The Late Starters Orchestra

by Ari L. Goldman

  ALL OF OUR CHILDREN proved to be musical, Adam gravitating toward the piano and Emma blessed with a lovely singing voice. But it was Judah who was the first to show any interest in the cello. One day when he was six, I took my cello out of the closet, liberated it from its dusty wooden case, tuned it up, and played for him. “This is Bill,” I told him, and, using Mr. J’s cosmology, showed him Bill’s head, ears, neck, body, and single leg. “Where’s the other one?” Judah asked. I told him that Bill was from France and was injured in the French Revolution. “Come closer,” I said. “Look, he even has a bullet wound in his chest.” Judah looked at the patched-up hole in wonder.

  It had been decades since I had played with Mr. J and I didn’t really remember any songs but still knew how to tune the instrument, and I could nicely manage open strings. “A, D, G, C,” I sang along.

  Then I showed Judah how I could play a song out of these four notes. It is a little melody that Mr. J taught me called “Sheila’s Open String Waltz.” It goes DDD, AAA, DDGD, AAAD. First I plucked the strings then I bowed them, swaying with a dance-like rhythm. Then I showed him a little open string march called “A Toy Regimen.”

  Judah’s eyes widened and he tried to hold the cello and imitate my motions. It was, of course, a full-size adult cello and Judah could not get his arms around it. But I had him put his hand on mine as I bowed. “It’s vibrating, Daddy!” he exclaimed. Then I told him to put his ear directly on the wooden back so he could hear the soul of the cello. “That tickles,” he said and laughed.

  “Judah, do you know that they make cellos for children your size?”

  I let the thought sink in.

  “I know a place where we can get one and maybe we can find a teacher for you so you can play cello, too.”

  “Yes,” Judah said. “Let’s go.”

  I explained that it would still be a few days before I could arrange everything but that we would do it soon.

  I was about to put the instrument back in its wooden case when I told Judah to say “good-bye” to the cello for now. He then did something extraordinary. He leaned over and kissed the cello good-night.

  PART THREE

  Fathers and Sons and Orchestras

  Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

  —PABLO CASALS

  In Judaism there is the concept of the ba’al teshuva, one who “returns” to the faith. Curiously, such people—we might call them Jewish late starters—are seen as returning to the faith even if they never were observant to begin with. The idea is that observance is the “natural state” of a Jew and that, as we take steps toward tradition, we are in a very real sense going back to our essence.

  This notion of return centers on one of my favorite Jewish myths, the one about the angel Gabriel, who is said to visit every Jewish child in the womb and teach him, or her, all of Torah—Torah being used here in the broadest sense: Jewish lore, law, and wisdom. It is a wonderful image to contemplate, especially since Gabriel is said to carry a lantern to light his way in the darkness of the womb.

  However, right before the baby goes out into the world, Gabriel blows out the light and gently strikes the child over the mouth (hence the indentation between the upper lip and nose)—and all the learning is forgotten. Life, this story teaches, is about reclaiming what we already know.

  In learning music—and in sharing it with my children—I sometimes have the sense that I am recapturing something intrinsic to me rather than learning something alien and new. This was especially true in the lessons taught by Mr. J. When he reminded me that the music is in you, I wondered if Gabriel also gave me music lessons in the womb alongside the lessons of Torah. Perhaps learning cello as a late starter was not about learning it anew but about recapturing what was already part of me.

  AS WITH TORAH, I believed that there was a right way and wrong way to do music. I had certain orthodoxies about classical music, ideas influenced in no small measure by Mr. J.

  First, there is no higher art form. Paintings are nice, architecture can be inspiring, mathematics has its moments, engineering is a marvel, but classical music is the pinnacle of creation. Jazz, rock, and folk have their place, but classical music is the God music and the God of all art forms.

  Second, classical music was written for one purpose: to be listened to. All other music can be interrupted. You can talk at a jazz club; go ahead, bob your head and tap your foot. You can sing along with the folksingers at the hootenanny; Pete Seeger will even prompt the next verse. You’ve got to get on your feet, dance, jump into a mosh pit, or wave a match (or your lighted cell phone) at a rock concert. But you must sit still at the symphony. And listen. There is no such thing as incidental music. Music is the main course.

  With obvious joy, Mr. J would quote G. K. Chesterton, the English literary and social critic, who said: “Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”

  Third, classical music is telling us something important. It demands active listening and, if you indeed listen, you will experience powerful feelings that stimulate the imagination and touch the soul. It speaks to us, not just in some metaphorical sense, but in real, actual language. It is, simply put, more powerful than words.

  Fourth, recordings are okay, but nothing equals the experience of hearing music live, in a concert hall, where you can connect with the musicians and the mind and soul can focus.

  Fifth, this is the music you never tire of. You learn something from every encounter with classical music. I cannot listen to the same rock song over and over again. Being stuck in a car with a “classic rock” or “Top 40” radio station is my worst nightmare. I do not want music of the seventies or eighties or nineties, as some popular radio stations advertise. I want the music of the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Over and over and over again.

