527 10 9760 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/d2b33df57f7f493360b0612e543da567.mp3 c4445d50f208f26c57ebf4055d146683 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/cb01a79af608f7c6350eb09aeeb31205.pdf c9407e7011daf1742cacfbaeece7712d PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Andrea DiGregorio, June 22, 2022 Date Transcribed: October 9, 2022 Rebecca: Alright. Andrea: How come I know your name, actually. Becky Lange. are you a cellist? Rebecca: Yeah, I remember you. Andrea: I remember you too. Rebecca: Well you are, I don’t know, probably five years younger than I am and your mom, Lola Reynolds, I swear she took you to every classical concert in Casper. You were always there, always near the stage and you were always really engaged. You were probably in elementary school when I was in junior high. I just noticed how incredibly interested you were then and it is not terribly common for a grade school child to be so interested in music and I noticed. Andrea: Uh cool, because I do remember. Now your father, our parents knew each other right? I think it was hard to keep track of my mom’s friends and stuff as a kid. But I remember you, and I remember you played in the symphony and of course everyone who played in the symphony to me were gods. So it was like, oh you can look on stage; look at what they are doing. I remember the first autograph I got was when Gene Fodor played with you guys and I think it was before he won the Tchaikovsky [The Tchaikovsky Competition; international solo competition. Any first prize winner can launch a world-class solo career. The competition is named after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer] He was probably, you know, cheap then. Rebecca: I remember that concert. Andrea: I thought he was so cute. I don’t remember how old I was but he was right up there with Michael Landon in my book. �Rebecca: Yeah he is a pretty good looking guy and he can play the violin. Let’s just start by making sure I have the recording on. Tell us your name, your instrument and how you came to play that instrument. Andrea: Okay, my name is Andrea DiGregorio. I play the cello. My maiden name is Reynolds and that is who I was when I lived in Casper Wyoming. I came to play the instrument because some people came to my fourth grade class and they had string instruments. I tried out the violin and thought, oh that is squeaky. Then I tried out the cello and I think I ended up hitting the C string first [the lowest string on the cello] and I thought, oh that is nice. Then I went home and my mom said, “Well right now you are too small but your grandfather has an old cello we can probably talk him out of.” If you choose that instrument then we will have a free instrument, she is thinking. So they let me rent from the music store, the one that was downtown. Do you remember that one? Rebecca: Les Parson’s. Andrea: Les Parson’s, that’s right. We rented an instrument from there and then Curtis Peacock came to my elementary school at Cresthill Elementary twice a week. I missed spelling, it was a pull out just like they are now actually, but it was okay because I was okay at spelling but if I would have missed math I probably wouldn’t have been a musician because I wasn’t as good at that and my grade would have been an F. They would have been like, “Well maybe the cello isn’t for you,” you know. So we met in the library and that is how I started playing. Rebecca: So did he basically function as a public school music teacher for those two days a week? Andrea: Yeah, he was there just fresh out of school. I had a major crush on him and I told my parents that I was going to marry him when I got old enough. �Rebecca: (laughter) They probably told you he already had a wife. Andrea: He didn’t yet. This was before he met Ellen. Rebecca: I couldn’t remember that he was single when he came to Casper. Andrea: He was fresh out of school. He was a public school teacher and later became part of the symphony and conductor of the Casper Symphony. I just thought he was the most charming thing ever. Rebecca: Okay, so that is the connection. He had you back here in the 90’s to play the Brahms Double Concerto. [A concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment. Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] I am jumping the gun a little bit. I remember that performance because I was the principal cellist at the time. It was a great performance. Andrea: Thanks, that is reminiscent of the string quartet. And John came back with me. We had played it here in Charleston, West Virginia first I think and Curtis said you can come and play. And he went on and on about how wonderful I was and everything, and I had just had a baby and John had given us a little toy dog; kind of plush dog for the baby. What I had been doing at the time was, I can remember the thank you notes, I would name the people like “John the Dog” and “Chris the Pig” and you know, so I could write the thank you notes properly. I told John this and he thought it was really funny so he goes on and Curtis is introducing you know this is John Harrison and John looks at me and says, “the dog” (laughter) It was pretty funny. Hometown girl comes and dog. Rebecca: Well yeah I remember that very clearly that Curtis made a big fuss over you because you were a local girl. Andrea: That is right. (laughter) �Rebecca: And he brushed off the other guy. I think you gave John a better introduction. Okay well, let’s see. How you came to play the instrument and your education from there. Andrea: Well you know what it was like growing up, there wasn’t a cello teacher and so it was basically just you were self-taught. Which is fine because I played piano more seriously at the time than I did the cello. And I went to a bunch of different rehearsals for the Casper Youth Symphony and when I was fourteen I got into the Casper Symphony and I was kind of over my head but it was okay because I was sitting last chair back there and listening to all of the cool instruments, you know. As I got older it didn’t bother me that much that I didn’t know how to play that well, but at some point I thought, I should be able to play this better, and I ended up going to something called The Congress of Strings. I don’t think they have it anymore. They had one for the east coast and they had one for the west coast. It was in Seattle, my parents let me leave and it was all free; the Casper [Musicians] Union paid for it. I got to go and it was wonderful because I had never gotten to be away from home that long. You know the longest I had been away from home was a week at the [University of] Wyoming Music Camp in Laramie. So, this was just like a big deal, and the guy there was like, “I can’t believe you haven’t taken lessons. It would take you forever to ever catch up to everyone else.” There were people from California. So I went home kind of crushed a little bit and thought, okay I need to actually study this instrument. So Curtis I think told my parents about De Lemos [principal cello] of the Denver Symphony and maybe put in a word for me. So my parents would drive me maybe once a month, if it didn’t snow, my senior year in high school. Because they wouldn’t let me drive that distance yet. We would go and I would have a lesson for an hour and a half and we would stay with my mom’s cousin and then we would come back and I would practice everything Mr. De Lemos told me to do. That is how we did it and I ended up going to the University of Colorado because Mr. �De Lemos was there. We already had this relationship and then he left after my first year. I was so mad. He had a sabbatical, he went back to Germany to play in the Hamburg Radio Orchestra. This woman named Barbara Theim came in and she was nice and all but she wasn’t Mr. De Lemos but she actually ended up changing my life as well, just the way Mr. De Lemos did. When I was I think 20, she took me to Austria with her for a summer and I got to meet people like [world-famous solo] bassist Garry Karr and other famous people that she knew, and stay in her villa. It was three stories, quite an extensive house but it's not made particularly well but it is still pretty and all that. I had never been in the Alps and all that. I came back and studied with her for the rest of the time and then I graduated early after three and a half years because I had been taking some courses at Casper College in my senior year and they fortunately transferred. So I got out early because I thought it would save money, which I am sure it did, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I taught here and there I had a job at the Boulder dinner theater trying to sell Annie. Barbara was like, you need to figure out what you are going to do with your life. She offered me an assistantship at the University of Colorado so I could figure out what I was going to do. So I took the assistantship, had a great year and fell in love for the first time, practiced a lot. Then I decided, I will either get into these schools or I won’t and I will do my Plan B. So my Plan A worked out though, and I ended up going to Yale University for my master’s degree. I studied with Aldo Parisot. [Parisot was a Brazilian-American cellist and teacher] So from out of there a quartet in Colorado that I knew called me up and said, “Do you want to be our cellist?” and I said “Sure, why not? I have nothing better to do and I don’t know what else I am going to do to make money.” So we won a couple competitions and we ended up going to the University of Wisconsin because there was something there called The Music Institute run by the Fine Arts Quartet. It was kind of like an assistantship so we didn’t have to �worry about money and we studied there for two years and then we got a job at the University of Northern Iowa for a year. Then we got a job in West Virginia with the symphony which was nice because all four of us were kind of the pearls of the symphony. That lasted for about 25 years and then the symphony started falling on hard times and now my symphony is with West Virginia State University. COVID has kind of killed the quartet for at least a year and a half. We had our first violinist leave, he went to Hong Kong to visit his mom and dad, then Trump closed the border to China and he couldn’t come back. So he had to resign and we had to get another woman who ended up getting a job with the Utah Symphony and here we are with[out] a violinist. But during that time the university fell on hard times and were like, we aren’t sure we have enough money to pay for completing your quartet. So we are stuck in a bit of a limbo place right now. And that is it in a nutshell. (laughter)... [whirring in the background] Well I hate to think about what it is that they are doing to my house. Rebecca: Oh, that sounds like a saw. Andrea: It definitely is a saw. I am going to move. Rebecca: That’s alright. The Congress of Strings; I was going to ask you about that. See, I went to Congress of Strings as well probably a few years before you. Tell me do you remember anything about it? Either musically or anything else? Because for me it was a very special experience. Andrea: Yeah it was wonderful. It was about a month or so and I had never been around so many string players. Good string players and good conductors. Playing things like [Arnold Schoenberg’s] Transfigured Night and [inaudible] and it was just like, “wow this is what you guys play?” You know and it was wonderful to be on my own for so long. It was beautiful there. They had a wonderful summer and it hardly rained. It rained for maybe fifteen minutes in the �afternoon, and that was it. I had never stayed in a dorm and some of the people were older than me but only by a year, going [to] places like USC and I think I just found, this is what’s possible. It was really neat and it was a special summer and you can put the green sticker on your cello case and go out there and feel kind of special in the airport because you have an instrument. [Congress of Strings administrators issued round green “Congress of Strings” stickers to participants to put on their instrument cases, to be able to recognize them at the airport, where they were met.] It was fun and it was transfiguring for me because the teacher there was like, “jeez you need to get a teacher,” or actually what he encouraged me to do was to become a doctor. He says, “You know, there is money in being a medical doctor,” and now I am lucky. But at the time I was terribly insulted that he would think that, but now I’m like, yeah he is probably right. As I look at the hole in my house I am thinking maybe I should have gone that direction. Rebecca: Well when you are young and you love music like I did, and it sounds like you did, it is almost impossible to think about anything other than how beautiful the music is and how much fun it is. Andrea: And I am the sort of person where if you tell me I can’t do something, I am going to do everything to prove that I can. Rebecca: Me too, yep. Andrea: So it is sort of like, go ahead. What he ended up doing, unfortunately, for what his aim was to discourage me and get me to do something that was a little more lucrative. He actually pushed me into it because after that I said to my parents, “I am going to quit piano and concentrate on the cello.” And they were like, Oh no! No, No! They didn’t say that but, I was 17 I could make up my own mind, but they were like, all those piano lessons all this time. But I �knew I couldn’t do both anymore half-assedly especially since I was far behind everybody. So that’s what I did. But yeah it was cool. Rebecca: Yeah, let me see. I am looking at my notes here. Did you have chamber music opportunities at the Congress of Strings? Andrea: Um I don’t remember of them, no. I just remember orchestra. Rebecca: Okay and just for the non-musicians in the audience and for the historical record. Transfigured Night can you say who its by and the GermanAndrea: Schoenberg the [inaudible] and Metamorphosis by Richard Strauss; those are the two ones that I remember specifically. [Richard Strauss, 19th and 20th century German composer and conductor (son of Johann Strauss of “Blue Danube” fame.) Arnold Schoenberg, 20th century Austrian-American composer] Shoot, we also played a Vaughn Williams, I forget which one, but I had never played all string pieces. [Ralph Vaughan Williams, 20th century English composer] It was extraordinary to me. Especially because the orchestra was huge with lots of cellos. Did you go to All Northwest? Rebecca: I never did make All Northwest. Andrea: That was kind of like- I went to All Northwest before I went to- Did I? Yeah Congress of Strings. All Northwest [orchestra] was just like 25 cellos [in the cello section] or something like that and we played the Firebird [Firebird Suite from the ballet, The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, 19th and 20th century Russian composer] and we played Brahms Academic Festival Overture [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer]. Things that we had never played in the Casper Symphony, you know? But there were so many people there, it was kind of neat. In fact they had it in this huge coliseum; it was in Billings Montana just to fit all the kids in there. It was neat to hear that kind of sound around you because that is why we like music. �Rebecca: Yeah, so let’s jump back a little bit just for the sake of clarification. Can you explain what All State Honors Orchestra is and what All Northwest Orchestra is? Andrea: Well sure, All State was just the state of Wyoming in which people from all around the state got to play [admitted by taped audition]. I forget where it was. I can't remember if it was in Cheyenne or not actually. All Northwest then included: Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington I believe. Or yes the Northwest of the United States. [also admitted by taped audition] Rebecca: Okay, let’s see. Andrea: Hey, was Mr. Fox your orchestra teacher? Did you go to NC? Rebecca: I went to NCHS [Natrona County High School] but I had Robert Bovie all three years. Andrea: Oh sure, I remember him. Did you have Rex Eggleston at any point? Rebecca: No, I am not sure where he taught. I know he was the head of the public school string program for years and years and I played under him in the symphony. Andrea: I think he taught in the junior high schools- I think he taught at Dean Morgan, that is the school I went to. What I liked about him and what I thought was interesting and you could never do now; if someone’s fingernails were too long, he had clippers and he would clip them [the string player’s left hand fingernails have to be short to facilitate pushing down the strings]. He also had a pocket knife. It might have been on the same keychain (laughter) and if your endpin was slipping he would dig a hole between the tiles for your endpin, like deface school property, for the cellos. Now I am like, that was so cool! You could never do that now but that was so cool. Rebecca: Yeah well, the cellos had to have endpins that didn’t slip for sure. �Andrea: Well my first concert with the Youth Symphony- the Casper Youth Symphony with Curtis I was twelve and I was the youngest person in the Youth Symphony. I had no clue what I was doing, I sat last chair with Gaylen Corrigan. I think his brother later became Mayor, right? Rebecca: YeahAndrea: Yeah I am not sure what happened to Gaylen because I am pretty sure he was high most of the time. I did not know that myself as a twelve-year-old but he just seemed a little out of it. Although, he did explain what tenor clef was to me because I had no idea and um- let’s see what was my point to this. Mr. Peacock that is right- My mom- We had to wear white on top and black skirts. My mom sewed a black skirt for me. Here I was, this was my first concert and first time on the stage with the Casper Youth Symphony and the first thing that happened was the endpin slipped and my cello fell flat onto the floor. Just as we were about to start, and he knew I was appalled. Everything came to a complete halt, Curtis Peacock came over picked my cello up, retuned it for me and gave it back to me. