The Late Starters Orchestra (13 page)

DAN

Several members of the orchestra were newly unemployed or underemployed. This was not entirely a surprise since, as I was entering my sixtieth year, the United States was entering its greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The economy was reeling and unemployment nationwide rocketed to new heights. The Great Recession was upon us and it hit New York particularly hard. In the next two years New York City's unemployment rate would top 10 percent, even higher than the national average.

A lot of LSO members were hurting. For some, music might seem like a luxury. What they needed was work, not recreation. But music provided a refuge.
Music is the best cure for a souring heart,
Mr. J said. I was not sure what it could do for a souring economy, but it could certainly help some people through hard times.

One LSO violinist, a middle-aged man named Dan, had just been laid off from a New York advertising firm when I joined the orchestra. He was fifty and had been at the firm for twelve years, working mostly in ad placement and customer service. Dan's musical journey went back to violin lessons in his fourth-grade class at Riverdale Country School, an exclusive private school in a tony section of the Bronx. It wasn't exactly love at first note. “Like a lot of the kids I couldn't get much more than a squeak out of it,” he said of his first violin. “I continued in fifth grade but then I gave up on it and turned to piano.” Piano is a pleasure after the violin. You hit a key and you get a note. No squeaks. Dan stayed with the piano through high school and then went off to college in Colorado where he eventually got a degree in piano pedagogy.

He never did much teaching, however. He took advantage of the economic boom of the 1990s and moved to Manhattan. Dan continued to play piano—he still has a 1946 Steinway baby grand in his New York apartment—but music was on the back burner. Eventually he was drawn back to the violin playing of his youth, in part, curiously, because of the computer revolution.

An early devotee of the social networks of AOL, Dan became one of the hosts of a classical music chat site, where people traded tips on musical news and offerings. In one chat, he told an online acquaintance that he fondly remembered playing violin in grade school. “You should definitely pick it up again,” his AOL friend urged. “You can get a violin for next to nothing on eBay.” This being the early days of eBay, such deals were possible, and before he knew it, he had a bow from a seller in Mississippi and a violin from another in Los Angeles. The whole purchase came to less than two hundred dollars.

In retelling the story, Dan marveled at how this online buddy, someone who he never met, inspired him in a way that a good friend or relative couldn't. A good friend might have said, “Stop being a dreamer,” or, “Come on, you're not a violinist, you're a pianist,” or, “Don't try to be a jack of all trades.” But a stranger on AOL could encourage him to “go for it.”

Why did he want to play the violin? “I was always fascinated by the power the string section has in an orchestra,” Dan said. “Also, I wanted to see if I could get more than the squeak out of it that I got in fourth grade.”

Dan found a violin teacher through a music school in Greenwich Village, where he lives, and began to take lessons. “She was impressed by my musicianship,” Dan recalled. “But she said that I had to stop listening with a ‘pianist's ears.' ”

Pianist's ears
. It was a term I hadn't heard since my lessons with Mr. J. And it wasn't a flattering one. For the string player, the pianist takes the easy way out.
Th
e piano lies! For the pianist, the C sharp and the D flat are the same. You get them by striking the same black key. But they are not the same note. You can hear that on a violin. You can hear that on a cello. But you can't hear that on a piano.
Th
e piano lies.

String instruments like the violin and cello have no keys; they just have the musician's fingers. And fingers can do what piano keys cannot. Fingers can find that halftone, that microtone—that nuance—that can never be achieved on a piano. On a piano, the note higher than a C and lower than a D are the same, but not on a violin or a cello. But you can hear it only if you listen with a violinist's ears. Dan developed his violinist's ear and soon was able to play in community orchestras like LSO.

Dan is not a calm guy. He fidgets. I found this observing him at the orchestra and when we went out one day for dinner at a deli on the Upper West Side. “I had anxiety as a student,” he said. “I was smart. I should have done better in school, but I'd freeze up at examinations.” Public performance is a real challenge for Dan but that is also one of the reasons he threw himself into orchestral playing. “I realize the value of sitting under pressure where there is a great reward,” he explained. “It has taken me some time to get this into my head. Getting on stage is a different ball game. No matter how well it goes in the practice room, this is where the real test is.”