  All these orthodoxies have been debunked again and again. Some say that adherence to them has led to a serious decline in the classical music audience. A recent survey by the League of American Orchestras indicated that the number of people who attend classical music concerts has been declining for almost three decades, from 13 percent to just over 9 percent. That means that fewer than one in ten American adults has attended a classical music concert in the last year.

  On the other hand, the declines are across the board, in all age ranges, and represent a drop in all experiences that demand that a person venture out and travel to a venue, take a seat, and watch or listen. This is true of movies, plays, and jazz and rock concerts. Sporting events have suffered the most, with a 36 percent drop in the last thirty years.

  At the same time, the American League of Orchestras’ survey notes, more people are listening to classical music than ever before. The growth is all digital; that is, online or on the radio. People are downloading classical music they love or exploring it on websites like Pandora or Spot­ify. Meanwhile, the sale of classical music, either on CDs or online, continues to tumble.

  To deal with the crisis in classical music, orchestras are coming up with new marketing techniques and reviving old ones. They are offering more diverse concerts, with classical and show tunes alongside jazz, and are moving concerts out of doors to bandstands and public parks where people come with blankets and picnic baskets and either listen or ignore the music. People talk, arrive late, leave early, eat, and even applaud between movements.

  It’s a tactic that seems to be working but is something of a compromise. For me, nothing equals sitting in a proper concert hall and listening to great music. To play cello in such a venue is my ultimate musical aspiration.

  DOWNTOWN SYMPHONY

  My initial success with LSO emboldened me to stretch more and explore the Downtown Symphony, an amateur adult orchestra that has been in existence for more than twenty-five years at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in Lower Manhattan. The orchestra gives four public concerts every year including an annual Messiah sing-in at Christmastime. After I heard about th
e Downtown Symphony from Eve and Mary at my first Late Starters rehearsal, I checked out its website. There, I saw these dreaded words, which Mary had already warned me about:

  “Admission to the orchestra is by audition.”

  I read on. In this audition, I would need to “play scales,” “sight-read,” and “play two contrasting pieces” of music. I knew numerous scales and I had at least two simple pieces in my repertoire (though I wasn’t sure if they were contrasting enough), but sight-reading? For me, that’s like seeing a mathematical formula and recognizing all the numbers and symbols without having a clue of how to solve it. It looks familiar but what does it all mean? I knew I wasn’t ready for this audition, but Mary’s words kept ringing in my ears:

  “You may not live long enough to be ‘good enough.’ ”

  I screwed up my courage and called Doug Anderson, the Downtown Symphony conductor, and scheduled an audition for late one winter night after work. Doug was warm and friendly when I met him in his crowded office at the college, where he is a professor of music. I told him that I had been playing on and off for a long, long time but that I still considered myself something of a beginner. “Most everyone who comes is like you,” Doug said. He told me that only a handful of the fifty players in the orchestra were music students or faculty members; most were amateur musicians who ranged in age from eighteen to eighty. He cleared away some books and papers in his office and I set out my cello. I told him I was a little rusty and a little nervous about the audition. He sought to calm me down. “Listen, Ari. We are a learning orchestra, not a terrorist organization . . . like some other orchestras. We’re here to have fun.”

  I laughed nervously and threw myself into my music. I made it through the scales okay and the two short pieces that I had prepared. I thought I noted a trace of a sympathetic smile on his face, but then I was playing pieces from my son’s Suzuki cello book. “Nice,” he said slowly, which was a sure sign that he wasn’t convinced. Doug then handed me a page of sheet music by the French composer Georges Bizet. I knew that Bizet wrote the opera Carmen, but this was not a trivia test. It was an audition and I was supposed to play—by sight—music that I had never seen or heard before.

  I put the Bizet on my music stand, studied it for a few seconds, smiled wanly, and said, “Honestly, I don’t know where to begin.”

  What’s the key signature? I suddenly heard Mr. J asking. That’s where our understanding of the music begins. The key signature consists of one or more notes arranged on the five staff lines at the very top of a piece of sheet music. Reading music, I heard Mr. J say, is like reading English or German or Chinese or any other language. The key signature, in effect, tells you what language you are in. Think of it this way: the key signature tells you the language, the notes are words, the measures are sentences, the lines are phrases, and the cadences are periods. Now read!

  I took a closer look at the Bizet. I saw a C# and an F#. I knew that meant that our “language” was the key of D. Then, haltingly, I played the first note, and the second and the third and soon a musical story began to emerge. I thought I was doing well and eagerly looked to Doug for an assessment.

  “Let me be honest with you,” Doug began. “I’d love to have you in the orchestra. You seem dedicated and interested in learning. You’ve got the right attitude. But this might be frustrating for you. At the beginning you’ll be playing about 10 percent of the music I hand out. By the time the concert comes, you’ll probably be up to 50 percent. Next year, even more. But it’s going to be tough at first. If you don’t think it will be too frustrating for you, you’re in.”