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t seem mad but I just felt like I was going to sink into the bottom of the earth. That was my first performance experience with the cello. Rebecca: Okay let’s jump back just for the people who don’t know, define the word “endpin” Andrea: The endpin is- Well the cello is a large instrument; not as large as a string bass and you sit down to play it so that your knees, it would probably be good for your knees, think of the [inaudible] you would have if you had to hold the thing up all the time, but they developed an endpin at the end of the instrument that sticks into the floor so that you don’t have to hold the instrument with your knees you just kind of hold it against your chest and your knees are on either side and it [the endpin] holds the instrument up. �Rebecca: Right, okay thanks. So do you recall any of the concerts you did, or any of the Youth Symphony concerts you did? Andrea: Um- I do know the concert where Gaylen Corrigan taught me to read tenor clef was [inaudible]. Now mind you, I am coming from elementary school I had never played anything this complicated in my life. But it was good for me. I think Mr. Peacock was like, “throw her in the deep end and see if she swims or not.” You know? I looked at it [tenor clef] and I said “what is that?” and he basically said, “That is one fifth up from what you are looking at.” [This is relatively easy for cellists because the strings are tuned in fifths, so it’s only necessary—with a few minor adjustments—to play the tenor clef passage on the next highest string.] I knew enough piano, I didn’t know any [music] theory but I had been playing piano since I was six, so I thought I could understand, and then I had to write in all of the notes in my practice part becauseto practice. I didn’t do that to Gaylen’s part because he was the one who taught me what tenor clef was, so after a while I was able to read it. So Finlandia was big and I just thought it was the coolest piece ever and then Live and Let Die Lennon McCartney we did a lot of that. I think we played it in Billings, Montana when we went on tour there. Those were two pieces because we actually got to play somewhat contemporary pieces. Rebecca: Okay let’s back up here, for the people who don’t know what a clef is c-l-e-f can you give us a definition of what a clef is and then go to tenor clef in particular? Andrea: Okay first you have to start at the musical staff, and at some point in the western history in the notation of voice and music they came up with five lines of and on those lines or in between the lines are certain notes. Since there were sopranos- very high and then the next was alto. Soprano became known as the treble clef and alto is what viola...is played on. Then you have two sorts of bass clef and it is sort of interesting because the cello and the bass plays it but �the bass plays it an octave lower. The tenor clef is between the alto and the bass clef. It was put in there because the clef got too high, too many lines above the staff for people to read. So they decided to add another clef and it was also for the tenors to sing in a chorus so that’s about the best I can do right now. Rebecca: Okay; I will just add that it is a sign, a kind of hieroglyphic that musicians have to learn. It defines that particular line and it defines the note and from there that is the reference point for all the other notes on the staff. Without a clef denoting what note it is, those five lines have no meaning at all. Great, okay- cellos typically play in bass clef which is what you learned in and had played in forever so then you bumped to tenor clef which is more advanced and you were rescued by your stand partner, right? Andrea: Yeah, because I didn’t know what it was, and if you have a cello teacher they will tell you what that is, but if you have never seen it before, you don’t know. Rebecca: Right, right. Andrea: Because of piano, treble and bass clef were things I had heard of before but tenor clef was something I had never heard of before. Rebecca: Well you wouldn’t have, would you. Do you recall, this is sort of between cellists but I can’t help but mention it because it could have been a complicating factor for me. In Dvorak’s music—the Czechoslovakian composer from the late 1800s—sometimes those passages are in treble clef no- should be in tenor clef and are noted in treble clef and you have to take them down an octave. Andrea: That is right- that is standard what you have to do and it is annoying too. Rebecca: I don’t think I had ever [would have] run into that if I hadn't learned [it] in high school music camps in Montana. I think I would have been sunk at a later audition. Okay let’s back up, �you mentioned Finlandia, please mention the composer and a bit about the piece if you could recall. Andrea: Uh [Jean] Sibelius um- a Finnish composer, it is basically an ode of love for Finland. I can’t remember when it was written but it was definitely a late 19th century piece. I think it was an ode of love for his home land. Was it after World War I? I am not sure, I think it was before that. [Jean Sibelius, 19th and 20th century Finnish composer] Rebecca: Didn’t he incorporate the Finnish national anthem or something like that? Andrea: Yes, yes that is right. Rebecca: It is a very accessible and beautiful piece. Andrea: (Singing the melody of Finlandia) Rebecca: Okay, okay so how did you come to be in Youth Symphony so young? Andrea: Uh- Curtis Peacock. He just threw me in there. Rebecca: That is great that he was so encouraging to you. Andrea: Yes- Yeah, I was learning cello I was learning it fast and I had been playing it for a couple of years and he just threw me there. I had a friend, I made some friends there and they thought I was just the biggest nerd on the planet but you know I didn’t mind because I was amongst the big kids so I felt pretty intimidated. Rebecca: Okay um- I don’t want to interrupt you if you were going to add something else. Andrea: Nope. It was great, it was great and unlike piano and this is maybe why I chose the cello. I am an only child and the piano is a solo instrument. With the cello I could be with other kind of nerdy people like myself and actually have friends. You know? And we could go to rehearsals together and learn music together. Whereas, when you are given a piano piece you are just practicing alone at home. �Rebecca: Right. Andrea: So it was also a social outing for me. Rebecca: You are telling me the story of my life when I was in high school. Youth Symphony was pretty much my social life. Andrea: Yeah, yeah my entire social life had to do with Youth Symphony, [Casper] Symphony, and Casper [College] Baroque Ensemble that Curtis also conducted. You know? My senior year I got to play Beethoven Ghost Trio [Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70 No. 1] with Curtis and whoever the on staff pianist was because there was just no one else around. Cellists, we are just like gazelles in Wyoming or something which just doesn't belong there. Rebecca: Well, that was a great opportunity for you. Andrea: It was. It was wonderful. I don’t think I have played it since I was 17. I can’t remember. Rebecca: Let’s go to your senior year of high school when you won the Young Artist Competition. Andrea: Oh yeah that was fun and I also got to ride on the float in the parade wearing my dress with my cello (laughter). Rebecca: Were you shaded somehow? Andrea: No, no didn’t matter. I got to be riding on a float, you know? It is like one of those things that one thinks they will never get to do. But no it was great, they did it right. I wish they would do it like this in West Virginia actually. It [the concert] was at the Thunderbird Gym at Casper College and they trucked in all these grade schools and I think there were three performances. I was part of it and there was a pianist who also won who was part of it who played the Grieg Piano [Concerto] first movement [Edvard Grieg, 19th and 20th century Norwegian composer and pianist] I played the first movement of the Haydn [Cello] Concerto [in �C major]. [Franz Joseph Haydn, 18th century Austrian composer] At that time I had been with De Lemos taking lessons and stuff and he had forbidden me from playing any real music because my technique was so bad. I was only allowed to play [etudes] and I was not very happy [An étude or study is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill (definition provided by Wikipedia)], and then this opportunity came to audition for the Young Artist Competition and I was like, I want to do this but Mr. De Lemos won’t let me do this, I know it. So I ordered from the music store the Haydn C Major Cello Concerto which I liked, and I had heard other kids practicing it at Congress of Strings. And I was like, I am going to learn that first movement, so I did. And against Mr. De Lemos—he never heard me play it because I was afraid he would be really mad, and [at] the end [of] my freshman year of college he wouldn’t let me play any music either (laughter). I went back to only playing etudes. Until the very, very, very end of the year but I mean it was cool because I got a pretty green dress and these kids would come in and you got to play it three times. And I forget, I think the kid was from Cheyenne who played, wait, was it [singing] anyway he played the first movement of his piano concerto and then the second part of the concert was Pete Williams who was a newscaster at the time. Do you remember him? He is at CNN now, he really went up in the world. And he narrated Peter and the Wolf [a symphonic fairy tale for children by Sergei Prokofiev, 20th century Russian composer] and that is what the symphony played. It was just a fantastic experience, first of all, you are playing for other kids so they are not going to be too critical you know and you get to play it three times. So it was a great experience to get to do that. And then Mr. De Lemos found out about it and he didn’t say much, he just looked at me, because it’s hard to say, “I forbade you to do any of this but you did win.” We never had that conversation. He just said, “I understand that you did this.” And that was it. �Rebecca: Wow, so you taught yourself the first movement of the Haydn C Major Cello Concerto. Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: Without any coaching or any teacher’s input. Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: That is quite a feather in your cap I would say. Andrea: I don’t - I have kind of been teaching myself cello all along so to me it wasn’t- I taught myself the Boccherini first movement of the B flat [cello concerto] to win Congress of Strings too. [Luigi Boccherini, 18th century Italian composer and cellist] Rebecca: You had to audition? Andrea: Yeah you had to audition. Rebecca: I didn’t have to audition, I just got recommended by the local musicians union. That’sI wonder if they changed. Andrea: Yeah I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get it because there were people [competing for it] who were in college. Curtis had gone to and fetched them from Colorado; they were violinists; they had come from Colorado to attend Casper College. Rebecca: You were cutting out for about ten seconds [so] you should probably repeat what you said a few sentences ago. Andrea: Do you remember how old you had to be to get into that? Rebecca: Congress of Strings? Andrea: Yes. Rebecca: I don’t know if they were letting high school students in when I attended. I went after my freshman year of college I believe. �Andrea: Oh, okay. Because I didn’t know whether there was an age cut off. I don’t remember. Yeah my phone is doing something weird. Rebecca: It is alright, I’ve got you now. Andrea: I have moved to a different part of my house. Rebecca: Well maybe that’s it. Andrea: Yeah, I was trying to get away from the sawing sounds. Rebecca: Okay, you mentioned Peter and the Wolf can you fill that in a little bit? The composer, what kind of work it is and that sort of thing. Andrea: Um- it is a popular classical music children’s work by Prokofiev. It is about a young boy named Peter who is warned by his grandfather not to go out and look for the wolf but he does. And let me think- isn’t there a duck? And a little bird? And they are each represented in the orchestra by different instruments. So it is not only an engaging fairytale with each character represented by a different instrument. The little bird is the piccolo and the crotchety grandfather is the bassoon. It is a well loved work by Sergei Prokofiev, the Russian composer. Rebecca: It is basically a stage work that the orchestraAndrea: No, it's just a narrator. Rebecca: Okay I couldn’t recall. Andrea: Whenever I’ve played it. I mean I had the Disney cartoon of it too, but it’s a narrator and an orchestra. Rebecca: Okay, that’s right, yeah. Okay, let’s back up. You rattled off some names of etude composers under De Lemos. They are familiar to cellists but not to everybody else. Can you say a bit about each of them: Cossmann, Duport, Grützmacher, and Dotzauer. [Bernhard Cossmann, 19th and 20th century German cellist; Jean-Louis Duport, 18th and 19th century French cellist; �Friedrich Grützmacher 19th century German cellist; Friedrich Dotzauer, 18th and 19th century German cellist] Andrea: Uh okay, I think they were, except for Duport- um- these ... De Lemos was German despite his Spanish sounding name and he liked the German composers of really difficult etudes. The only reason they exist in the world is to torture cellists or violinists or violists or what have you. These particular composers wrote for the cello, and they wrote very impossible, very difficult things. That you could break your knuckles over and still wouldn’t sound that good. But the really good people sound great on some of these, but I never sounded great on any of these. The idea is to work through them, and as you work through them, you get better. And even if they aren’t perfect and you never play them in a concert hall, the point is that you learn a lot from motor memory and from finger patterns and bow patterns. But I used to just sometimes - I couldn’t even figure out what it was supposed to sound like and I used to practice in my living room with the grand piano and my cello. If I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to sound like, I was unfamiliar with thumb position; I had never heard of any of this stuff, I just played, but Mr. De Lemos had to teach me a lot of things. I would be like, what is this supposed to sound like? So I would turn around and play it on the piano so I could hear it and then I would try and match it on the cello and that is actually how I taught myself a lot of stuff. Because I already knew how to play piano so I would turn around play it on the piano and then I would be like, okay now I understand what this is supposed to sound like. Rebecca: Yeah for me as a former teacher, it doesn’t seem to me to be as important how you learn to read music and hear what you see on the staff as long as you do learn it. Andrea: Mhmm- �Rebecca: Etudes, I do agree a lot of them are so unrewarding that it is really difficult for students to stay motivated to work on them. Andrea: Well some of them were [inaudible] so I was like, I am not going to do this anymore. I just refuse to do this anymore. Rebecca: You told your teacher that? Andrea: NoRebecca: Oh. Andrea: (laughter) Rebecca: That was smart not to tell your German [inaudible] I guess I am stereotyping. I don’t know. Andrea: No, I just broke down. I couldn’t do it anymore, and by that time I was playing actual music that was hard, so you know, playing back-breaking etudes wasn’t something I needed to do anymore. I mean, I would probably be better but I knew people who were getting tendinitis from playing this stuff so I was like, this isn’t worth it. Rebecca: Well Cossmann in particular, no doubt you know the story; was it Robert Schumann who devised a method to strengthen his fingers and it ended up ruining his hands for piano. Do you remember that story? Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: It is a good story, maybe it didn’t happen; you never know with history but, I never had a teacher that made me play Cossmann but can you describe those explicitly and if you can’t I can because I really remember how bad those were for the hand and how hard I fought. �Andrea: Ugh Cossmann what it does is, it is all about repetition and there is no music involved. It is all about finger repetition. Like if you were to sit at a typewriter and type the same things over and over and over again. To me that is what Cossmann is like. Rebecca: Well, and doesn’t it require that you keep a finger down and you exercise another finger on an adjacent string while leaving the other finger down. I was never convinced that it was actually good for the left hand or taught it very much except contortions. Andrea: Yeah the only thing I think that does- hold on I am going plug [to] this in, maybe that is part of the problem I am low on battery. I think the only thing that does is basically teach you finger positions within one position, and the angles in order to be in tune that you have to kind of contort your fingers. Rebecca: RightAndrea: Yeah. You know during COVID or during the beginning anyway I started to go ... I know Alwin Schroeder, [Alwin Schroeder, 19th and 20th century German-American cellist and composer of etudes for the cello] but I’ve never gone through much of the second book, so then I started the third book, but the third book is mostly Piatti [Carlo Alfredo Piatti, 19th century Italian cellist, teacher and composer] unfortunately, the Caprices. But in the second book I was introduced to this guy named Merk, a German composer of etudes. [Joseph Merk, 19th century Austrian cellist, and composer of cello pieces] He was part of the compilation that Schroeder did of etudes. And you know? He was musical. I was like, I really like these; one could actually play these for real in front of an audience and it would be musically gratifying. Rebecca: Yeah I seem to remember that the Schroeder second book was pretty good. Well you are lucky that- Do you know about Rudolf Matz, M-A-T-Z. [Rudolf Matz , 20th century Croatian composer] �Andrea: Mhmm. Rebecca: Talk about boring, repetitive, systematic. I bought those, I think, when I was teaching and I repent of making my students work on those. Very systematic, nothing is neglected except the interest of the student of course. Andrea: RightBoth: (laughter) Rebecca: Okay, well this is really great. Oh I have a standard question I ask everyone at some point. Does anything from your musical experience in Casper whether: Youth Symphony, Casper Symphony or your performances with the Young Artist Competition stand out to you as the highest point of your musical career then? Andrea: Ooh- Hmm- Gosh, because with me growing up in Casper, well, you know the western type of thought is like, figure it out and do it yourself. I mean, people who grow up in Wyoming and maybe the Old West; there weren’t a lot of people, so you have to figure it out. Whatever it is you want to do, you have to figure it out: If my mom wanted to carpet the front step. It was cement and she wanted carpet on it, whatever, so instead of hiring someone to do it she just figured it out and did it, that kind of thing. You want to know how to work on your car? Take it apart and see how it fits. For me, the greatest part of living in Casper was having the freedom to figure things out and no one was going to say anything. “Oh no, that’s wrong,” or anything; there was just discovery. So I don’t know if there was a high point necessarily. There was just a constant discovery of things you could do and music you could listen to. So I don’t know if there was a high point; there was just a continuation of education. So there were many high points but it was really a progression into the next fun thing to do, and it was always fun. �Rebecca: It’s really true, when you are in a, should we say, culturally relatively isolated place that if you are going to be doing the sort of stuff you are describing, you are pretty much on your own unless you luck into a really really good teacher who is within a reasonable distance geographically. Yeah, that’s great. OkayAndrea: So, yeah I enjoyed it. I enjoyed growing up there. I mean, I don’t know what would have happened to me if I’d grown up somewhere else where there was more cultural access and a teacher I could, you know, but in a way there are other things that go along with that too, so. No, just being able to learn music at my own pace and having fun doing it, I think for a young person is- and- and no negative feedback, only encouragement is really important. Rebecca: Well if it’s fun then you’re gonna be motivated . Andrea: Yeah. To learn the next thing. Rebecca: Yep, I wanna back up. You refer to thumb position. We know what that is but a lot of people don’t, so can you describe it? Andrea: Well okay, so you have your fingers in a kind of spider- like way going up the cello and then you get to a point where the neck is not gonna let you go up any longer in the spider-like position, so you’re gonna run out of fingers, and your fourth finger [pinky] is the weakest finger, so instead of letting them run out so you don’t get into higher pitch positions you can put your thumb up there and it acts as a finger and then you can keep going [into higher pitch positions]. Rebecca: Right, and you lay it across the strings so you’re pushing it down with the side of the thumb. Andrea: The side of the thumb and that- first learning how to do that really hurts. Rebecca: I know. Andrea: (laughter) Until you get callouses there it really hurts. (laughter) �Rebecca: Yeah, I remember when I really finally got to a teacher that made me learn thumb position and told me that I really couldn’t do without it, I was asking him, “Listen, when does this stop hurting?” He said, “Oh, it takes about a year to build up a callus.” And that was very discouraging. (laughter) When you’re 20, a year seems like a really long time. Andrea: Yeah, well I remember asking, for some reason we were taking like some sort of field trip in Seattle at Congress of Strings with our teacher at a lake. And I was kinda like, “Aren’t you gonna go jump in the lake?” And he was like, “Oh, no no no no. I have to play tonight and I don’t wanna lose my thumb callus.