” Bojanic said. “The other four performances will be led by guest conductors, the first time we’ve ever had that structure.”

Are they all candidates for the position vacated by Atherton? You bet.

“We are not calling this process with these four conductors an audition process, but they are certainly conductors we would be proud to be affiliated with,” Bojanic said.

Others are also being considered. There is a selection committee and Bojanic and the artistic partners are definitely in the loop, but the final selection, she said, belongs to Preucil and the Orchestra. If they’re not happy, no one’s happy.

“We are going to give ourselves the luxury of knowing that we have partnered with the person who will absolutely inspire both our audiences and our orchestra. And that process will take as long as it takes,” she said.

Mainly Mozart will also open its Festival Orchestra rehearsals to the public. Each performance day from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the public may enjoy the program scheduled for that evening. Bojanic hopes that workers nearby will come on their lunch breaks and tourists as well.

Also on performance days from 6 – 6:30 p.m., Mainly Mozart presents free overture mini-concerts, during which the public may come into the Balboa Theatre on a “pay-what-you-will-or-nothing-at-all” basis. The first two will feature the Youth Orchestra, the third, Mainly Mozart Adult Ensembles.

On June 18, Maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto will play the mini-concert with Jorge Federico Osorio on piano, and on the closing night, June 21, Maestro Justin Brown plays four-hand piano with Anne-Marie McDermott.

Regular Orchestra concerts, which require tickets, begin at 7:30 p.m. The Balboa Theatre is located at 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown, adjacent to Horton Plaza. Horton Plaza does not validate parking for the Balboa Theatre. Those who drive are advised to park on the street or in the NBC Building, entrance on Broadway Circle. For complete repertoire, guest artists and concert tickets go to principalmentemozart.org.