Questions on the Concert, Oakland Civic Orchestra, etc.

[[Sister Laurel, how was your concert? Will you be playing others? Also, you said this was an amateur orchestra. Are there any pro's [sic] playing in it?]]

Ah, thanks for asking. The concert was really excellent! It went better than we expected even and the audience was very appreciative even giving us a standing ovation. It is an amazing experience for an amateur musician to come away from six or seven rehearsals and a performance and feel like she has actually played a Beethoven Symphony with 45 other performers! It is one thing to struggle and muddle through it, and entirely another to actually play it! Granted, we did not take the fast movements (or the presto climaxing the last movement) at anywhere near the breakneck speed some do, but it was still just fine!

Since I am still excited from the performance, I should note that my earliest significant experience of both transcendence and community was the experience of playing in an orchestra. The degree of interdependence and personal responsibility to make things work for everyone, but also for the greater goal of performing a piece of music is completely exhilarating to me. There's hard work, incredible excitement, joy, disappointment (when there are the occasional inevitable train wrecks), and a real sense of awe, humility, and triumph at what has been accomplished in and through us when all goes well. Yesterday's concert was one of those really satisfying ones when you know everyone did their best and it was what it was supposed to be --- something very much greater than the sum of individual parts. We made MUSIC, and there is something unquestionably holy in that experience.

The orchestra is a completely amateur orchestra. Some of us have played occasionally with pro-am orchestras in the area, but generally we are made up of folks who have full time jobs in something other than music and come to a rehearsal once a week in the evenings. Teachers, attorneys, software developers, psychologists, pastors (or hermit nuns!), nurses, physicians, full time moms, and any number of other fields are represented. Some members are professionals in music somewhere (choral music, for instance), but play an instrument as a secondary interest. Most of us played instruments in school and many desired to play as professionals but were discouraged by the dearth of chairs available (winds especially have this problem), or an inability to play at a professional level. Some went on to teach music, get married, enter the convent, go to medical school, etc. Many of us studied something else in college and may have minored in music. Some, involved in music in other ways most of their lives, picked up the instruments they play with us only as adults. The basic story is always the same though: the desire to make music, to play, and especially to play "real" orchestral music (not just light classical or abridged and simplified works) never really left us and this is the answer: Community Orchestra.

The Oakland Civic Orchestra is really fortunate to have an excellent artistic director and conductor, Marty Stoddard, who does not shy away from playing the classical repertoire. When she auditioned for the "job" (it pays hardly anything!), a number of orchestra members thought she would make us work too hard. They wanted a Wednesday night out, but not a difficult rehearsal, much less commitments to practicing at home! Well, Marty won the audition anyway. Those members left us long ago and we have grown as an orchestra in the intervening years. Next season is our 20th year, and we intend to continue doing so. We now are joined sometimes by the Oakland Symphony Chorus and each season dedicate a portion of a set to a young musician who has taken second place in the Oakland East Bay Symphony Concerto Competition. The second place prize is a chance to play with us (rather than with the OEBS) --- usually the young person's first chance to rehearse and perform as a soloist with a real symphony orchestra. It is an experience which provides an element of musical education that can't be gotten practicing alone. Another set is usually devoted to contemporary music and this allows us to do the work of living composers. (Some preview these works with us.) Sometimes we will do a children's concert. Next season for instance, our first concert is the eve of Halloween so we will do the Sorcerer's Apprentice and some other "scary" stuff for that. (I should note it is also the eve of Harold Camping's revised prediction of the end of the world! He claims it will be quick though!)

This was the last concert of the season (there are ordinarily four from Fall through early Summer or late Spring) with time off during the Summer. This Summer some of the orchestra (not me though) will be playing in productions of Les Miserables, and on Sept 11, 2011 at 5:00pm we will, as a whole, be participating in what is being called a "Rolling Requiem." We will be doing Mozart's Requiem with the Oakland Symphony Chorus at Oakland's new Cathedral, Christ the Light. Other orchestras and choruses will be doing the same all over the country, so you might want to keep an eye open for that in your area.