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” (laughter) So professionals apparently think about that sort of thing, like oh we don’t wanna soften that cause then it’ll hurt. Rebecca: Right. Andrea: How did you learn vibrato? May I ask? Rebecca: Okay let’s define vibrato first. You get to do it since you’re the interviewee. Andrea: Well it’s, people hear a singer, just have a steady pitch and vibrato is on either side of the pitch while still holding that pitch and it is thought to beautify it. And string players do that by- it looks like they are shaking their hand on the string, but actually it’s a fairly steadied and intentional shaking of the hand, in which you are basically playing the same pitch but you are making it more beautiful. Rebecca: That’s the hope anyway. (laughter) Andrea: Yeah, well, yeah. Rebecca: Did you ask me how I learned vibrato? Andrea: Mhmm. Rebecca: Oh, well, you know, I don’t remember, I think- I don’t know how I bypassed the really nervous nanny goat sort of wiggle but I never did have to unlearn that. I think I just kind of �started doing it. I went to a lot of concerts and I probably absorbed. I mean my parents took me as your mother did, I’m sure, to every classical concert in town whether it was a chamber concert or the symphony or whatever until I was old enough to play in groups and I must have just absorbed from watching how it was supposed to behave because I never had to really reform my vibrato I just had to refine it. Because if it’s too wide it sounds wobbly ... and if it’s too narrow it sounds nervous and, this is the motion of the hand I’m referring to, so I was lucky. I guess I just sort of started and went on from there. As a teacher I had to unteach quite a lot of badly started vibratos but that’s sort of in the game. And I don’t know if you’ve discovered this either as a performer or a teacher but vibrato is as much a psychological technique as anything else. I’m thinking of a student I had in Wisconsin who, her- she had two older sisters and she was- they were really good on violin and piano and she-, well they picked on her a lot. It was not a very happy family situation and she ended up as a cellist because they weren’t cellists; they were pianists and violinists and she had a chance of doing something on her own that they couldn’t criticize so much and she was so determined to do well that she kind of defeated herself and it came out in the vibrato, it was just overworked and nervous and I could tell how much her state of mind was affecting. Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: How did you? Andrea: Huh? Rebecca: How did you learn it? Andrea: Well probably the same way you did. I mean, I watched people do it and tried to do it and I had a hard time getting rid of that really shaky shaky shaky, you know, too fast kind of vibrato and oh god, I mean how old was I? Oh, even- Okay so, somewhere in the later years of �my bachelor’s degree I went to a music camp and I roomed with a Juilliard [prestigious conservatory of music in New York City] student who had actually—she had figured out how to do vibrato and what she did is, she would, she said, just do some position in first position and do it very slowly and just bend your finger to loosen them up back and forth. And then what you do is you’ll do with the metronome one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two- and finally with your thumb up cause you can’t cheat, right? When your thumb is up, you can’t bend your finger like in some kind of bizarre way, and that was the first time that I was able to loosen my fingers up enough to do vibrato, but even when I was in graduate school and I went to lunch with my teacher and another student and I don’t know how we were talking about vibrato but he said, “Oh well, you don’t necessarily move your body you just kind of shake.” and I’m like “Oh did you have to say that in front of Marian?” (laughter) Did you really have to say that? But it was true, I struggled with vibrato and I still kinda do a little bit here and there, if I get nervous I start reverting back and just shaking. So, I mean I know that there’s ways to control it and I know what exercises to do now because of this roommate that I had. But yeah, I- You know who you should talk to is John Stovall. Rebecca: He went quite a distance, didn’t he? Andrea: I would say. Talk about someone who ... taught themselves what to do. Rebecca: We should mention he ended up in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: Casper bass player. Andrea: Mhmm, and I remember him cause, well I was a little kid and he was older but in high school I remember him playing Lieutenant Kijé from the bass solo and it was amazing. I don’t know, I mean bass players, a lot of them are self taught anyway because there is no actual �methodology for bass players. I started playing bass about ten years ago and I was like, “Well okay.” just cause it seemed like a fun thing and you know I was looking at all the different books by Vance and Roth and so forth, and they’re just, how do these people learn? [George Vance edited and produced collections of music for bass] And you know Vance starts in treble clef and it’s like, no, why would you do that? (laughter) Suzuki, [Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violin teacher, spawned the Suzuki philosophy of music teaching, in which children begin their music lessons at age 2, and parents are heavily involved in lessons and home practice] they can’t even decide on what position is fourth position, so if you’re like teaching yourself the bass, boy you’re on your own, and unless you have a really good teacher, which John didn’t. Right? I mean that’s even weirder than cello in Casper. He like, taught himself how to play. He ended up at the Aspen Music Festival I know, and ended up in the Boston Symphony. But he was in the Youth Symphony. [The Aspen Music Festival is a classical music festival held each summer in Aspen, Colorado. Professionals perform and teach, and students qualifying for fellowships attend, take lessons and play in the student orchestras] Rebecca: Yeah, I- My hat is off to anybody that plays the string bass because they’re so big and you can only play two notes and then you’ll have to shift, move your hand I should say for people who don’t know what that is. It’s crazy. Andrea: Oh yeah. To play in tune and then to vibrato, your vibrato has to be a lot wider. But just to play in tune and get a good sound. And then there are bow holds right? You’ve got French bow, you’ve got German bow. If someone came to me and said play- you know someone gives me a German bow, I’ll be like, “Okay, I kind of know how to hold it.” (laughter) Rebecca: Describe the difference. Describe each bow and you could maybe give us the reason why there are options for bass players that aren’t [available for other string players]. �Andrea: I have no idea. No idea why they’re like that. The French bow looks just like a huge bow that everybody else has in the string section. The German bow has a- it’s huge at the palm so that most of your fingers except for the first finger [index finger] and the pinky finger can fit inside of it, and you have to lean over and it uses a different part of your shoulder in order to play it. And both of them are highly effective depending on which one you use but I have no idea why. (laughter) Rebecca: Well I think it’s cause the bass is really not part of the violin family, cause you know those sloping shoulders I think it’s part of the viol family, V-I-O-L, that mightAndrea: Oh yes. Rebecca: Don’t know. That’s justAndrea: That’s possible. Rebecca: Let’s back up to John Stovall, Lieutenant Kijé. Could you say who that’s by and say a little more about that? Andrea: Oh gee, now we’re talking about bass things. Are you sure? Rebecca: (laughter) [inaudible] Andrea: I mean John Stovall is the star player from Casper, Wyoming to contact him. I mean, I remember he was in high school and he played a beautiful bass solo from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé. It’s like one of the standards in bass literature and something that you would audition with if you were trying to get into a fine orchestra like the Boston Symphony. And you know, back in my last chair (laughter) Youth Symphony, I just remember looking back at this kind of- he had hair, it was the 70s so it was like, down to his shoulders. Rebecca: (laughter) �Andrea: And he played beautifully, you know. I mean, that’s as much as I can- I’m not gonna go into who Lieutenant Kijé was and (laughter) this thing so. The fictional character of Lieutenant Kijé, but it’s a great solo for the bass. Rebecca: I want to jump back to vibrato. You said something about having the thumb up. Do you mean fully engaged with the back of the fingerboard or do you mean actually resting on the string? Andrea: Resting on the string. In like second position. And then you just, each finger, you kind of get- you bend it more than you necessarily would, because it will, when the thumb is in that position and you can do the exercises that way, and then once you’ve loosened your upper parts of the finger up you put the thumb back where it’s supposed to be [behind the neck of the cello], and you do the exercises that way. And that’s how I slowed my vibrato down because my vibrato was way too fast. Rebecca: Were you ever told to lightly place your finger on any string, it’s easiest on the high strings the A or the D, and bow- I mean it makes a very- you’re not doing it for the sound, you’re doing it for the physical motion, rub your hand up and down quite a distance and then gradually narrow that until you’re pretty much fastened on one pitch but your hand is still remembering that motion of rubbing up and down on the string very lightly. Did you ever do that? Andrea: I was never told that. Once I started trying to teach vibrato I started like, investigating ways to do this, other than what the student had taught me in music camp, and that was one of the things I think, William Starr. I went to the Institute of Chamber Music, he was also at the University of Milwaukee, or sorry Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and he was on staff there and that’s one of the Suzuki ways of doing things and I kind of learned that while I was there as a way of figuring out the whole vibrato situation. But no, no one ever told me that. I mean. I was an adult �by the time I started looking at that and was- I actually learned a lot by starting to teach. I didn’t know what positions were, I mean I didn’t- I just played. In fact, all the way through graduate school I didn’t know what positions were and then I discovered Rick Mooney books and “Oh, these are the positions?” [“Positions,” on a stringed instrument, are numbered according to what pitch the left index finger is placed on, on the fingerboard.] He also wrote a double-stop book which is pretty good and I was like, “Oh, yeah this would have been really helpful.” (laughter) [Double-stops are two notes played on a stringed instrument simultaneously] I didn’t know what second or third position was. I was just like, “What are positions? You just, you find the note.” But yeah. Rebecca: It doesn’t help that it’s according to the logic of violin strings. [Because the violin fingerboard is approximately half the length of the cello fingerboard, the violinist’s left hand can reach one more pitch than the cellist’s left hand can. Since the system of position numbering for all stringed instruments is based on how many pitches the violinist can play before having to move the hand, this numbering system doesn’t transfer logically to the larger instruments such as cello and bass.] Andrea: Right, yeah and that’s the problem with bass playing too, I think. Rebecca: (laughter) Andrea: They need to have somebody out there with a bright mind who understands bass and goes, “Okay, here are the method books that are good to actually help you people.” Rebecca: Yeah. Andrea: And they still don’t have that. �Rebecca: Well, it would take just the right person, and if somebody’s a good performer it does not follow that they’re a good teacher and, you know, have enough ability to render into a system what they do. I noticed that. Andrea: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay, let’s see. I have some notes, I want to be sure that we’ve covered everything. Are there other things you want to tell us? Andrea: I think that growing up in the 70s, having a strings program in a kind of isolated, small community like that, was just amazing. Just an amazing opportunity, and you know, if I had grown up in a bigger city probably I wouldn’t have gotten the same opportunities that I got in Casper. You know, I was young. Curtis Peacock threw me into the Youth Symphony probably before I was ready. He threw me into the symphony before I was ready (laughter) but I learned. I mean he respected the capacity of my being able to learn quickly because he had known me since I was nine years old, ten years old, I guess it was. And so, having teachers that consistently, they may not be able to teach you the instrument, but they believe in you and can throw you into situations that they know that you’re gonna swim. I think that’s incredibly valuable, and so that kind of independence of thought and independence, of just being able to create and figure things out for yourself is really important. I teach kids now who are just- they seem like they’re helpless. And you know it’s kinda- and I teach in the public schools right, who seem like, “I don’t know how to do this.” and I’m like, “Well, figure it out.” As I get older, I’m getting a little bit more persnickety. It’s just like, “You people have the kind of resources I didn’t have growing up. You have YouTube for one thing. (laughter) And you know, why don’t you just figure this out? It’s- you could figure it out if you want to.” So, you know, it gave me the opportunity to be free to learn how to play. �Rebecca: Well, Andrea I can’t resist. Well, I don’t want to interrupt you if you have more to say. Andrea: Nah, that was about it. (laughter) Rebecca: You’ve smoked a story out of me here. When I was, I don’t know, I’d been teaching about twenty years and I was starting to feel kind of stifled by what I was doing and I read, I forget now just what book it was by Abraham Maslow, if it wasn’t a book, it was a story of some Native Americans who were sitting around watching a two-year-old, a very young child, try to open a really heavy door and Maslow watched this. I’m not sure how he had the opportunity to watch it but he did, and the really cool thing from his point of view was that the adults did not help this kid at all, and so this very young, it sounded like maybe he was two or three, struggled and struggled and struggled and struggled to get this door open with no help from the observing adults and finally got it, and you can imagine the sense of accomplishment, the unbelievable sticktoitiveness and hard work. So I read that, and it just changed my teaching forever and I began saying to my students, “I’m here for you to bring your problems, your cello playing problems to me about, but I’m not gonna tell you how to do things anymore. Go home and struggle with it and tell me what you ran into next week. Bye.” I mean, I didn’t cheat them of their lesson time, but it just changed everything. And so these students, they got really really really attached to their own learning process and figuring it out. They were just so excited about it, and it basically ruined them for their college teachers who were, logically enough, the teacher knows more than the student, so of course the teacher is the authority and should tell the student how to play. That’s the mindset they ran into and it was really hard for them. (laughter) Andrea: Oh, yep. Well it’s interesting because yeah, when you teach yourself you’re kind of likeit depends on how the ego goes I guess, whenever- when I got to people who I knew knew more than I did, they would ask me to jump and my question was always, “How high do you want me �to jump?” It wasn’t like, well, I can think for myself, I already knew that (laughter) but now you have something to add to it so I mean maybe, maybe this is a different generation of, I think somewhat self-entitled children who’ve been raised differently than my parents who grew up during the Depression raised me. So I think it might be just a different culture actually and it’s interesting that you talk about Native American because I’m adopted and I’m Native American. (laughter) Rebecca: Yeah I knew you were adopted. That’s about all I knew. Andrea: Oh yeah, I’m from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation up in North Dakota. But I never saw any of it because I was adopted. Rebecca: [How] young? Andrea: Very young, yeah. Baby. Rebecca: Ah. Okay so, so it’s very interesting that you should talk about how, really, the best thing about being from Casper was that what other people would perceive as a lack of opportunity you experienced as opportunities. Andrea: With the right kind of mindset probably, yeah. Rebecca: Mhmm. Andrea: Yeah, I mean I enjoyed the independence of, of always being able to think for myself. I would, you know, and I would learn from watching the Denver Symphony on PBS every once in a while and when they focused in on the cellos, I would really look at them. And also, just I guess the fact that a small place like Casper, Wyoming would have a youth symphony and a symphony, and occasionally have chamber music come in, and then someone who knew what they were doing who was like, fun, like Mr. Peacock was. �Rebecca: Yeah, and the Casper College Baroque Ensemble could not have functioned without high school cellists cause there often were not many or any cello students at Casper College. Andrea: Right. Both: Yeah. Andrea: Yeah. So I got to do that. Then there was a harpsichord. I never heard of harpsichord before. That was like, “Wow, look at that! That’s a harpsichord.” (laughter) And I grew to not really like the sound of it but that’s okay. (laughter) Rebecca: Okay describe it. You mentioned it, now you get to describe it. (laughter) Andrea: Oh no no no. It sounds like, oh who was it that said it sounds like skeletons- oh I shouldn’t say this; I’m on tape. Rebecca: (laugher) That’s alright. If you don’t know who said it, it doesn't matter. Andrea: Skeletons copulating on a tin roof. I don’t like the harpsichord. I think I admire the people who are willing to play it. (laughter) Rebecca: Well, so it’s a keyboard instrument, I forget if it has one or two keyboards. Andrea: (laughter) It can have one or two, yeah. Rebecca: And they’reAndrea: And it’s very difficult to tune and it has a very tinny sound and it’s a precursor of the piano, piano forte. Rebecca: Right. And it’s plucked instead of pounded. Andrea: Yeah, the strings are plucked by the keys rather than pounded like the piano. Rebecca: Yeah, well I think a really high quality harpsichord very well tuned is a real addition to Bach and Corelli and those things. �Andrea: Oh I agree. I’ve played continuo with lots of them but as far as- they blend really well but if you had asked me to go to a harpsichord recital Rebecca: Oh no. Andrea: I wouldn’t be able to do it. Rebecca: I wouldn’t either. Okay, now you’ve mentioned continuo now you get to describeAndrea: Okay, don’t no no no. [inaudible]. You keep asking me- I gotta go (laughter) at some point. [“Continuo” is a bass line, often played by the principal cello and a keyboard instrument (usually harpsichord). As the term suggests, this bass line continues throughout a piece, when the other instruments are silent. The best example is The Messiah, by George Friedrich Handel, late 17th and early 18th century German-British composer, The Messiah has choral and orchestral movements interspersed with interludes where a vocal soloist sings a short “recitative,” resembling an improvisation, and accompanied by cello and harpsichord.] Rebecca: Okay. Yeah, okay. Andrea: It’s been really fun talking to ya. Rebecca: Well thank you for giving us your time. Andrea: (laughter) Oh sure. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Andrea DiGregorio Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-06-22 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Andrea DiGregorio. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on June 22, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rebecca Hein; Andrea DiGregorio Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.01_Andrea_DiGregorio_6-22-22_Compressed Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/a13a25ca8ffc42cff3d322d9a7398d66.mp3 b0f0872f7c3ed9d48c1048f76b414d0c https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/8517d5d650ba4e2de4693d1c0e44e79f.pdf 2ca3a96783a2c0a2277a1ab6f24607c1 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Carolyn Deuel, June 4, 2022 Date transcribed: July 11, 2022 Rebecca: Great, so can you still hear me? Carolyn: Yes, I can. Rebecca: Okay, thank you very much for giving your time today. Let’s start with your name and your instrument and a little bit about your musical background, how you came to play that instrument or those instruments. Then we’ll go from there. Carolyn: Okay, Carolyn Deuel and I play percussion in the symphony mostly mallets. I have a degree in piano from the University of Northern Colorado. A degree in organ from the University of Iowa and while I was at Iowa I took percussion from Tom Davis who was the head of percussion and actually a Casper native. And so, when I got done with my master’s I came back to Casper in the summer of 1976 and they were doing the musical 1776. Tom Kinser [Head of the Casper College music department, saxophone instructor, and conductor of the stage band, in the mid-1970s] was one of the ones knowing I took percussion at Iowa so he invited me to play in the city band, and when Curtis Peacock was looking for another percussionist for 1776 Tom sent him my way. Rebecca: Okay, can we backtrack a bit and can you explain exactly what mallet percussion is? Carolyn: Yes, it is a percussion that is playing keyboard type instruments, but you are playing them with mallets. Instead of your fingers like on piano or organ. That’s like the glockenspiel or bells, xylophone, the stand up chimes, the vibraphone and the marimba. But then I also play, when it’s needed naturally, things like triangle, claves and you know those kinds of things as well as bass drum. �Rebecca: Right. So the vibraphone and marimba it’s my understanding that those are larger versions of the xylophone? One with wood and one with metal? Carolyn: The marimba is wood and it has bigger keys or pieces of wood for the different pitches just like a piano has. Also bigger vibrating pieces of metal tube underneath, and it’s a more mellow sound. So, often the xylophone is a brittle sound and it will cut through things and marimba is more of a solo instrument. The vibraphone is totally metal keys and the thing that is different about it is it has a pedal like a piano so it’s the only one of the mallet instruments that has that feature and therefore, you can make the sound ring and mold different sounds together so it is a frequently used instrument to make ringing melodic sounds. Rebecca: Yeah, can you explain a little bit more in detail what the pedal does on the piano? So that we have a point of reference. Carolyn: The pedal, there are dampers on each of the strings the strings make the sound on a piano. There are dampers on the strings, so if you just play a piano note then the damper goes right back on the string and it stops the sound. But if you have the pedal on, then the dampers are raised and all the sounds you play will mush together until you release the damper pedal and stop the sound by having the dampers go back on the strings. Rebecca: Okay, thanks! Carolyn: Mhmm. Rebecca: Okay, okay I’ve got a question I don’t know if I asked it or not. What is mallet percussion exactly? Did I ask you that? Carolyn: Yeah, and I told you that they’re instruments that have keys like a piano like C, C#, D all of the different keys. But, you play them with mallets so you have a stick that you’re holding in your hand that has a ball on the other end of it and you strike the different notes with the �mallets. So, for most of those we’ve talked about you’ve got either a plastic or yarn head on the mallet that strikes so that naturally your not going to hit the vibraphone or the marimba with a hard mallet that’s going to damage the marimba or be too much of a brittle sound with the vibraphone. But, with the bells and with the xylophone you want a bright sound so those mallets are plastic or even when you are doing marching band or something where you really want the mallets then it’s a metal ball on the end that strikes the bell. Then with the chimes, the stand up chimes, you have a wooden thing that looks more like a hammer and so you strike the lip of the chimes with that. Rebecca: Okay, and I’m for some reason thinking about the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker— Carolyn: That is—that instrument is written for celeste [pronounced chell-essta] and in the old days with the symphony we had an actual [celeste] that looked like a teeny tiny grand piano. So that it had a lid that you lifted, it had two rows of metal tubes that stood up and then on the end a piece of metal that was hooked to the key it had a square block that would hit those and so they have a very special sound as you know, anyone who hears the Nutcracker, knows that sound of the Sugar Plum Fairy. But, it was a small instrument so there wasn’t the full range that I needed so I would have to play, you know bring the music down a octave to play within scope of that and now what they use is just a, go ahead and use a synthesizer a celeste sound on it. So you are playing it like a keyboard, like a piano. Rebecca: Ah, and in your opinion does the synthesizer really sound like an acoustic. Carolyn: I like the celeste better. And I’ll tell you what this past...Christmas when we were doing the Nutcracker just a suite from it. They really had trouble coming up with a sound they all liked and so it was a problem but they finally came up with one they accepted. �Rebecca: That’s rather interesting, personally I’ve always felt that synthesizers were never going to replace actual instruments and people— Carolyn: I’m with you. But unfortunately they’re cheaper and they stay in tune so a lot, a lot, a lot of people are using them, you know. Rebecca: Yeah, okay well I have to tell you this, maybe it will interest historical records but um. I was a freshman at the University of Wyoming and I was killing myself trying to learn to play the cello and it was so hard because I was still at the stage where I was struggling to play in tune and things like that. So one day I went into the sound lab. There was a guy there whose whole life was composing music on the synthesizer. I think I said something like, “Can you really compare what you’re doing to what I’m doing?” He knew I was a cello performance major and he said “Yeah” and I said, ‘How can you figure?” I was trying not to be adversarial but it was such a struggle to—a Carolyn: Oh boy— Rebecca: Learn to play the cello. He said, “Well I think it’s the same because I control everything this synthesizer does.” So he was saying he played it like anyone else plays an instrument. I went away from that conversation feeling really stunned because if there’s one thing I couldn’t do at that stage of my skills is control what the cello did. Carolyn: (laughing) Rebecca: It was a great conversation. Carolyn: That’s neat, very cool. Well you know the Shepherd of the Hills [Presbyterian church in Casper, Wyo.] just got a new organ and they are very proud of it because they, they had an instrument that wasn’t very good and what they did. [Inaudible] is the organist there and they got one that has samples from the different organs of the world. So, they invited the folks of us who �play the Bach’s Lunch concerts on the pipe organ at Saint Mark’s [Episcopal church in Casper, Wyo.] to play a recital there and it was fun! I played a Franck piece [Cesar Franck, 19th century French composer and pianist] with the French Cavaille Coll organ sound [Cavaille Coll was a 19th century French organ builder]. Those were special organs that had all kinds of different mechanisms to them. I used the samplings from that for the Franck. Then, I used an American organ for an American piece and it was fun to hear the difference, but still it's like you're hearing a recording, you know. And I don’t ever want to hurt their feelings but it isn’t the same as the pipe organ. Rebecca: Well, organs are a very difficult instrument in my opinion because where you have your hands it seems to me there is more than one keyboard. Is that right? Carolyn: Yes, and then you have the full pedal board too so you have your feet doing the third part you know. Rebecca: That’s why I think it’s difficult, almost as difficult as the double bass. Carolyn: Aha (laughter) Rebecca: Okay great. Okay, is there anything else you want to add about your background before we go onto your affiliation with symphony? Carolyn: No, I don’t think so. But I’m glad to get to tell the story about 1776 because that gave me an easy entrance into the symphony. It was the symphony that was doing the 1776 musical so by Kinser telling Curtis that I played percussion, and by my playing for him and doing an okay job in the musical. I’ve been in the symphony since 1976. Rebecca: Okay, and what instruments did you play in the 1776, in that musical? Carolyn: Well, that is the only time in my life that I ever played timpani. So he had a need for a person in the pit [orchestra pit, where musicians are grouped in an area lower than the stage] and �he could only have two performers so I mostly played bells. But, I did do a little bit of timpani because that was needed. So, I am trying to think, am I right? Was I playing or was Roger Cliff playing? I know that I was doing stuff that I hadn’t done before, and never did again. And I can’t play snare [snare drum] because I never learned it. So, it was mostly: bells, chimes, triangle, I don’t think there was tambourine in 1776. That's another instrument that’s a common one. Of course, it’s been a long time since I did that. Rebecca: Okay, for, for the historical record describe what a tambourine is. Carolyn: It's like a drum head with jingles on it, they're actually called jingles, and they’re pieces of metal that are on the sides. So the drum head is on a wooden frame and it has these metal pieces that clink together and make a jingly sound. Rebecca: So you hold the frame and you pat it? Carolyn: Shake it, you either shake it or you pat it. Yeah, you either hit it like a drum or you shake it. All the pop stars, pop bands, had people who would shake it or hit it on their knee and then come up and hit it on their hand. Rebecca: Okay, thank you Carolyn: huh Rebecca: Okay, is there anything you want to add about the various percussion instruments you have played before we go into your time with the symphony? Carolyn: No. Rebecca: Okay, so you joined the symphony in 1976. Carolyn: Right. Rebecca: And have you played in the symphony ever since? Carolyn: Yes. �Rebecca: Okay, and it’s my understanding, you referred to the timpani, that is a separate percussion instrument and you have a timpanist playing the timpani usually? Carolyn: In the Wyoming Symphony? Yes. There is one person who plays the timpani. And the rest of us cover the other things. Rebecca: Okay, but you have performed on the timpani before, and presumably could? Carolyn: Just a fraction. No, in fact let’s erase that and pretend I never played the timpani. Rebecca: Okay. Carolyn: Okay, (laughter) Rebecca: They have to be tuned, there’s three of them and they all have to be tuned, right? Carolyn: They’re up to five and they do have to be tuned. They have a pedal on them that has several pitches so you have to tune. Each one has a range of about a fifth, about five notes. So then, you have bigger to smaller with different pitches and then by what is needed in a given piece that says how many and by the technique of it. For instance, a lot of pieces that use—let’s say you are playing in the key of C, you would use the pedal in a G [A musical “key” means the note on which the scale is built, that in turn, the piece is based on]. And if there is a lot of time to move, if you needed an A or a D or an F or something else you could change the tuning on it. But if it’s fast notes where you have to go quickly then you would add a third one to be able to play more pitches or a fourth one or a fifth one. So, it depends on the range of the notes and how fast everything is. Rebecca: Now, that makes sense. Okay soCarolyn: Because each one can just play one note at a time. You knowRebecca: Yeah right, yeah because I am trying to make sure this is clear to the listener. Because each individual drum as it were, that is probably the wrong word for timpani- �Carolyn: No, their other name is kettle drum. So it is fine to call it timpani and drum. Rebecca: Yeah, it can only have one pitch so it's the equivalent of having a keyboard instrument with only four keys or five depending on how many drums you have. Carolyn: Right, then with your foot of course you can change them quickly. You know, but again you have to be sure it's in tune and it just depends on how many fast notes you have and things. Rebecca: Yeah that makes sense. Okay, so I was sitting here doing the math you’ve been playing in the symphony for more than 45 years, 46 to be exact, is that right? Carolyn: Right. Rebecca: Have you played every concert? Carolyn: No, and the reason for that is that the composers don’t always write us in. Rebecca: That is very true come to think of it. Carolyn: So we rarely play January concerts for the symphony because they usually do a smaller group of musicians and they often do classical music. And if there is any percussion it is usually just timpani. Now, Mozart once in a while would use triangle or something but generally the bigger use of percussion didn’t come in until the Romantic composers in the 1800s. Rebecca: Yeah, let’s back up and just clarify the term classical, because you and I know what it means but it’s not generally known that there's basically two meanings of the word or two connotationsCarolyn- Right, so when I’m talking about the classical literature of a symphony. I’m talking about the classical era of literature that went from 1750 to about 1810, and the main composers were Mozart and Haydn and the start of Beethoven. Rebecca: Yeah, Okay great. Okay so- of all the concerts you have played with the symphony can you describe a few that were more memorable than others? �Carolyn: I’m trying to think. In the early days we did more with the [Casper] Civic Chorale. So the performances of the Verdi Requiem and the Brahms Requiem [Latin text of the Catholic Mass for the Dead set to music] were very special times and the fun part for me was that I had also done those pieces in Mexico with the Civic Chorale with the Wyoming State Choir actually. Um, we had done the Verdi Requiem and I had done the Brahms Requiem at the University of Iowa. So they were pieces I knew and had sung and enjoyed. [Giuseppe Verdi, 19th century Italian composer] Rebecca: That always makes it easier. Carolyn: Yeah, and fun you know. Um, let’s see another one. ArtCore [Arts organization in Casper, Wyo.] did “Visas for Life” and it was in collaboration with Mariko Miller who was an Honorary Consul General of Japan. And her father was in the Japanese consulate at Washington D.C. when World War II was about to happen. He tried to avert that but there was nothing that could stop it. But her name, she was five at the time, her name was a code name. One day she was sitting at the table eating lunch and feeling perfectly fine and she heard her dad say ‘Mariko is under the weather today’. And of course it had nothing to do with her sitting there, it had to do with whatever message he was trying to pass on. So, in Casper then she was able to get another great story that happened in World War II. There were people in Lithuania, there was a Japanese ambassador to Lithuania. He woke up one day and there was sound outside and it turned out that there were many many hundreds of Jews that were trying to get to safety. To be able to get out of Lithuania they needed passports from the Japanese consulate, and they needed to be able to get on trains and get out of the country to safety. He had many wires with the Japanese government and they would not allow him to do it. So he was sitting there with all these people needing his help and not getting help from his government, and he finally decided he was going to sign them �anyway. He signed well over 2,000 [passports] and in that time span the passport was made to the woman of the family. So they don’t really know how many that covered, but he was still signing them. He was recalled to Japan and he was still signing them out the window of the train as he was having to leave. But she [Mariko] was able to bring the son of that ambassador and his wife to Casper and the symphony and the Civic Chorale and the school system all worked together and did this concert. And they had a talk and a film from that family. Symphony played Fanfare for the Common Man [by American composer Aaron Copland] and then I don’t remember what else but we started with that and you know the only percussion in that is bass drum and timpani and then it’s brass players. So I got to play the bass drum and it was a very powerful thing. The school system had essay contests and the winners of those contests were honored on stage that night at that concert. The Civic Chorale sang, the symphony played and it was wonderful. Rebecca: So Fanfare for the Common man is a piece by Aaron CoplandCarolyn: Yes, yesRebecca: Okay well that’s really interesting. Um, I want to jump over to various pieces you may have sung and or played in. I wanted to ask you about Beethoven’s Ninth. Have you sung in a choir for that? Carolyn: I have, it was fun. Various times there would be concerts that would be different literature you would have. So with Beethoven’s Ninth I actually just sang, but there were other concerts where we would sing, like Messiah [An oratorio (composition for small orchestra, soloists and choir) by George Friedrich Handel, German-British composer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries] but they would have more literature for the concert and I would get to, like, to play in the first half and sing in the second half. That was a lot of fun. But, with Beethoven’s �Ninth it’s very [inaudible] that we are talking about this right now because they [the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra] are getting ready to do it on October 8th. I will not be singing, but in the old days we had risers that had chairs so we could sit. Beethoven’s Ninth is written so it is 70 minutes of music and the choir sings only the last fifteen. So, you have the problem of what are you going to do? Are you going to make the choir stand there for 70 minutes? Or for 55 minutes? So in the old days with the seated risers it was no problem at all we could sit and totally enjoy the symphony and then stand and do our part when it was time. Then, somebody trashed those risers and another time we sang we were backstage and we were allowed to just come on for the fourth movement. It was very crowded because it was the Civic Chorale and College choirs so it’s not a comfortable thing to sing just because of the physical problem of it. We were squeezed onto risers. You could barely hold your music out and so it is not a favorite of chorale people, of a lot of us. We like it better when we are included in more of it and really are half of the show, but what’s going to happen in the fall is the chorale is- any of the chorale that wants to join the college choir will do that and will be rehearsing it separately. But there are a lot of us, about ten of us, that sit for performances. I actually sit when I play for symphony, most of the time I have a stool that I use. So, I am 70 years old and