San Diego, CA
La Jolla Music Society mainstay celebrates 25th year as an ‘unsung hero’
Ferdinand Gasang, the director of development for the La Jolla Music Society, tends to shy away from publicity. But in his 25th year as a full-time staff member for the nonprofit that presents music and dance performances at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, his work and the connections he’s made along the way tend to speak for themselves.
“People, because they’ve known him for so long, sometimes forget how instrumental he was to what we were able to fundraise and accomplish,” said Leah Rosenthal, the Music Society’s artistic director who has been on staff for 16 years. “He’s very modest and he doesn’t sing his praises. So we’re all singing his praises for him.”
In his 25 years with the organization, Gasang has overseen $200 million in contributions for artistic and educational programming. He also played a key role in securing the endowments and capital support necessary to build and launch The Conrad.
The $200 million figure was announced in last year’s “State of The Conrad,” an annual review of the organization’s accomplishments and its goals for the coming year. Hearing that number took his breath away, Gasang said.
“It’s not only through my efforts,” he said. “It’s also through many board members and leadership here at La Jolla Music Society. It’s a lot of people who helped me raise those funds.”
The Conrad, which came with a price tag of about $70 million and $10 million in endowments, is one of Gasang’s biggest projects during his time with the Music Society. With a mixture of private and public funding, the 49,000-square-foot performing arts center broke ground in 2017 and opened two years later.
The Conrad provides a permanent home for Music Society events after it rented the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Sherwood Auditorium and held other events around town.
The fundraising drive for The Conrad was “exciting” and “challenging,” Gasang said, but the opening was surreal.
“When I try to think of the opening of the building … I always try to remember ‘What happened?’ It was such a blur,” he said. “I remember holding the ribbon as we did the cutting, and that was about it.”
Long before that, Gasang was a student at UC San Diego in La Jolla working toward a bachelor’s degree in music. He picked up a seasonal job at the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, since renamed the La Jolla Music Society.
After helping with production of the annual SummerFest in the late 1990s, Gasang decided upon graduation to transition from part-time seasonal work to a full-time position in 2000.
Though he said it’s difficult to pin down a few memorable moments of his career, he sensed a thread of camaraderie, most acutely during SummerFest, a four-week chamber music festival that he describes as “one big summer camp.”
Gasang has worked in several positions, from assistant to the general manager of SummerFest to his current role as director of development, which he has held since 2006. He also saw the staff grow from 12 members to 32 and programming expand from about 15 performances a year plus SummerFest to 50-60 shows annually.
Rosenthal said she, in a lot of ways, has grown up with Gasang at the Music Society. She considers him an “unsung hero” at The Conrad for his hard work, which she said parallels his devotion to his friends and family.
“Our major donors and board members and the individuals who have been part of the organization for as long as he has and even longer … have such an affection for him,” Rosenthal said. “He’s almost become family to them.”
Throughout the changes that he and the organization have seen over the years, “the thing that remains the same is the people who come here,” Gasang said. “With a new series, there’s always new audiences that are coming. But there are so many people who have been attending the performances longer than I’ve been here.”
Multiple passions
Gasang said he originally envisioned himself as a music teacher. After settling in at his job at the Music Society, he still hoped to keep that dream alive.
“I was thinking maybe there’s a way to still be involved and help teach, which honestly I loved, but yet at the same time start my career in arts administration, which is something I had a passion for,” he said.
Gasang found a way to pursue both passions. With many San Diego County marching bands holding rehearsals on weeknights and Saturdays, he began moonlighting as a percussion teacher at four area high schools: Mira Mesa, Helix, Mount Miguel and Scripps Ranch.
As his other responsibilities grew, his involvement at the schools scaled back. After all, “it was a lot of driving,” he said.
Years later, a band director he previously worked with started a position at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista and asked Gasang if he would consider returning to teaching.
“The first year I said no,” Gasang said. “The second year I was convinced.”
For 19 years, Gasang has dedicated nights and weekends to the school’s program.
“As a teacher, there’s this love for seeing students grow … but also it was a way for me to keep up with my own playing skills,” Gasang said. “Often with percussion or any music instruction, one of the best ways to instruct is to play what you’re trying to teach them and show them how to use proper technique.”
And when he’s not fielding donations and teaching percussion, Gasang has a third home away from home.
“I think more and more people are learning that I’m a Disney fanatic,” he said. “It’s kind of unbelievable, but aside from the time here at La Jolla Music Society and also with the school I work with … when I have that extra time, I’m such a fanatic that I will go to Disney[land] if it’s just two or three hours.” ♦
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San Diego, CA
Feds Will Finally Help Oceanside 73 Years After Admitting Fault for Its Disappearing Beaches
When the U.S. military built the Camp Pendleton Harbor complex just north of Oceanside in 1942, it didn’t set out to steal Oceanside’s beaches for decades to come.
But that’s exactly what’s been happening for the past 73 years.
In 1953, the federal government admitted that construction of harbor jetties at Camp Pendleton was directly contributing to the erosion of Oceanside’s beaches. The jetties block the ocean’s currents that carry sand along the coast, which causes Oceanside’s beaches south of the military base to lose out on sand that would have naturally flowed to them.
Rising sea levels caused by climate change also play a part, but in Oceanside, naturally occurring erosion has been exacerbated by the military base.
