Castro Valley Orchestra -- Concert Preparation is a Big Job

Three bassists from our last concert.

The Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra plays three or four concerts a year, and has done it for more than a decade. What you hear is the result of months of rehearsals and practice. Here’s how it works.

Tuesday is the official weekly rehearsal night. As it approaches 7 p.m., cars begin to arrive at Creekside Middle School. The musicians carry, and sometimes roll, their instruments into the school and down the hall. On the right, the band room door is usually open and folks stream in and go to their customary places.

The band room, with its tall ceiling, lockers on all four sides, and whiteboards, is used by the middle school for its music programs. It’s already set up with chairs and stands, but they may not be arranged perfectly, so there is some scraping and carrying before instruments come out of their cases and tuning begins. Many of the musicians have been playing in the group for years together, so there is plenty of friendly banter and telling of jokes, including some hilarious musical ones that are the specialty of a certain clarinetist.

Normally, music director Josh Cohen is already there, and he gets ready, sometimes passing out music for new pieces the orchestra will work on later. However, slowly, he is training the group to use the Internet to download and print out the music at home before coming to rehearsal.

By 7:15 p.m., it’s time to start. The oboist plays a piercing “A” and the other musicians match it, bringing the group into tune. Then, with a wave of his slender baton, the orchestra’s seasoned leader gets the 30 to 40 musicians under way.

When you attend a concert, you hear the pieces in their entirety, one after the other, but that’s not how the orchestra rehearses them. There are frequent stops and lots of repetition to get the sound just right. And it takes a couple of months to do it. Luckily, the sheet music is marked with measure numbers or a rehearsal number or letter to make sure everyone starts in the same place.

Sometimes, just the strings will play, and the winds sit and listen, thinking about how their parts fit in. Then, it’s their turn to play and the strings listen. Sometimes one section plays. Normally, before moving on to another piece—or a movement within it—the group plays the section through from start to finish. Knowing what to play is important, but knowing how it relates to the entire orchestra is essential to having a good concert.

The group works on the tempo—how fast or slow it goes. There are frequent changes in dynamics—how loud or quiet it is. Dynamics are especially tricky. The entire orchestra may change volume level together or some instruments may play louder to stand out, for example, during a solo. The entire orchestra or sections can change volume slowly, too. It’s very important to have these changes learned by concert time.

Josh, with support from the advisory board, made up of several members of the orchestra, plans the programs in advance. It can take time, and often costs money, to borrow all of the sheet music to a piece of music. It can cost several hundred dollars if it’s not available in public domain.

At about the halfway point, Josh calls a break and people go back to chatting and heading down the hall to the restrooms. Then, it’s back to work. “Let’s hear the violins and cellos at measure 147,” says Josh, in his friendly tone. Although he controls the musicians, Josh doesn’t holler at or berate them. That’s part of why the musicians keep coming back for more each season. The group meets from September to May, echoing the school year. As a part of Castro Valley Adult and Career Education, that’s natural.

It’s important to practice your part to learn the nuances and get it smooth for the show. I keep my bass in a stand in my dining room, so I can pick it up every day and work on the concert pieces. There isn’t time in the group rehearsal to do this.

The upcoming concert on Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. features four works, including Reinecke’s Harp Concerto. It takes place at the Castro Valley Center for the Arts at 19501 Redwood Road, Castro Valley. Adult admission is $10, seniors and children 13-18 are $5 and kids 12 and under get in for free.

Wind Symphony Satisfies

I just got back from an enjoyable evening of orchestral music--without a single stringed instrument on the stage. Instead, it was a wind symphony, known also as a concert band, filled with a skilled contingent of horns and woodwinds--backed by a powerful percussion section.Over the course of the show we would hear a brass quartet, brass ensemble, woodwind ensemble, and in the second half, the whole group together.

I need to thank Amy, my fellow bassist, who not only played with me last Sunday on Beethoven and Balalaika music, but performed as a tuba player tonight with the group. That's a tuba pictured.

I heard the CSU East Bay Wind Symphony, along with separate ensembles from it, in the theater at the Hayward, California campus. The group was expertly led by John Eros, who kept the beat perfectly with his baton.

The show began when four young men in tuxedos walked onto the stage with their trumpets and trombones. They played Paul Hindemith's Morgenmusik from Ploner Musiktag, from 1932. It was kind of a wake up for the audience to focus their attention. Nicely done, with sharply defined harmonies and everything tidy.

Then, the rest of the brass joined the four to play Vaclav Nelhybel's Numismata (1965). Pretty impressive with the two tubas, French horns, and euphonium. Then, they all exited, stage left and turned the show over to their woodwind colleagues. Not only were there clarinets in abundance, but a saxophone or two, a row of flutes, and even a contralto clarinet--so large it sat with its bell on the ground while the curving tube delivered the mouthpiece to the proper height. You could hear it holding down the bottom, especially before the tubas joined it in the second half.