the only thing I cannot do is stand for a long time. So the word has come down that we won’t be able to have any chairs like we do at chorale concerts, so people will be standing for the fifteen minutes and I am not going to be there. But a lot of the people will enjoy doing it. They are going to allow them to come on just for the fourth movement and I haven’t really clocked how long but it will be a little longer than the fifteen minutes generally. At least they don’t have to stand for the 70. Rebecca: Yeah, another question I have. This comes from having had some voice performance major friends in college. They always explained to me that the human voice is a very delicate �instrument, it needs to be handled with care so that you’re warming up and not exceeding your range and not singing too loud and so on is all very important. I have always wondered how the choir and the soloists could manage sitting there through the first three movements and part of the fourth movement before they have to start singing. It must be very hard on the voice, is that true? Carolyn: Well you know there is a difference between someone with the voices you are talking about- possibly a little more delicate. It's like we are generally run of the mill singers for the most part so- it's not that bad. You will have warmed up a little bit beforehand but it’s not like when you have the whole group around you you're not really having to strain. I mean yes you are full voice when you get to the fortissimo [loudest] sections and everything but it's not really that bad. The vocalists you are speaking with probably have maybe more delicate voices in terms of what they need to be doing in a solo capacity. But you know if you are at a party or something like that and then you decide- oh let’s do some sing-a-longs people can sing and for the generals one’s of us it is not that hard on our voices. Rebecca: I see, so the four soloists don't really have any protective cover; their warmup that they did before the piece will last them. Carolyn: They probably have--you can warm your vocal cords up by doing kind of a humming or an ‘n’ sound so they probably know what will work for them to be able to keep their throats warm and their vocal cords a little bit stimulated. So I guess it’s probably the people that can sing after sitting there for that long that are going to succeed as soloists because they don’t have the benefit of being able to baby themselves. Rebecca: And it makes sense that there are probably lots of places where the orchestra is playing loud enough where they could do a bit of humming and never be heard. �Carolyn: Exactly. Rebecca: Well that is very interesting, to an instrumentalist all I know is suddenly they are having to sing and they didn’t get to warm up. That must be- the only thing that would be harder would be singing in a seven hour Wagner opera. Carolyn: (laughter) For sure. Rebecca: Okay, well great let’s see I am trying to cross out the questions as you answer them so I don’t ask them twice. Oh- You referred to the Messiah let’s go back to that and say a little more about it. Who it’s by, what it is, and why it’s significant. Carolyn: Okay well its actual title although I’ve seen printed other copies is accepted I think among the musicologists it is just called ‘Messiah’ rather than ‘The Messiah’ but Messiah. But Handel is the composer he was born the same year as Bach 1685 and he was in Germany but then he went to England and Bach stayed in Germany and there were various times when they could have met and I think they chose not to. (laughter) Because there isn’t any reason they couldn’t have crossed paths. [Audio cuts out 32:52-32:55] Carolyn: Hi, my screen went funny for a minute and then came back. Can you still hear me? Rebecca: Yeah, I can hear you. Great. And- the recording is still going. Carolyn: Very good, okay so. One story is the King was sort of snoozing and the piece finished and his wife jabbed him. And he was so startled that he stood up, and when the King stood up everyone stood up. So it has become a tradition that everyone stands for the Hallelujah chorus which is the end of Messiah. Rebbecca: It is the end of the Christmas part of the Messiah. �Carolyn: Exactly, and when people are only doing the Easter part they still do the Hallelujah chorus because of course that is the most popular piece from this work. Rebecca: Right. Carolyn: But the people from this- whether you are doing the Easter section or the Christmas section or the whole thing you end with the Hallelujah chorus and people generally stand up. But, it was kind of an accident in the first place. Rebecca: That’s a great story. Okay and the thing that I think is kind of interesting about the Messiah is it is one of the few choral pieces where the libretto [the words that go with the music] was originally in English. Carolyn: Right. Rebecca: I mean you look at the Brahms Requiem and that libretto is presumably in German? Carolyn: Right. Rebecca: And Verdi Requiem is in Italian, I assume and Carolyn: Right, but see Handel was in England. Rebecca: He is basically considered a British composer, I think. Carolyn: Yeah and so- so that’s why it was in English. Rebecca: Yeah, well cool. Carolyn: But of course he started over in Germany. Rebecca: Yeah, okay let’s see. We’ve gone over what instruments you play as a percussionist and you have described them. You have defined mallet percussion. We have clarified what you meant by classical music. Oh, you referred to ArtCore. Can you say a little more about ArtCore? What it is and what it does? �Carolyn: Sure- sure- we made up the name ArtCore from Art Coordinating Representatives. And so it was very strange when we went to get a web address. We tried to get just plain ‘Art Core’ and someone in England had gotten that name 17 years before that. So what we had to do was use ‘Artcorewy.com’ for our website because by adding the Wyoming part- and of course it’s worked out well because it lets people know where we are. But anyway, we made it up and someone else had it. So what we do is to present concerts for student and community audiences. For instance, when we had the ‘Fire Ants’ which is a group from Buffalo, Wyoming this spring they actually worked with the students at Kelly Walsh [high school in Casper, Wyo.] and worked with band, orchestra and choral students they all came together. Then the day of the concert we had a 12:45 session that students could bus in and homeschool families could come to. So, by having a general place they can come we can provide for all the schools. And then, they do a 45 minute program that incorporates part of their performance but also they talk about what inspired them to take up music and working hard enough to become professionals. Frequently the message that they give the children is, find something you are really good at and pursue it. It doesn’t matter if it’s music whatever it is but really make your best efforts to excel. Then they do standard evening concerts that are open to the public, and we have- not every artist does that but a majority of them do. For instance, for 22-23 our first concert is going to be Riders in the Sky which is very popular in this western town. And they do the western music like Roy Rogers and they’ll only do a concert so they don’t have outreach with theirs. Another one that we have is Urabe Mexicano. Casper has a Fiesta WYO on Labor Day Weekend on that Saturday and this is a group from the San Diego area, that’s a Mexican group, and it is a free concert to draw people in from the community. And so- because it is Labor Day Weekend we do not have school outreach with that because school is not in session. The other thing that would be of interest �maybe besides doing the concerts. We do a rotation of competitions. We have a new music competition that is for composers in Wyoming and they can write for up to eight performers up to twenty minutes and we help mount the concert the next year for the winner. That alternates with the one act play competition and official arts competition. And within our presenting series which is about forty to thirty-five shows a year we do championing of our local performers and state performers as well as bringing in Riders in the Sky, Tenors Unlimited from England so a wide variety. Every summer we do a music and poetry session so we include the written word by having a musician and a band and a writer for each of four week and the fifth week it is a musician and open mic for writers. And, I am the executive director of that group. Rebecca: Well, I have noticed that ArtCore does a very wide variety of things. They present a wide variety of types of music and artists which kind of characterizes ArtCore in my mind. Carolyn: And that is why it is interesting when we do surveys because we find that we have a lot of different audiences. We have people who will only come to the locals. You know they come to the Tremors and to the different ones with the local performers. And then we have the people who are really tied into dance, and we present dance every year. This next year we will have Soul Street Dance which are street dancers from Houston who are fabulous. We will have Rory Woodbury which is a modern company from Salt Lake and we will have Chicago tap Theater which includes live instrumentalists and tap dancers on stage for the concert. All of those will be doing a lot of outreach with master classes, school shows, and Soul Street even goes to the juvenile detention unit. Rebecca: Okay, that is all very enlightening. I didn't know that you guys did all that. Okay I want to jump back just quickly. You said Kelly Walsh, let’s just clarify, that is the high school on the east side of Casper. �Carolyn: Correct. Rebecca: Okay, well let’s see do you have anything to add and or- maybe I asked you this already I don’t have the question written down or crossed out. The high point of your time with the symphony. You have been playing with the symphony for- I did the math here, for more than 45 years, 46 years. Does any concert jump out at you as being the absolute most transcendent, fun, inspiring experience of your musical life? Carolyn: (laughter) Oh my, well it has been a joy to do all of them. I think the two that I told you about are probably the. You know the Visas for Life was very very special that we were able to do that and then it was a lot of fun to play in the musical- you know. I played violin in orchestra when I was in high school before my wrist wrecked up and so I had played in Camelot and Carnival and I am trying to think of what the other one was. But, 1776 is the only one I got to play percussion in and that was a lot of fun. Rebecca: Okay, is there anything else you would like us to know about your involvement with the Casper Symphony or the Wyoming Symphony? Or whatever various names it has had over the years. Carolyn: no just that it is tremendously exciting to get to be on stage and to be part of symphonic music. You know it is just- to be on the stage and be embroiled with the sweep of the sound you wish that the audience could be there with you. And it is much better now that NCHS, Natrona County High School, its stage has been redone because it has a lot better sound with the orchestra pulled out to the front. It used to be that the sound would go up into the catwalk and not go out into the people like you wish it would. So the sound is much better, but it is never the same as being in the middle of it. �Rebecca: It is interesting to hear you say that, describing what it is like to be in the middle of the sound. I know it is something I have always treasured about playing in an orchestra. So you are on the very periphery of the orchestra playing in the percussion section but you still have that experience of being immersed apparently. Carolyn: Yes, see I am lucky because they usually put me in front so I am very close to the harp and the piano and I often have similar parts. So I am very much in with that part of the orchestra. Jane Hammond and I are often side by side a lot of times and Kathy Williams on piano and then other-. You know, it is possible that the drum set might be beside me but a lot of times the snare players and gong and others like that are either beside me or in back of me. So I really do get to be part of the main part. Rebecca: Have you ever been called upon to play piano? As a percussionist in the symphony? Carolyn: Yes, there was a time when Betsy Taggart was actually the symphony pianist but she was doing a solo piece with us and so I got to cover the other parts she would have played if she were just playing the symphony. So that was fun. Rebecca: Well you have to have so many skills and know so many things to play percussion in an orchestra it seems to meCarolyn: (laughter) Rebecca: It’s not like me with the cello where all I have to do is hold the bow and move my fingers. You know that is a big job but it is only one instrument. And only one line of music, so. Carolyn: Sure, but but- what you are doing for the most part- I mean you may have a four part chord or something but generally what you are doing is reading the melody of a piano piece. Or say the left hand part if you are playing in some things if you are accompanying a woodwind instrument or something. The fact is, compared to what I read on piano or organ, the reading part �of it is very easy for me. Now, for everybody- just like I didn’t learn snare theoretically percussion people when they are coming up through school they learn all the different percussion instruments. They play cymbals, they play snare, they play bells and stuff. But I found a lot of times when the scores come to us that we use for a given concert. A bell part will have every note written in. So that says to me that it is someone that does not easily read and you know, sothe skill level of a mallet percussionist coming from piano and organ world is far greater than coming from the percussion world. And there was another fun concert in Laramie that was a celebration of- I think a concert of the opening of the Civic Center. Excuse me, I meant to say Cheyenne. It was in Cheyenne and they invited people from the different symphonies to come. So there were five of us in percussion that were going and the principal percussionist divided up parts. It was very scary for me because I was supposed to play a snare part, which I couldn’t do. But, instead of telling him I waited until I got there and then the group of percussionists were meeting and I said, ‘I don’t play this, I can’t do this.’ and somebody else said, ‘man I was really worried about a mallet part.’ So we switched and we were in great shape. Rebecca: (laughter) That is a great story. Carolyn: (laughter) And we got to play not only some separate literature but we got to play some pieces with Ballet Wyoming and that stage was big enough that they could have our symphonic group and then a screen that was projecting some images and then the dancers in front of that. So that was very cool. Rebecca: Okay, let’s back up you used the word snare. Can you define that a little better? Carolyn: Snare instrument is a drum that has some pieces of metal attached to the bottom and they can either be on or off. If they are on then it is the rattling sound you hear when people are doing any of the marches for military things or to accompany the Star Spangled Banner. Or it is �the general sound you hear with drums that are played with two sticks that just play evenly on the drum head. If you don’t have them then it just kind of thuds more like a standard drum but with the snares on it is the more rattly, higher pitched sound that everybody would know from marches and the anthem. Rebecca: Okay, let’s go back to the piano for a minute and clarify. The right hand is the hand that usually plays the tune and the left hand is- usually but not always- is that right? Carolyn: That’s right, there are pieces written to highlight your left hand or something you know but generally the right hand is more like the sopranos in a choir. It's doing the melody. Rebecca: Okay, and left hand is playing chords whether all together orCarolyn: Individual notes. Right. Rebecca: Now I want to go back to something you said about every note being written out. The implication being that if a person had a higher skill level they would just need chords indicated? Carolyn: No, it’s just a matter of- it’s just a matter of when I read piano or organ music like organ music I am reading two hands and feet. And on piano I might have all ten of my fingers busy. But generally with the mallet instruments you are playing a melody note that would be on the- it is just one note that you are reading at [a] time. So I am not reading full compositions where the piano is trying to be the full orchestra. Instead you are just reading one line. In a lot of the European scores they would write just one instrument’s notes. So just like what you have for cello. You have a single line right? Rebecca: Right. Carolyn: And that is what the mallet instruments would have for the most part. But if you look at piano music we may have four or five notes that we are playing at once. Rebecca: Right. �Carolyn: So it’s just that you have a single line that you are reading. Rebecca: Okay, I want to ask you about attitudes. You are a percussionist and I am wondering if either from your fellow musicians or from non-musicians if you have encountered a stereotype that percussionists are a little bit dim witted and that they don’t really need the same level of skill that a string player or something like that would need. Do you run into that attitude? Carolyn: I have not, the thing I have noticed about percussionists and I think we all realize is that there are a lot of people, especially people who are drummers, who are always their fingers are moving, they are always doing rhythms. You always figure they were doing that from the time they were little kids on their mom’s pots and pans in the kitchen. But when they are just sitting waiting between pieces, or something like that, they will have music going through their head and they will be doing rhythms. So I think of the drummers as kind of being engaged in and thinking about music all the time, and if I see someone doing that- out in public. I tend to think that they may be a drummer but I don’t- the only thing I have noticed is that people will kid us about being paid by the note. Rebecca: (laughter) Carolyn: Because of course we don’t have as many as the string people and so- I don’t know if you knew Leah Sprague but she played flute and then went to piccolo and she had rheumatoid arthritis and in the later years she couldn’t hold the flute. But anyway, when she was playing piccolo we did a piece and I had a triangle ding and then I had 82 measures [rest] and then I had another triangle ding and then I had a hundred and some measures and then I had another and that is what I had for the piece. I found out later, after the concert, that she was waiting for my second triangle ding to be her cue for an entrance and I said, ‘My gosh! What if I missed it?’ and she said, ‘Well you didn’t’ (laughter) you know but I could have! �Rebecca: [Inaudible] Carolyn: For sure, but so- then an example of what happened you know we just premiered a piece in March that was a suffragette piece for I am trying to remember the woman’s first name but her last name was Boyles. She did some traveling around Wyoming and she studied some history and then she did this work that we presented. I was told when we got the assignments that I didn’t have an assignment for that piece. Then it turned out that she had written the bass drum part that Ron Colter was playing so that it went immediately to a snare part and he didn’t have time to put down the bass drum mallet and pick up the snare sticks. So he let me know that they needed me for that section. The stage was crowded so if you see the recording of it you can just see my head in the back behind the bass drum because I was sitting beside the risers and right behind the bass drum. I was squishing in my shoulder as he was playing the bass drum and I was needed for exactly seven measures. But, it was loud bass drum playing fast notes and it couldn’t be covered any other way than to pull one person while the other did that… isn’t that insane. Rebecca: Mhmm, and the snare is played with wooden drum sticks. Is that right? Carolyn: That’s right, sometimes they have plastic tips but they are basically wood. Rebecca: Well, I have to tell you something that happened to me when I was at music camp at UW when I was in high school. We had a percussionist that was doing a demonstration or a performance for us or something and he asked us how many of us thought percussion didn’t take very much skill or that percussionists were second class musicians and so on. And a lot of us raised our hands. He is sitting up there with a trap set and I’m thinking maybe you should describe to the listener what is involved in a trap set. Carolyn: Okay, it has a bass drum that is controlled with your foot so you are hitting the beater on that by depressing a pedal with your foot. Then it has a snare drum like we have been talking �about that has the rattly sound and it often has a tom drum which has a non-rattle sound. That is just a general drum sound but it is higher than the bass drum that you hit with your foot and then it has cymbals. In this case the cymbals are a plate of metal that is on a stand and they are moveable; they are just hooked to the stand at one point. Then when you hit them with a drum stick they sizzle and they make a neat sound, but as opposed to the crash cymbals you would be hearing with the National Anthem and you hear snare and bass drum and cymbals all together. These are free standing so the person who is drumming the snare can lift his stick and hit the cymbal at any given beat. Frequently they will have two cymbals so you will have different sounds. So you are a one man band with being able to play the snare sound, the regular drum sounds and the cymbals. Rebecca: And the cymbals the way you are describing them, they ring until theyCarolyn: Until you stop them, that’s right. So what did this guy do with the trap set? Rebecca: Oh well he said; ‘Okay, do this with your foot’ and he showed us what he did with his foot. ‘Do this with your other foot’ and he showed us what he did with the other footCarolyn: Because you can do cymbals with your feet too. Rebecca: Yep, ‘Do this with your right hand and do this with your left hand’ and we very quickly discovered that was a lot harder than we thought it was. So kind of put us in our places. Carolyn: Excellent! And I was in a brass and percussion class at Greeley where we were learning a little bit about all the different instruments. So, we were trying out trap set and I was doing okay and the teacher was impressed until they told him I was an organ major. Rebecca: (laughter) Carolyn: At which point he said; ‘Well you should be able to have all your appendages work.’ Both: (laughter) �Rebecca: Well at least when you play organ you don’t have to play with your toes, just your two feet. Carolyn: You actually play toe and heel to play the black notes and the white notes Rebecca: Ah, so it’s basically the ball of the foot and the heel of the foot. Carolyn: Right so, we frequently wear tap shoes because they have got about an inch heel on them and that lets our ankle leverage to let us go toe-heel-toe-heel along the keys. So even our toes happen on the white keys, not just the black ones but you are basically walking along or dancing along the pedal board. Rebecca: Boy, playing an entire organ recital must require quite a lot of stamina in the legs. Carolyn: It does, it really does. You know it is funny I had a roommate at Iowa that was a theater major and we were not friends the first semester. Then she decided we should be friends, she was a very strange person but she could never understand why I would be tired after I had practiced organ for a couple hours. Until she finally went to an organ recital and then she got it. Rebecca: Yeah, I would imagine so. Carolyn: (laughter) Rebecca: Okay, is there anything else you want to tell us about involvement with the symphony. Carolyn: Um, no I just think that it’s a wonderful part of Casper that we have had such a history of music. Because they count- the City Band has played every year except the Covid year since 1888. The [Wyoming] Symphony when they count the years that we are playing, we are 70 years old from World War II. But there was a symphony that came before us but they quit for the war and they don’t count those years. So you know the people that we bring in from ArtCore are just totally amazed that we have the symphony and if they happen to be in town and they go to a symphony [concert] they are astounded by the quality of it. And they are amazed that we have �had amazing music teachers in the schools. And student ensembles [groups]. Another neat concert was when they included the string players with the symphony and we had 50 string players from the secondary schools that played in with the symphony for a couple pieces. But you know people don’t know what Casper is and then they come in and they find out what all is going on here and they are astounded. Rebecca: Yeah, that is not surprising. Okay well I really appreciate you giving your time today toCarolyn: Well I thank you forRebecca: Share your experience in the symphony. Carolyn: Well it is nice to be asked and it is very nice to visit with you and hear your stories. Rebecca: Okay, well thanks again and good luck with everything you are doing with ArtCore. Carolyn: Thank you very much good luck with this project and everything you are doing. Rebecca: Thank you Carolyn. Bye. Carolyn: Bye, Bye. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Carolyn Deuel Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-06-04 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Carolyn Deuel. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on June 4, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Carolyn Deuel Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_Carolyn_Deuel_6-4-22_Compressed Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/e39349ce7277d03f485db19a1d87e60a.mp3 5314eebd91fff324db76c8a78aba57dc https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/c2e54f6d26f2580d05a657769719b115.pdf 3705444970af5c3d2fa30b4208cadcf5 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Dale Bohren, May 18, 2022 Date transcribed: September 13, 2022 Rebecca: Hello. Dale: Good morning. Rebecca: Okay thanks a lot for your patience here, we’re only half an hour late. Dale: Well, it’s a tech world you know. Rebecca: Yup. Okay so, let me collect my thoughts here. Let’s start with your name and your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument, and other sundry items of information about your musical background. Dale: Okay. My name is Dale Dale, B-O-H-R-E-N, of course D-A-L-E. I am a string bass player and I began to play the string bass when I was in fifth grade at Park School [in Casper, Wyoming]. [Blaine] Coolbaugh was the school teacher there and he had a meeting with all the kids and he wanted everybody to play the violin. I said I don’t really want to play the violin, I want to play the bass. He said I don’t have a bass. And I said okay, well, I really don’t wanna play the violin. Anyway, later that day when we were at recess he was driving a Cadillac. And a big Cadillac. And he came in- the teachers used to drive across the playground to get to where they’d park. And so we were at recess, the place is crawling with kids like ants. And through the ant pile comes Blaine Coolbaugh in his Cadillac with a string bass neck [the neck of a stringed instrument is the narrow part that extends above the upper part of the body] out of the window and he gave me this string bass and said your mom’s gonna have to come pick you up. Anyway, [he] gave me this string bass, and my mother said uh-uh, so I had to carry that bass home that night. I was really thrilled to do it, just thought it was such a cool thing. And it was. �Rebecca: I’ll tell you, speaking as a cellist, I’ve never understood why anybody would want to play an instrument so difficult, and unwieldy physically, as the bass. You gotta be shifting ... [approximately] every two notes, don’t you? [Shifting is the string instrumentalist’s term for moving the hand up or down the fingerboard to reach pitches that are out of the reach of the hand wherever it happens to be.] Dale: Yeah, sure do. Rebecca: And you think that's cool, don’t you? Dale: Well, I liked the sound. I liked the feel of it. And they were telling me I had to play the violin and I was just contrary enough to say nuh-uh. Rebecca: Well just between you and me, I think it’s really hard to make a violin sound good because the upper registers tend to be screechy and that’s just really hard. It’s like [being] a soprano [vocalist]. Dale: Yeah. Well, it was a good decision for me. I’ve had a good life playing string bass. Rebecca: Do you think you've had more opportunities because you’re a bass player as opposed to some other, with the exception of viola maybe, other string instruments Dale: I don’t know, you know. I sure have had a lot of opportunity, I played you know, in country bands, and I played for the Royal Lipizzan Stallions because I could read [read music]. Other instruments played that, but I also got to play blues, I’ve been able to play jazz. Of course, classical orchestras, pit orchestras, theater’s my favorite. But I gotten to play in a lot of those styles and I don't it’s cause I’m a bass player but certainly they all have bass. And in Wyoming the pool is kind of limited and so I’ve gotten a lot of opportunity just by being here. Rebecca: And you’re talking now about just acoustic string bass, right, not electric bass? Dale: Right. �Rebecca: Yeah. Well, that’s really cool. Okay, so that’s some of your background, now let’s go to probably, Youth Symphony would have been your path into Civic Symphony? Dale: No, because I ... got introduced into the Casper Civic Symphony really early. I think Blaine Coolbaugh who was my grade school teacher was also at one time the orchestra conductor. Anyway, we lived near NCHS [Natrona County High School] and rode our bikes, my brother David and I, we were, I don’t know, like a couple of mealy worms in that neighborhood, we were just everywhere and always moving. And we had gotten two Sting-ray bicycles, Schwinn Sting-rays- we worked, we worked, we worked, and we bought these bicycles and were at NCHS and I’ll never forget it because we were driving our bikes around the front of NCHS, there was a lot of concrete, a lot of open space, we’d made a ramp, we could jump our bikes and all. And there were people going into the auditorium through the stage door carrying instruments and I saw a guy carrying a string bass in. And of course like I said, I was kind of attracted to that instrument and saw some other people that kinda looked familiar. Anyway, we snuck in through that door and watched the orchestra play years before I was ever invited to play, and then so I was watching the orchestra and just thought it was pretty cool. And then I did get into the Youth Symphony through the school district when we were playing and I did get to play. But Bob Bovie was my high school music teacher and he and Rex Eggleston [head of the public school music programs at the time] got me into the symphony, I think. And I played next to, the principal [principal bass] was Joe… let me think of his name here… Rebecca: Corrigan. Dale: Yeah, Joe Corrigan. What a wonderful guy. Just a happy, happy spirited guy. And he was like oh it doesn’t matter if you can’t play, but you know what he said, I don’t play every [note] �now and again. Anyway, so I got to play in the orchestra because they needed a bass player. And I was probably in high school at that point. Rebecca: Yeah. So that was Youth Symphony- no, that was Civic Symphony. Dale: It was Civic Orchestra. But I’d already been playing in the Youth Symphony some I thinkRebecca: Right. Dale: I mean we’d been on some tours. There was the orchestra at school, of course, it wasn’t a— they weren’t great. Rebecca: No. We were in the same school orchestra at NCHS cause you went to Casper College a year early, is that right? Dale: Mhm. Rebecca: Well, I’ve concluded that playing the bass is a matter of temperament. Some people are attracted to it and some people aren't. Dale: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay so, that’s your background. Now let’s go into your experiences with the symphony. The Civic Symphony or the Wyoming Symphony or what- Casper or whatever it became. And if you want to intersperse your experiences as manager, that’s fine. The cool stories you have from your years as manager are really worth telling, so just go ahead. Dale: Well I got the opportunity to play in the Casper Civic Symphony and you know it was initially way over my head but I just really thought it was…what a cool sound and getting to stand there and look at all those different sounds being made and put together into a piece and crafted. I played in the orchestra a little bit when Ed Marty [Edmund Marty, brass instructor at Casper College] was the conductor. Not so much played in it, as got to go hang out around. And I don't know if you remember Ed Marty, his daughter Zoe was a bass player too. �Rebecca: Right. Dale: And Ed was just really… I mean he was really a fine French hornist and a good musician and I think he looked at the students as potential, I guess. Anyway, he allowed me to come and hang around there and when the orchestra was playing. Like I said, we were in the neighborhood. So I got to do that. When I started playing in the orchestra really seriously was when I was in high school, Curtis Peacock moved to town. I got to take some lessons from Curtis Peacock and it just kinda opened up the world for me of string bass playing cause he talked about concepts and it wasn’t just okay put the bow here and draw the string here. He talked about how those things worked and how you made sounds and about shapes of notes and how, making music as opposed to playing notes and all those things I just thought were really intriguing and really caught fire in me. So when he came to town I started playing much better and started paying attention, I guess, you know. Before, we were just part of a pack of people that were being taught and so maybe we played in tune and maybe we didn’t. Maybe they knew who was, who wasn’t. I don’t know but became very in tuned to how to play more musically and better and join the symphony and then became very serious about trying to play those pieces and then eventually under Curtis’s—Curtis was the- also the symphony conductor as well as the [string instrument] instructor at Casper College—and I played better and better and I did win a scholarship to go to the Congress of Strings in Los Angeles and Congress of Strings was produced by the musician’s union- nationally. The National Federation of Musicians. And they used to have meetings; it was down in the basement below the drugstore on 2nd St- the Tripeny Drugstore. They had a little office there, and a man by the name of Kelly Walsh was the leader of the union, the musician’s union, which I’ve always thought was kind of funny because of course there’s a high school here named after Kelly Walsh, and later on I came to know that he was a very strict principal, but he �was also a really fun musician. I don’t know what he played, maybe clarinet or something. But anyway, he was the president of the union and I won a scholarship to go to the Congress of Strings, and you might have gotten to do that too back thenRebecca: I did, I was lucky enough to do it in Seattle, you guys had to get used to L.A. right? Dale: Yeah, we went to Los Angeles. Rebecca: Yeah. Dale: And my dad allowed me to drive the car out there, I don’t know how old I was, pretty young. And so I took a car with a string bass out there. I was very popular because I was the only one with a car. Rebecca: Ugh, yes. Dale: I was pretty shy at that time in my life. But anyway, I got to study with Ring Warner from the Chicago Symphony for that period of time. Met just some incredibly good musicians. I did okay. But it was a real eye-opener to see the quality of music that people were playing, people our age. So I got to do that, and eventually I did become the principal of the string bass section in Casper with Curtis. I had a couple of life experiences in the symphony. I left for a while and when I came back I was playing in the orchestra and Curtis wanted me to be the principal again and I just had to say I can’t. My wife had contracted an illness and she was having surgery every year it seemed like. I just had to make a living and I couldn't just do everything Curtis wanted so they threw me out of the orchestra. Rebecca: Aw. Dale: And I felt bad about that but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. Anyway, I rejoined again later, and have played off and on in the orchestra, you know, for, I don’t know, 40 years? Or more actually. Probably 45, 50 years. And so let’s see, who was it… The principal �[bass] player then was Richard Cohen and Richard was uh…He was a good player, but he was challenged in his life by probably, I don’t know, autism or I don’t what it was he had but he could be at times very difficult because he would have outbursts and play things and say things that were certainly heard across the orchestra. But it was an interesting experience and I’ve played off and on like I say, through many, many years. And I also played in some of the periods of time when I wasn’t able to play in Casper. I became a member of the Billings Symphony and played in Billings for seven years as a regular member and then a number of other years just as an import. Again, because of the experience I got starting in the fifth grade playing music and kind of being cultivated and fostered by a number of really good string instructors—Rex Eggleston, Bob Bovie were both really instrumental, if you’ll pardon the pun. At one point, I was in the orchestra, Curtis was the conductor, Donna Efimoff—[a longtime symphony board member] who was a huge supporter of the orchestra—came to me and said they had a number of different symphony managers, and she came to me and said we need you to be the symphony manager and Dale, you would be just great and we just really need it, and we’re kind of uhwe’re not doing so well we need somebody with some enthusiasm and somebody that really loves the music and loves the orchestra and wants it to succeed and work hard. And my thing was well, that’s a full time job. I have a job, I was trying to make money to feed my family, and I was. Anyway she said well, you know you could do this part-time, and she talked me into doing this. And as you know there’s no part-time work. There's part time pay but no part-time work. Rebecca: Right. Dale: So I started with the symphony. They had no money. I had been on the symphony board when I had been ... in highs chool, I think. I got on the symphony board and met a lot of the principal people that made the orchestra work, and gained a pretty good understanding of the �pieces of the orchestra, that there was an orchestra where people came and practiced and played music. And there was the part of the orchestra that was the board that raised money and made decisions and you know, decided what was gonna be played, and who was gonna be the conductor and dealt with all the problems and the marketing and the business things that went with that. And then there was the guild that was mostly women, I think it was exclusively women, but they did things to raise money. They had a a thrift store. They did fund raisers like dinners, they did parties, they did…they were the social arm also of the orchestra. So anyway, I did become the symphony manager and that day I realized they didn’t have enough money to make a photocopy. And we needed an office and we needed… we didn’t have a symphony, we didn’t have a season, and Donna had told me, well you know, we’re really… we’re talking, you know, about one of the options is that we fold. So I said I would do it and I did. We got busy. People wanted the orchestra to succeed. We sent out a fundraising letter and checks started showing