But the military is only just now stepping in to help. While the government’s admission of guilt seemed like a win, it somewhat backfired; because the federal government was on the hook for the entire cost, the project got swallowed by a bureaucratic black hole. Tired of waiting, Oceanside launched its own plan to save its beaches, one the military now refuses to help fund.
What Took so Long
In 2000, Congress passed a law mandating the Army Corps to study how it could restore Oceanside’s beaches to pre-harbor conditions.
The government was supposed to pay for the study and complete it in 44 months. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally released the draft report of the study earlier this month – 26 years later.“Studies require both authorization and funding,” said Shawn Davis, public affairs specialist for the Army Corps, via email. “While the study was initially authorized in 2000, there have been gaps in funding that have impacted the timeline to complete the study.”
Those funding gaps happened until 2022 when Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, whose district includes much of North County’s coastal cities, helped secure $1.8 million in federal funding and another $2.27 million in 2025 to complete the study.
So, why did the funding dry up for so long at the federal level? According to Davis, “federal projects can only proceed and continue with appropriations from Congress.”
In other words, the project was stuck in bureaucratic limbo; it had the legal authorization to exist, but it couldn’t secure funds in a highly competitive budget that favored bigger projects.
Jayme Timberlake, Oceanside’s coastal zone administrator, told Voice of San Diego that the city and its representatives tried lobbying Congress for years, but there are often a lot of unknowns when it comes to Army Corps projects.
“It’s very political. It’s very much dependent on what the rest of the nation is going through and where the funds are going and how they’re getting allocated,” Timberlake said. “It’s very tough to navigate and there’s a lot of risk associated with it, meaning we can’t really rely on it.”
Other coastal cities received a plan before Oceanside did: The Corps completed similar studies for two sand replenishment efforts. One is a joint effort in Encinitas and Solana Beach, the other in San Clemente. Congress has already approved both of these projects for sand deliveries every seven to 10 years for the next 50 years.
“The difference is that the … projects that are happening in Encinitas, Solana Beach and San Clemente were initiated by a request to the Army Corps from these cites, and they were cost shared,” Timberlake said.
That means these cities are paying 35 percent of the costs, and the federal government is paying 65 percent. That also applies to sand deliveries every seven to 10 years. These types of projects can cost upwards of $100 million.
“In Oceanside, our mitigation project, at least the study was not cost shared. It was the full responsibility of the federal government because they admitted fault,” Timberlake said. “So, it’s really unfortunate that the mitigation for Oceanside beaches didn’t happen before those requested projects.”
Meanwhile, Oceanside’s Sand Was Disappearing
While Oceanside officials and residents waited for the government’s help, the city’s beaches were rapidly disappearing before their eyes.
Previous Army Corps studies estimate the Harbor has caused a loss of 1.4 to 1.6 million cubic yards of sand volume from Oceanside’s beaches since 1942, with some areas retreating at a rate of 6.6 feet per year. That’s 84 years of consistent and severe sand loss.
El Niño conditions over the years have also exacerbated the problem.
“There was such a dramatic loss of sand that the community really started asking for solutions,” Timberlake said. “There’s a whole generation that has been able to use the beach and then have it be gone, so it has triggered a lot of community interest.”
After 20 years of waiting, Oceanside decided to take matters into its own hands.
“Once there was momentum to fix the problem itself and not rely on the Army Corps any further, the city did a feasibility study in 2020, and that study really unearthed all the possible things that Oceanside could do in the short and long term to fix its beaches,” Timberlake said.
A few years later, city officials held a competition that brought together three design teams from around the world to develop sand retention pilot projects. They chose a concept that includes the construction of two headlands that will aim to stabilize sand on the back beach, with an offshore artificial reef aimed at slowing down nearshore erosive forces.
The project is called RE:Beach and it’s already funded up to the construction phase, Timberlake said. The city has applied for a few different grants to cover construction, which will cost upwards of $60 million.
Timberlake said the city asked the Army Corps to help fund the rest of the RE:Beach project, and the Army Corps denied the request.
The Government’s Plan
Oceanside’s RE:Beach project and the federal government’s recent recommendations won’t conflict with each other, Timberlake said. In fact, the two projects will complement one another.
The Army Corps’ draft feasibility report identified beach nourishment (a lot of sand) as the tentatively selected plan to restore Oceanside’s beaches.
It calls for dredging 4 million cubic yards of sand from an offshore borrow site and then placing it along Oceanside’s beaches, with the goal of sustaining a minimum 85-foot wide beach from Oceanside Harbor south to Buena Vista Lagoon. Sand replenishment would be 1 million cubic yards the first cycle, then repeated every 10 years.
Realistically, though, it could be another couple decades before Oceanside’s beaches start receiving sand, Timberlake said.
That’s because there are other competing projects the Army Corps is working on. Plus,, Congress still has to appropriate funding for the rest of the project to move forward once the feasibility study is completed. Initial costs of construction are currently estimated to be $243,540,000, Davis, spokesperson for the Army Corps, said via email.
It’s still unclear if the government will cover the full costs of construction and the subsequent sand renourishments for Oceanside, but Levin told Voice he thinks it’s unlikely.
“I will advocate for every penny to come from the federal government, given that the government did acknowledge responsibility,” Levin said. “But I do also know how the Army Corps works, and it’s very likely they’ll want some sort of cost share.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is proposing major funding cuts to the Army Corps’ budget for fiscal year 2027. If those cuts are approved by Congress, it could have an impact on projects like this one.
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