The woodwinds got some heavy support for the following selection, In Another Time, a newly composed work by Nicholas Vasallo, who teaches at the university and created this lively piece especially for this concert. It's great to hear music by living composers, and I got to meet him afterwards. The bass drum player jumped into the air as he struck powerfully on his instrument during this piece. Nobody would sleep through this exuberant composition.

The intermission gave me time to stretch and to talk with Lea, my orchestra colleague, who had joined the group on French horn for the concert.

The combined forces of the woodwinds, brass and percussion opened the second half with a rousing John Philip Sousa march, The Black Horse Troop. Then, a change of pace, with two pretty Irish melodies by David Gillingham--one traditional and one newly written in 2000. The grand finale was the martial-sounding Symphony No. 3 by Boris Kozhevnikov. It had me wondering what was going on in the Soviet Union back then. Had party secretary Khrushchev pounded his shoe at the United Nations yet?

Then, applause, and it was over. The nicely dressed, pleasingly skilled musicians left the stage. It was surely worth much more than the $5 ticket I had bought. I walked into the cool evening air in a happy frame of mind.

As a string player, I tend to think along the lines of the "full" orchestra, but these guys really did a great job.

Report from the Orchestra Pit

Last night was the final tech rehearsal for A Christmas Carol, and we took it very slowly. With all the stops, starts, changes and tweaks, we ran past midnight. Tonight, we will have an audience and I hope we're all ready for them.

It was my first experience in an orchestra pit. And that's truly what it is--a stage-wide slice of area invisible to most of the audience where the musicians crowd together and play. I was tucked next to the entry stairs with just enough width to move a bow. Even then, I frequently knocked its tip into the stair's railing. That's not as bad as my poor compadre who put the first dent in his gorgeous bass saxophone when the stand it was in decided to collapse. But he went on, like a pro. The photo here is not our orchestra or theater, but it shows the same view from the corner that I have.

The odd thing is, we're right in front of, and under, the actors, but we can't see what they're doing. We watch our conductor and guide attentively--he can see the stage--but it's an act of faith. In the theatre, you're constantly stopping and starting and changing the tempo to match the action above--that you can't see. But when it's going well, it sounds great, and that's what kept me moving along last night.

Mozart Rules

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the best known and most loved composers in the classical world. He wrote great, accessible music. It's supposed to be good for your kids to listen to it. He started very young and died much too early.

Playing Mozart is an amazing thing. It's an exercise but also a blissful release, when you contribute your part to the orchestra as it moves along through fast and slow passages, the dynamics roar or whisper, the notes pour out or sing solo in delicate beauty. You have 40 people participating with instruments and hundreds listening and it becomes an event--an altered state of mind.

Today, the Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra, of which I am a member, played three Mozart pieces along with two other amazing works. The program went very well, thanks to fine conducting by Josh Cohen, our leader, as well as guest conductors Todd Wetherwax, Sandra Noriega and Tom Baker, who all stepped in and kept us moving and playing the pieces effectively. Mr. Baker had the distinction of composing one of our pieces, conducting it, and also playing viola and piano (not all at once, of course).

Community orchestras bring the pleasures of classical music to the public at very reasonable prices, and give amateur musicians a chance to work on important and valuable works and grow as performers.

It's Orchestra Season Again!

Tonight I resumed playing with the Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra--my musical pals since the beginning of 2007. Each year, from September to June, we gather on Tuesday nights at the middle school and rehearse for two hours each week, preparing for our three concerts per session.

Tonight we played a Mozart Double Piano Concerto that featured one of the most out-of-tune pianos I've ever heard. It made the great composer sound like the entertainment in a honky tonk bar despite fine playing by Tom. We also went through a piece this same fine piano player composed that will be a treat for anyone attending the upcoming concert on Sunday, October 23.

We tackled another Mozart piece, Symphony No. 31, which, unlike the Double Piano Concerto, I had never laid eyes on before. I was gratified at the amount of notes I was able to play on the first time through, sightreading. Part of the reward of playing in a community orchestra, besides the beauty and the camaraderie, is seeing yourself grow and improve over time.

Josh, our beloved and very hard working conductor, recommended playing chamber music to improve your sensitivity to other players, and I couldn't agree more. I belong to the Chamber Musicians of Northern California, which puts on three weekend workshops a year for players with at least some experience playing. I've attended about a dozen so far. The next workshop is the weekend of October 15-16, but you should join the group and apply now if you're interested.

Double Double Bass

It can get lonely in the back corner of the orchestra when you're the only bass player. Tonight, I got company, when Devon, a young woman with a blonde bass, was already there. Her bass had a pleasing tone, and she promptly sightread her way through the parts.

The sound, with two (or more) members of the lowest part in the string section, gives the orchestra more punch, greater presence, and it's sure easier and more fun for me.

The concert date -- May 29th--is approaching, but it should go well now.