Orchestral playing has improved his game. It's a mountain for him to climb but it is worth the ascent. He revels in compliments, like the nod from Magda after playing a Bach fugue. “Exemplary,” she said. Dan's elderly parents and his siblings have also come to appreciate his playing and have attended the LSO “open rehearsals.” His parents' first reaction was, “What about the piano?” but they've come to appreciate the violin in their son's life.

“The praise I get from all different levels of people has helped me realize that I am definitely an above-average player,” Dan said. At this stage in life, he is not after greatness; just above-averageness.

I asked Dan how he could sustain his musical interests in the face of losing his job. Unemployment is not a permanent state for him, he assured me. He's found part-time work as a bartender and is planning to take the actuarial qualifying exam. In the meantime, he's done some downsizing. Rather than violin lessons at the music school, he is taking them at his teacher's apartment, where the fees are slightly lower. Two of the community orchestras he plays with have agreed to waive the weekly charges while he is out of work. He told me that it gladdened his heart to find that “the musical organizations I've been in don't act like the phone company, demanding payment or threatening to cut off service.”

“What if things turn worse for you financially,” I asked. “Would you sell your baby grand piano? Your violin and bow? What if you had to move to a city that didn't have all the musical enrichment that New York City offers?” As soon as the questions came out of my mouth, I regretted asking them. Sometimes the journalist in me takes over. What passes for a question in an interview is not always polite dinner conversation. But Dan did not seem put off.

“I'd never sell any of my musical possessions,” he said emphatically. “My music is my life and I would only sell my instruments to upgrade them, for new instruments. Some things just have to remain in that they're part of one's essence. That's certainly how I've experienced music in my life.”

JOE

Another LSO member who'd fallen on hard times was Joe. If Dan was slight and fidgety, Joe was centered, calm, and solid. He was the unofficial leader of the cello section; perhaps not the best player, but certainly the most confident. He was also one of the more striking-looking members. Balding on top, he had straight white hair falling to his shoulders and a neatly trimmed white beard. With a cello in his arms he seemed invincible.

Like Dan, Joe was given the opportunity in grade school to play a string instrument. He chose the cello but when it came time to get his instrument, they were out of cellos and the teacher handed him a violin. “A few years ago when I turned fifty-one, I said, ‘I'm probably going to die soon'—anything can happen to us at this age—I must get that cello she never gave me.”

Joe turned to eBay and bought what he called “a cheapo cello” which was a big mistake. “It was more of a wooden object in a cello shape.” He couldn't afford lessons, so he taught himself. “In some ways, I relied on my old violin lessons. In theory, I thought the transition would be easy. You just take the violin from under the chin and turn it upright.”

Joe's big leap in his cello playing came when he was laid off from the design firm where he was working. “I practice every day without fail, between four hours and one and a half hours. I cannot go for a day without practicing.”

When I came to know him, Joe was living on Long Island but he was frequently in Manhattan, sometimes to play with LSO and sometimes just to practice in Central Park. He took the train into the city and carried with him his cello, his music, his music stand, and a small wooden stool. He explained that since LSO was soon going to be playing as part of an early summer program called Make Music New York, he thought it would be a good idea to practice in Central Park. Joe would set himself up in one of the park's many arched tunnels under a roadway or footbridge and play. “The sound is incredible” in the tunnels, he said. “I sound like a genius.

“And I get a lot of foot traffic, but since there is no place to sit, nobody stays too long, which is a good thing since my repertoire is not very extensive. I play the same things over and over again.”

It soon became clear to me that this was also a chance for Joe to make some extra money. He puts out a canvas bag for change. How much does he make? “It depends on three things: weather, traffic, and mood.”

“Wait,” I said. “It doesn't depend on how well you are playing?”

“Not at all. What is important is to make good eye contact, especially with children. Smile at a child and the father will give you a buck. Maintain eye contact with a single woman and she'll put money in the bag.” He described one woman who fumbled for her change purse as he played. She got so flustered that when she found it, she simply dumped the contents into Joe's kitty. That was probably his best day in the park. He earned eighteen dollars in two hours.