  “I’m in?” I said almost disbelieving what I had just heard. I actually passed the audition? Is that possible? Whoopeee! I tried to remain cool. “Okay,” I said with a smile. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  A week later I showed up for my first rehearsal. I had none of the jitters that accompanied my first Late Starters rehearsal. I auditioned. I was accepted. I was ready. The Downtown Symphony met in a proper soundproofed music room at the community college, not at all like the makeshift rehearsal space of the LSO. And unlike LSO, which was all strings, this orchestra included oboes, clarinets, flutes, and horns. It even had a percussion section, complete with various drums, cymbals, and a gong. There were about fifty of us in all, including my friends Eve and Mary from LSO. I had to pinch myself. I felt like Pinocchio in Geppetto’s toy shop. I was a real boy in a real orchestra!

  The rehearsal began. We were playing passages from Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” a piece I’ve always loved. What a full, rich sound! It was thrilling to be sitting in the middle of all that thunder and excitement. I surprised myself by being able to keep up with more than 10 percent of the score. I was with them 20 or even 30 percent of the time, but then I already knew the music, just from hearing it so many times. Knowing the melodies always makes them easier to play.

  During the break I spoke to some of the other musicians and was gratified to learn that I was not the only one who was lost. “Do you figure it out by the time of the concert?” I asked a young man who played the double bass.

  “Well, most of it,” he answered.

  “Isn’t there a lot of pressure on you to get it right?”

  “No,” another musician, a violinist, chimed in. “At the concert, Doug brings in some pros who lead the way.”

  “You mean he brings in ringers?”

  “Well, we call them subs.”

  “Who are they substituting for?”

  “The rest of us.”

  It sounded like a good thing. You bring in some real good players and that brings up everyone’s game. I asked if any of the “ringers” were at the rehearsal that night.

  “They never come to rehearsals,” my new friend the double bassist told me. “They’re pros. They just show up the night of the concert. Now don’t worry. We have backup.”

  After the break, I went back to playing with greater confidence. Performing with a safety net sounded perfect.

  MILT

  On the subway going home that night I ran into an older man bundled in a winter coat and carrying a violin case. “Excuse me,” I said, “weren’t you at the Downtown Symphony tonight?”

  He was indeed and we introduced ourselves and spoke as we rode uptown. His name was Milt, a retired physician in his eighties, and his story was not atypical of late starters. Milt took up the violin as a young boy in New Jersey and played through high school and into college. “When I was nineteen, I was admitted to medical school and I put my violin away and never touched it again for fifty years,” he said. Medicine became his life. He finished medical school and opened what he described as a thriving family practice in his home state.

  He worked out of his home office, later out of a private doctor’s office, and even later out of a clinic. He told me that he treated several generations in some families. “Grandparents, parents, children. They just kept coming. And then one day, I closed my practice. I went home, found my old violin in the attic and picked it up again,” he said. “And I haven’t put it down since.”

  Milt said he had “to learn it all over again,” but that it came back, slowly, step by step. “Music is my life now. After retirement, there is nothing else.”

  He and his wife sold their New Jersey home and moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in part because they wanted to be near Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. One of their favorite activities is attending the Philharmonic’s “open rehearsals,” where, for less than twenty dollars, you can hear great music and see how it is shaped by the conductor and the musicians. The open rehearsals begin at 9:45 in the morning. “You get to go for a fraction of the price of what people pay to go to the same concert in the evening,” Milt said. “And I love to watch how the sausage is made.”

  I had not heard of the Philharmonic’s open rehearsals in decades and was surprised that they still existed. I remember going a few times in college. I called Richard Wandel, an archivist for the Philharmonic, who told m
e that these musical sessions were as old as the orchestra itself, which is pretty old since the New York Philharmonic, the oldest standing orchestra in the United States, played its first season well before the Civil War. Open rehearsals began in 1842 under the very first musical director, Ureli Corelli Hill. The sessions were at first intended to give the orchestra a chance to prepare before a live audience without the pressure of a formal performance. With time, they also became a way to involve people who otherwise might not attend the more expensive official programs.

  For Milt, the open rehearsals are also a way to involve his wife, who is not a musician. Milt inspired me to check them out as well. On the winter morning I attended, the audience was made up of mostly older, retired folks. Who else can take off a morning for music, except perhaps for a professor, like me, or some students? The audience filled only about half the seats in the orchestra and the balconies were pretty much empty. I had paid $18 for my seat, a seat that would cost $115 if I had decided to go to the same program that evening.

  The members of the Philharmonic, who play their concerts in formal wear, came straggling in as though they had just climbed out of bed, casually dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. I was thinking that my fellow LSO musicians come better dressed. There wasn’t a tie or jacket on stage. I was trying to imagine Mr. J trundling onto the stage with his cello for an open rehearsal when he was in the Philharmonic in the 1950s. Given his penchant for eccentric dress, he would have shown up in a paisley shirt and plaid pants. And he would have fit right in.