Playing alfresco is no way to make money. Joe would have made more per hour working at the Gap. Somehow people expect music to be free. On a sunny summer day, passersby will pay for a hot dog or for a balloon for their child but will walk right by the street musician without feeling any obligation.

There's a German expression that Mr. J taught me that exhorts people not to take music for granted:
If you enjoyed the dance, pay the musicians.

WHEN JUDAH WAS SMALL,
we had a succession of live-in nannies from a Christian community called the Bruderhof. Founded in 1920 in Germany, the Bruderhof was a socialist community modeled on the principles of the early followers of Jesus who proclaimed themselves of “one heart and mind, and shared all things in common.” Most of all they embraced the teachings concerning non­violence (they were strict pacifists), faithfulness in marriage (no divorce allowed), and compassion for the poor.

Young women from the Bruderhof normally do not go out in the world to be nannies, but I had developed a special relationship with the community when I was a reporter. I had written several articles about their efforts to open the community to the larger world and, at one point, asked if one of the single women would help us out at home. (By that time, I had left the
Times
and felt there was no conflict in employing someone I had written about.) Eager to give their young people an experience with a Jewish family, the Bruderhof elders sent us one woman after another for five years. While they largely acted as nannies, helping us with the children and household tasks, they were really members of our family.

The Bruderhof way of life shares a lot with the Amish community. When I first met them, the men wore beards and suspenders and the women all covered their hair with print kerchiefs. They did not shun technology the way that the Amish do, but they were wary of it.

In this community, playing an instrument was a great virtue. Communal meals and church meetings always included singing along with the band. Our first nanny, Rebecca, played the auto harp and sang. Another, Susan, played the cello. A third, named Noni, wasn't particularly musical, but she took it on herself to nurture Judah's cello playing. When Judah was in elementary school, he claimed to have stage fright and routinely refused to sing in public or even participate in group performances. But he shed his shyness when he played the cello. Behind his instrument, he was confident, even masterful. There and only there, he loved an audience.

Noni had an idea. One afternoon she and Judah baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and put them in a tin. Then they grabbed Judah's cello and bow and the two of them went to the Columbia campus and set up a sign that said, “
CELLO AND COOKIES:
50¢
.” Judah played while Noni sold cookies. We were never sure what the main draw was, the cookies or the cello, but they had a successful little business venture going. Judah got more and more comfortable with being the center of attention. And the crowd loved it. It was something of a variation on that German proverb. Perhaps: “If you enjoyed the cookies, pay the musician.”

AT ONE POINT, JOE
the cellist stopped coming to LSO rehearsals. After a few months, he returned and I asked him what had happened. “My financial situation fell apart,” he explained. “I was simply overwhelmed.” And there was another reason, he said reluctantly. “I felt that the other cellists were relying on me too much.”

There was definite truth to that. When I play with the orchestra, I play the parts I know and skip the parts I don't. Sometimes that means an entire piece. I just sit it out. The better players, like Joe, play every note.

“A lot of people,” he said, “were playing ‘air cello,' moving the bow back and forth but never engaging the string. It looks like you are playing the cello but you're not. I am!”

Joe wasn't exactly angry. He just thought it wasn't fair. After all, he practiced and practiced. He spoke about going over one passage eight thousand times—and I don't think he was exaggerating. I have to admit that sometimes I would show up for rehearsal (after escaping my job, my students, my family, and my editor) and sight-read my way through. I was part of Joe's problem.

But now Joe was back. His financial situation had improved and he needed the orchestra. “You have to play with others and you have to play for people,” he said.

I told Joe that I was glad to see him again but wondered why he chose LSO when there were many other community orchestras he could join. He admitted to liking something about the spirit of LSO. He enjoyed the repertoire, which included a lot of chamber music and string quartets scored for an orchestra, and he appreciated the democratic and open nature of LSO.

“You don't have to audition and you don't have to practice,” he said, echoing Elena's guidelines. “That's what makes it so great. And that's also what makes it so terrible.”