up in the mail. We had people come by. Des Bennion [of the Bon Insurance Agency] had an open office space that he allowed us to use and I think we paid rent but I don’t think we paid much rent. And he allowed us to use his photocopier if we needed it and one thing and another. Eventually we got to where we had a photocopier, we had office furniture and we got that office together. It was on 2nd St across from Veteran’s Park. And people were very generous with the orchestra. We went from not being able to afford a photocopy to being able to produce some concerts. But each concert cost about, I think it was… I wanna say $7,500 it was costing us to put on a concert. Anyway, we did that whole season and we ended the year with a little bit of money in the bank and began on the next season and I was the symphony manager for three years and every year we made headway. The last two years of those three we began to work on– there was a lot of discussion in the orchestra world and in Casper about repertoire and what the �orchestra could or should be doing. And it centered on should we [be] playing– could we possibly be playing too much Mahler [Gustav Mahler, late 19th-early 20th century AustroBohemian composer] to attract a crowd and would the audience like to hear something more than just the classic pieces or the heavy classic pieces, and were we playing the right kinds of thing for our level of orchestra. And we went through, well there were some big bands–the Moody Blues was one of them–that were using orchestras as background. And of course the Beatles had used orchestral instruments in their more popular records, and then the Moody Blues. I had called the manager for the Moody Blues and said, you know—of course, they’re in London– and said, you know, what would it cost to have the Moody Blues come to Casper? And they said $95,000. Which just kinda blew me away, because, I mean, like I say, our concerts were costing some $7500 to produce and there were sixty or seventy of us [musicians]. So, I knew we couldn’t pay $95,000, we were lucky if we had the money for the next concert. But I talked to let me see what was his name… At the Casper Events Center they’d been trying to bring different big bands to town and I had had a discussion with–I’ll think of his name here before this is over– about how they could afford to get these bands and he was telling me well sometimes we get them on an odd night because they’re coming through, they’re going, they have a weekend here and a weekend there and they try to fill in inb etween and so we get a better deal and sometimes we can find a promoter that will take the risk, so explained that’s how they were doing it. I got his- he had a great big book and it was not unlike the [unintelligable] catalog, and it was probably, I don’t know, 14 inches wide by 20 inches tall. And as you page through this book, it just had all the different acts and all the different people who promoted different kinds of music and different styles of music and different kinds of theater and dance and all this different stuff. And it was like a catalog of people that promoted various artistic endeavors. And so I looked �through that and I found a- I called a couple of them, and just you know, explained who I was and what I was wanting to do; that I was wanting to find a group that was like the Moody Blues to bring to Casper to play with our orchestra. And I contacted a guy down in Jupiter, Florida and told him what I wanted to do and he said “Yeah, I’ve done the Moody Blues.” He said, “Are there other orchestras in the region that could play with the Moody Blues?” and I said “oh, I think that there are.” And he said “Well, would you be willing to help me find them?” and I said “I sure would.” Anyway, we began to try to put together a tour for the Moody Blues, and so we ended up with them in Rapid City, in Denver, Casper, I think Billings, and Salt Lake. So all of them, they just came on kind of a whirlwind tour through the Rocky Mountains and played. So we got the Moody Blues to come to Casper and play with our orchestra. It was a really good concert. It was at the Casper Events Center. It was- I mean, my recollection is every seat was filled. And we had a blending- the audience was really interesting because it was a blending of the rock & roll crowd and the orchestra crowd. It was very happy; maybe it was just me but I just, it was a very joyful experience to have the Moody Blues come. And of course, the orchestra itself had never played in something like that, we had microphones on violins and big mixing boards and roadies. I don’t think the orchestra had ever had roadies before. Well, we had roadies. Rebecca: [unintelligible] Dale: And it was aRebecca: [unintelligible] Oh, go ahead. Dale: Go ahead. Rebecca: I recall playing that concert; having to listen to myself through headphones, instead of having- being able to hear myself directly. And if I hadn’t had prior experience with that in Puerto Rico with recording studios, it would have been a real ordeal. But yeah, go ahead. �Dale: Yeah. Well it was just a really great experience for the orchestra and I think that it—and this was in the last year I was there before I moved on to being the executive director at the Casper Area Chamber of Commerce—but the orchestra had other bands come in subsequent years. I think Kansas [American rock band formed in 1973 in Topeka, Kansas] came, and they had some 50s bands that came and played with the orchestra. And It became, I think the perception was less stodgy than just playing Mahler and Beethoven. And I would like to say, nothing wrong with playing Mahler and Beethoven, but it really kinda broke the mold for the symphony to go try some new things. At that time the orchestra had a deal with Casper College, where Casper College would have their string instructor on the payroll, and then the orchestra would pay part of the salary that was to direct the orchestra, and I think the orchestra also had a person, maybe personnel, and a library manager. And that’s how they managed to get a good person who could conduct and also teach. And then relationship with the Casper school district, the Natrona County school district was that a lot of those string instructors in school would play in the orchestra. And they would- so they would teach their students in the schools where they taught and then they would play in the orchestra, and they had a way for their students to see how they played music and how one could do that. Back in those, I don’t know, I suppose in the 60s, 70,and 80s there was a youth orchestra in Casper, which if you played in the youth orchestra you got the experience you needed to audition for the symphony. And a lot of people did, and we called it string farming at the time as far as the strings, because you needed ten violins, one oboe but ten violins for each section. And so we– the orchestra cultivated and fostered that education in the local school district of students who wanted to learn to play music. And it certainly was a big factor in me playing the string bass for my entire life. �Rebecca: You recall a rule that anybody who played in the Youth Symphony was required to continue in their public school orchestra? Dale: I don’t recall a rule, but I mean, I wasn’t gonna quit. So if there was a rule, it didn’t… it didn’t come to my attention, because I wanted to take the lessons. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay so, you were manager for… was it ‘92 through ‘90— 90… you better tell me. Dale: Well it must have been…’90…maybe late ‘92, ‘93, anyway through late ‘95. Rebecca: Yeah, so Chris Boor[?] was the manager when I was hired to be the principal cello. Dale: Mhm. Rebecca: Completely oblivious to the fact that the symphony nearly couldn’t pay me. It worked out. Dale: Well, and then I was followed by um… Rebecca: Holly Turner. Dale: Holly Turner, yeah. Rebecca: You know, that is– it’s not a part time job period, it just isn’t. Dale: No, and it’s fundraising, grant writing. I mean, I think now there’s a bit of a broader base of employees to work on, but at the time if you were through cleaning the bathroom, you could answer the phone. And that was in between writing grants and writing fundraising letters and planning things and you know, trying to make sure the musicians were well served. The problem for me is that when I was the manager, I couldn’t really play in the orchestra, which is a terrible irony because the reason I was managing was because I wanted the orchestra to succeed but I couldn’t play in it because… you just couldn't do that, and produce the show. Rebecca: You mean there wasn’t time? There wasn’t time to keep yourself– �Dale: Well, things had to be done at the same time, during the rehearsal you might have soloist who needed to be taken care of, or cookies to pick up, or donuts or coffee, or just lots of different things that had to happen. And sometimes they…I mean you just couldn’t really stop and play in the orchestra and then pick it up, things had to be done when they had to be done, and you’d say well, you could have organized volunteers to do that, and we did, a lot of volunteer organization. But the part of that is you kind of have to be there on the ground when the questions are asked or things don’t get done. It just wouldn’t— it just wasn’t possible. Rebecca: Right, and I don’t remember if you have said this already on this interview but I remember when I interviewed you for my article that I did on the symphony you said, this sentence always impressed me, the three groups that took to make the symphony run, the musicians, the guild, and the board, none of those organizations really had any idea of what the others did or really therefore could appreciate what they did. I know when I when I was playing I only had the vaguest idea of you know, where the money came from to pay me and the other musicians, and things like that. Dale: Right. I think I had said that they each thought they were the orchestra and they– they really were I mean, they were all such necessary parts of it but it was kinda interesting to learn how they weren’t as interconnected as you thought. And the guild did things, but the orchestra didn’t really know the people in the guild, I mean, some of course, but it wasn’t like we were all in the same room doing the same things, it was various arms doing their own thing. Anyway, it was good, the guild— one funny story, we were planning to have to have a black tie ball, the symphony ball, this is what it was, called the symphony ball. And it required a fancy, fancy dinner. And so Donna Efimoff and about four others had arranged to have a tasting; I had never done a tasting, I mean, we sat down, we ate. I had never done a tasting for dinner. So we did a �tasting at the Casper Petroleum Club and we went up there and we tried a couple of different meals. And the manager’s name was Sandy, and Sandy would bring out something you know, and these ladies and myself, we would taste it and we were proposing this, well what would be a fabulous dinner? What would be something you could really sell? And they brought out…by the time we got to the dessert, they brought out some desserts and Sandy had this meringue that was supposed to be just fabulous. And it was a, of course, an egg meringue on a plate and it had some other fruit on top of it and I think some cream of some sort. Anyway, I was trying to— I had never had a meringue and I was trying to figure out how to, you know, it was kinda crisp and the base of it was about as big as what, you know, a hamburger size, and it’s there. So I was trying to— I took my fork and I just kept pushing on it hoping it would break into a piece so I could try it. And this meringue was like a tiddlywink, it came up, and off into the middle of the table. Needless to say the meringue didn’t make onto the menu. But it was just hilariously funny and those ladies, they must have just thought I was so backwards, and just to be clear I really was that backwards but I’d never had a meringue and it was so embarrassing and yet so funny. It was so funny. I laughed with Donna Efimoff about that for years. And, by the way, I did learn how to make a meringue and that one was just probably a minute too long in the oven. Rebecca: Okay so, do you have anything more to tell me about your years as manager? Dale: You know it was a really rewarding experience, and part of the reason was because of the people who really cared about the orchestra. They really cared about the music, they cared about the training, the youth part of it, they cared about the community part of it. One of those people was Betsy Knapp, and I don’t know how many years old Betsy was, but she had a long history with the orchestra, she had a depth of knowledge about music, and she really loved what was— she really loved that there was an orchestra in Casper. And she would write the — she wrote the �history of the Casper Symphony. And she would write the program notes for each of the programs, and so I got to know Betsy pretty well as we put together the programs and what not. And she would come in and hang out, and just for a little bit, just a few minutes, and drop off the work she had done, and she’d say well I’ll leave you to it and she’d go. But there were just numbers of people that would come into that office and they’d— they really uh— it was a community organization, they loved what was going on, I’m sure that’s the same thing that goes on today. It’s just was— it was kind of a hub. Really appreciated that about the orchestra. Rebecca: Yeah, so, after you ceased to be manager you could play in the orchestra again from a standpoint of time? Dale: I did, I played in the orchestra. Rebecca: From…that would be 1995 on? Dale: Ohhh, you know I was kind of off and on there, but I’ve played in the orchestra every chance I could, yeah. Rebecca: Do you have any high points that you remember from playing with the orchestra, either long ago or somewhat more recently? Dale: Oh definitely. one of them was when I first started playing, the orchestra was playing the New World Symphony, [by Antonin Dvorak, late 19th century Czech composer] and in the New World Symphony, one of the movements starts with the string bass section playing a solo. And it’s pizzicato [plucked rather than bowed] and it’s…it goes [to a melody] bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum…kind of on like that, just through this passage. And I went to orchestra that night, and I’d been practicing that part, and I was in high school, and Joe Corrigan wasn’t there. And it came time to practice that and I was the only string bass player. And I was terrified, literally terrified. And Rex Eggleston was, I think, conducting, but I don’t �know if he was the conductor, was he the conductor for the orchestra? He was definitely…maybe it was an interim thing he was doing. Rebecca: I think he was the conductor till Curtis arrived— Dale: Okay. Rebecca: —whatever year that was. Dale: That would make sense. He was the conductor, so he— he came, we took a break, we were gonna start next with this movement of the New World Symphony and he came back and he must have just seen that I was terrified, I don’t know. But he came back and he said, you know, Dale, how are you doing? And I had gone to a summer camp up in Bozeman, Montana, and Rex had been the one that had taken us all up there, been our Casper leader. Rex is a wonderful person. Anyway, so he said you’ll do fine, just do your best. So we played that and I actually kinda played it. And you know it’s just one of those things that when it’s all said and done I just realized oh my god I was just so uptight this whole thing and you kinda relax and everything else seems easy. But the next day Rex Eggelston came by to the high school. Of course he was in charge of the music in all the schools in Casper at that time. Came to high school and found me, and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said “Good job, Dale.” And how could that not be a real high point. Rebecca; Yeah. Dale: But the leader of all the teachers; it was really something and I remained friends with Rex for a long time. But probably the real high point is Gary Karr [world-class string bass virtuoso soloist] came to Casper as a soloist with the orchestra. And Gary Karr probably revolutionized what bass players conceived what they could do and probably revolutionized what bass players were expected to do, because he was just so virtuosic and the way that he played, he played �things— he could play Paganini on the string bass and the Flight of the Bumblebee on the string bass. [Niccolò Paganini, 18th and 19th century Italian violin virtuoso and composer. His compositions are among the hardest ever written for violin; on the string bass—because the bass is so much bigger—they would be just that much more difficult. Flight of the Bumblebee, by 18th century Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, would also be very difficult on string bass] And the things that he played and the tempos that he took, it was just…it was groundbreaking, it was ground shaking, I just couldn’t believe someone could do that on a string bass. And of course, admittedly we were in Casper, Wyoming and not New York City or something but Gary Karr really did change the world of string bass playing. Well, he came to Casper and I was the student and the principal string bass player so I got to play a duet with Gary Karr. And it was kind of funny, cause it was one of those things where I’d go boom and then he’d go blelelel, you know boom and blelelel. But I got to meet him and got to play a duet and got to talk to him, have dinner with him and realize that he was human, just like all of us, he just had this enormous talent, and was multiple generations of bass players before him in his family. And so that was…well I’m still talking about it. It’s Gary Karr. Rebecca: His last name was spelled K-A-R-R, is that right? Dale: That’s correct, mhm. Rebecca: Okay, Gary, just a normal spelling for Gary? Dale: Mhm. Rebecca: Well that’s cool Dale: Yeah. Rebecca: Well I’ve lost when that was. Dale: I don’t, I don’t know either, probably the seventies. �Rebecca: So you still would have been in high school probably. Dale: High school or college, yeah. Rebecca: Not necessarily, I forgot we graduated. Dale: Yeah, ‘74 maybe. Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah that would have been in high school. Dale: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay, so moving on from your high school years to later, you have played in the symphony off and on…let me think, I know…well you were accepted as a sub most recently, is that right? Not let into the section? Dale: Right, well, the level of playing in the orchestra has really improved, and I think orchestra went from, you know, trying to focus on local players to more of the audience experience. And so the, auditions have changed. If you want— you need to be able to play a concerto [showy solo piece for soloist, with orchestra accompaniment] if you want to audition for the orchestra at least in the string bass section last time. I just, I just don’t— I mean, it’s been a long time since I took any lessons, I mean I have played professionally and semi-professionally around the world but I haven’t played a concerto, and there are a number of string bass programs that have grown up through the years at various universities. One of them is in Greeley [Colorado], and there are students who go and pay for college education where the focus is string bass performance. And so those players, when they get out of the university program, they need gigs. And so it’s— since Casper is a regional orchestra now, they will audition for those jobs and it’s— it’s just more difficult for a local player, it’s more difficult for a player that doesn’t have the same credentials to get those jobs. So I haven’t played in the orchestra for years. But I think I’m on the…I mean COVID really changed things, I don’t know if they’ve had any substitutes in the past couple �years but I think I’m on the— I mean I was told I’m on the substitute list. But I’m very blessed, I have a lot of gigs. And I get to play a lot of different kinds of music, and including in a couple orchestras in Wyoming. It’s not a problem but it— the, the level of the musicianship in the orchestra has been improved, and I would say, at the expense of local players who get no— there’s no margin; you either play the part best or you don’t. Rebecca: Dale I don’t recall if it was you or somebody else who told me that since Christopher Dragon is the conductor and he’s also the main conductor of the Denver Symphony, do I have that right? Dale: I don’t, I don’t know, um… Rebecca: He’s affiliated with the Denver Symphony somehow. Dale: He is, mhm. Rebecca: Yeah, so his presence in Casper is attracting people, musicians, who want to come to his notice, and one of the ways they can do that is audition here in Casper. Dale: I don’t know if it was me that said that, I think it’s probably true though. Rebecca: Yeah, which kind of pushes out local talent like you. I have to say, I noticed that at the time and wasn’t too happy about…I mean, you’re confident, you could play in the orchestra, no problem. But that's just my private opinion. Dale: Well, and I—it’s just different, it isn’t the same as what it used to be and I think that that happens. I mean, I— I I don’t know that it’s a tragedy for local musicians. It’s certainly different and it ... doesn’t foster local musicians, and it affects the community in this way. And then if there’s not local people playing those parts, then there’s not local teachers teaching parts. And there are exceptions, there are students who might go the whole distance, but as a general rule that won’t be what…I mean the community— if you need a cello player you might not have a �cello player that you can find to do a gig because now they come from other places. But, that said, that is what has happened, and the orchestra sounds great, and if you’re in the audience it might be a better experience, that’s just the way it is. Rebecca: Yeah I’m sure it is, I remember they tackled Mahler’s Fifth [Symphony], not that many years ago. That’s not an easy piece of music and it’s a real treat for the audience. Dale: So it’s just different, you know, it’s just different. and that probably changes, with each board and as boards evolve and as management evolves. I know each manager has their own…you just never know what’s—till a person is in a job, in any profession, what’s really gonna be their forte, until they’re in their— maybe their second year and begin to form here their organization heads. And I think that that’s true with the symphony and through the various management that has been, and you mentioned Chris Boor and me and Holly, each of us had our own thing that we do, and there was a guy by the name of Kent Steiger, who I think was the very first symphony manager and he was a professional. Great smile, good person. And trying to herd the symphony into having a management, you know, having real management as opposed to a shoebox under somebody's bed, you know. there’s just a lot of changes you know, and it’s evolving. But I think the bottom line it is based on, people loving music and you know, their experience with that, totally positive thing. Rebecca: Can we jump back in time? I remember you telling me this when I interviewed you for the article I wrote on the subject, to when, I think you were high school you served in— you were on the board and learned a whole lot about fundraising? Dale: I did. I was very shy, you might remember, in high school. I actually knew you, I didn’t talk to many girls for sure. and I got elected to the symphony board as a symphony representative, and I was very young. And I went to a meeting, it was at ... [Marta Stroock’s] �house, and there were, I don’t know, 20 people there. And they had Ralph Black from the American Symphony Orchestra League in New York City come to the [unintelligible]. And Ralph was there, he wore dark suit, dark tie, white shirt, slicked back hair, looked very much like he was from New York. You know I was probably— I might have had a shirt with a collar on. Rebecca: And you had a beard, and your hair was a little long. Dale: It might have been. But we— so we were there in that setting, you know, and they were talking. It was a…I guess nowadays what you’d call a retreat. And we were talking about how to fund the orchestra and what could be done to improve the funding. And at the time I think the symphony had two and a half seasons in the bank so they could run for two and a half seasons without any fundraising. They’d been doing it. And it was because there was the guild, and there was the board, and the board would get together and in somebody’s office and the phones were such— you know, you had those phones that you’d look at and you’d have a…you’d have different buttons you could push for different outside lines. We’d have five lines, and they’d blink when it was busy. And so we’d get together in an office and they would have pizza or they would have— or somebody would make food and you would have list of people who’d supported the orchestra in the past and lists of people who hadn’t supported the orchestra but had been seen at a concert, and their phone number. And the thing you did was pick up the phone, push the button, and dial the number and say “Mrs. Rebecca, this is Dale Dale from the symphony, and we’re in the middle of our fundraising, and we— you know, we want you to participate with us, could you give us a thousand dollars?” And a lot of people were like, “Well I don’t know if I— I don’t really know if I can do that,” you know, I don’t ask people for money. And so Ralph Black was saying um–this is something I just— it’s just stuck with me a lot of years–he gave us all a piece of paper and he gave us a little golf pencil, a little pencil. and it— �and he said okay, now make a list of people who give money to orchestras. And so in this group, you know, they were saying well, people that own boats, people that own businesses, people that are professionals, people that love music, people that, you know, buy nice clothing, I mean all these different, different ways of explaining who it was that gave money to orchestras. But at the bottom line, and he probably had a kind of a roundabout way of doing this, but the bottom line, he said, the only people that give money to orchestras, symphony orchestras, are the people you ask, and not many others. And boy, that was sure my experience, in the symphony world. But, so I was in high school and so he said, you know, if you call someone on the phone and you say, would you give me a dollar? He said they probably will. He said if you ask for a hundred dollars, they— they might. He said, if you ask them for a thousand dollars, you’ll never offend, because they’ll think “This guy thinks I can give him a thousand dollars,” you know, when in fact, if you only could— you might give five hundred, you might give a hundred, but the fact that they thought that you could give a thousand made you feel better. And so he said you just don’t have to worry about— just don’t ask for too little, don’t ask for five hundred if they could give you a thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand. And so he’s also the one that you know, ask them to join you in supporting the orchestra because nobody wants to be the one that pays when you're not. So you’re calling them to ask them for money but you’re not doing anything. So you know, join me in supporting the orchestra, and I thought that was really good advice. Who gives money to orchestras? Only the people you ask. Rebecca: That’s so logical. Dale: It is. �Rebecca: So, something has occurred to me while you were talking. So looking at that symphony program, there’s always a list of supporters according to— categorized according to how much money they gave. Dale: Right. Rebecca: Right, so, it dawned on me, I saw my parents’ business way up at the top, that they gave a lot more in proportion to their income than a lot of other people but that was leaving out of the picture all the fundraising things like the balls, and the dinners, and the things like that that a lot of these other people that appeared to be giving less were actually spending lavishly at these auctions, at the balls and dinners. Do I have that right? Dale: You do. Rebecca: Yeah. Dale: Yep, yep, Rebecca: Well, what it really takes— oh, go ahead. Dale: Those— those fundraising things were really interesting. One time the uh— Susan and I, my wife Susan, and I used to donate a dinner at our cabin. And I— I would— I thought of it as okay, I have the expense of the steaks and the expense of the wine. And so I would say this dinner is for eight, eight people and it includes, you know, all these different things. And it would— it would cost us hundreds of dollars to do this party for the symphony. And one time a local real estate person decided he wanted that party. And we had music by the Tremors [a Casper band] so my friend Cory and I would play music, and I thought, you know, we’d cook steaks on the open fire, we’d play some music, we’d have some wine, and it’d be great. and we did that one year and it was really, really fun, and the next year we did it again, and one of the people that’d done it the prior year stood up and said, we did this, and it was really fun, he said, �it was just so so easy, and just really a lot of fun. And so a bidding war started, and it was a real estate person, and a doctor, and they started bidding on this party. And the real estate person finally said, I am not gonna be outbid by a doctor. And I think that it was at ten thousand dollars for this dinner, I mean I was laying down by the fire cooking steaks and we were serving, you know, probably a 20 dollar bottle of wine which is not cheap but it wasn’t like, a ten thousand dollar dinner. But it was, and it sold for $12,000 that year, and for a couple years after that. And and the same person bought it, we had a great time. And anyway, [unintelligible] was the support of the symphony supporter. And then at one point it was decided that that dinner was a little too rustic because there was an outhouse at our cabin, and instead of a bathroom. So they moved it to another location where there was, you know, indoor plumbing and the dining got to be like magazine quality table settings and I'm sure they must have served a meringue, what do you think? Anyway, it was really, really fun. Those parties were so much fun. And those things didn’t— you’re right, they didn’t— they weren’t what was put into the, to the program in support of the orchestra, those were just things you did to make sure it all worked, and the people whose name was put in the orches— in the program as supporters for cash donations. Rebecca: Right. Well, those are great stories. Dale: All in all, you know, it’s just amazing that there’s an orchestra on the high plains of the Rocky Mountains and that there has been all these years, and people who’ve— who’ve…I mean it’s changed people’s lives. It changed my life, for certain. Gave me a different appreciation for things and it, you know, music and math, I think are— established that they’re pretty close to the same part of the brain that you use, and I used to be able to just, do a lot of math in my head and people would say my god, how do you do that? And I— I think it’s the music. I think it’s listening to all those different parts and how that all works and the value of that in a person’s life �is…is immeasurable. So I’m just eternally grateful for having had the Wyoming Symphony in Casper all these years, and for everything that I personally got. You know, it’s— there’s a lot of rough and tumble to an organization that has 60 or 80 or 100 or 120 people involved, but it was really beneficial. Rebecca: Well, you look back at the early days and it’s really kind of amazing that Casper, Wyoming could give rise to a civic orchestra. Dale: Yeah. Rebecca: And from there I guess the growth isn’t too surprising, but it sure took a lot from a lot of different parties and organizations. Dale: Yup, sure did. And a lot of people after me, you know, that the symphony managers, there’s probably five or six since then, and another one coming. Rebecca: There’s gonna be a change in managership? Dale: Yeah, Rachel Bailey gave notice, I think May 13th was her last day. Rebecca: My goodness, I didn’t know that. Dale: Uhuh, and she’s— I don’t know what she’s gonna be doing, she didn’t really say, but she said she’ll be in the ... audience, so we’ll see. Rebecca: Well, well, she was there quite a while. Dale: Yeah, she was, she was. Rebecca: Okay, is there anything else you would like to tell us about your experience with the symphony or being manager or anything like that? Dale: I think I’ve said it. You know, it’s just such an amazing thing and what a great opportunity and I certainly have benefited and appreciate it. Rebecca: Okay, well, I really appreciate your giving us your time today. �Dale: Of course. Well, thanks for doing the interview and thanks for your interest in the orchestra. I think it’d be easy to lose that history, and we won’t because of your work. Rebecca: Yeah, we have to keep it alive, definitely, trace it from the beginning to the end, if possible. Dale: Yeah. Well, best to all of you, all of you Rebeccas at the [unintelligible] Goose Egg. Rebecca: Thanks Dale, same to you. Dale: Okay. Rebecca: Okay, bye. Dale: See you, Becky. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dale Bohren Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-05-18 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Dale Bohren. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on May 18, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_Dale_Bohren_5-18-22_Compressed Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/b22ac0c4ccfeae03bde91d5da2e869a7.m4a 4fe8348adda89a2a91e57d6485e5d16d https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9d1aff97434ba26058ca6f51532f2068.pdf 81af94f7af308070f6f504530b9c8a6b PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Delores Thornton, June 14, 2022 Date transcribed: July 20, 2022 Rebecca: Okay, let’s start with your name, your instrument and how you came to play that instrument. Delores: Ha, okay. Delores Thornton I play the flute, and, I guess I came to play the flute because my brother and sister both played clarinet so I didn’t want to do that and my parents thought, maybe a doctor told them, it would help my asthma. I guess because it takes so much air. Rebecca: And did it? Delores: Well you know we moved from Texas to Arizona and that probably did as much to help my asthma as anything. But, I was playing the flute by then. Rebecca: Right. Delores: So I don’t know if it helped or not. I still sometimes when ... it is cold and damp I still have asthma but you know I don’t have to use an inhaler or anything like that. It was never that bad I guess. Rebecca: I see. Okay let’s see.. Your education in general and your musical education? Delores: Okay, I have a bachelor in flute performance from the University of Arizona but I didn’t want all my friends to think music degree fluff, fluff, fluff. So, I also have a major in math and I went on one more year to get a teaching certification in math. And I did just a little bit of master’s in music but after I got my teaching certificate in math that is what I planned on doing. Because you can’t make a living in music unless you teach a band or something and I didn’t want to do that. �Rebecca: No, it is very hard especially for wind and brass I think, because at least in an orchestra you have many string players but not the same at all for woodwinds. Delores: Yeah, yeah andRebecca: Okay so you have a degree inDelores: I have a degree in flute performance with a second major in math and then I have secondary teaching certification in math. Rebecca: Okay so, my impression when we were both in the symphony was that you had a day job. And then you did your flute teaching at Casper College in the evenings is that about right? Delores: Yes, I used my math degree probably to get a civil service job, I worked for the Bureau of Reclamation as a computer technician Specialist for 32 years. Then, I taught at Casper College in the evenings and I did all my private teaching there too. Well, about three or four years ago they decided we could not do private teaching at Casper College anymore. So now I only have three or four private students and one or two college students and they don’t have ensembles anymore. So I don’t do much teaching anymore and what I do is at Hill Music, they let me use a little room there. Rebecca: Okay that would be Hill Music in Casper right? Delores: Correct, yes. Rebecca: Okay and for the non-musicians in our audience or whoever will be listening to this recording. Let’s just define the word ensemble. Delores: Oh, when I first started teaching at Casper College which was oh I don’t know probably between 35 and 40 years ago. They had lots of ensembles [groups]; they had a clarinet ensemble, guitar ensemble, flute ensemble, brass ensemble. Well about three years ago, I think about three, they got rid of all the ensembles because my ensemble always had six to eight people, one year I �had ten, but all but three or four of them were community members. They decided they wanted to, well I don’t know if they decided if they wanted to get rid of community players, for whatever reason they decided to have one ensemble that all the music majors would participate in because they all have to have two ensembles. Band being one and this would be the other. They only have 10 or 12 people in it but they wanted it all to be students. They didn’t want any community members in this particular ensemble and that is what they have gone with. So, no more ensembles. Rebecca: YeahDelores: Which is a group of players. [laughter] Yeah I don’t know. I think it is kind of too bad but, it is what it is. Rebecca: Okay so, when did you join the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra? Delores: I moved to town, to Casper, in 1976? And they just happened to have an opening. So I took my little flute to the college and played for Curtis Peacock and he said ‘Okay, you are second flute.’ And then when Priscilla left about three or four or five years later whatever it was, I don’t know if I should even say this because of the recording. I won’t go into the Casper College part. Um, I just moved up to first. There wasn’t an audition or anything. Rebecca: Yeah, well that would make sense if you were the second flute and the first flute chair was vacated. That would be Priscilla Nicolaysen? Delores: Yes, but they don’t do that anymore. When the first is vacated you have to audition you don’t just automatically move up. Rebecca: I am aware of how the symphony is being handled now so that jives with what I know. Delores: Right- [laughter] �Rebecca: Okay, great so you joined the symphony and became second flute. What are your recollections about those early years? Delores: Um, they were really really good. We had the same people and we rehearsed on a Monday night and then we had the string rehearsal on a Wednesday night and then the following week we went Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night. Well you know because you were in there at that point too. Rebecca: RightDelores: But we had a few imports. I am sure less than 10. That would come in to play the rehearsals Friday and Saturday and then the concert Saturday night. But, it was very nice because you played with the same people all the time; you knew them. We did tours, run out concerts and tours. You know it was fun, a little different now. Rebecca: Yeah, you recently retired from the symphony, right? Delores: Yes, a year ago in May. Rebecca: Okay, so you have seen this transition between how things were done before they went to non resident conductorsDelores: Yes. Rebecca: Through the 2000’s and the 20-teens. Okay, so I would like very much to hear your opinion if you care to state it about this transition that took place. When Curtis Peacock left and they started having non resident conductors. Delores: Well, the first non resident conductor they had did not really like Casper very much. And, he would come in as I recollect, and I don’t know this for a fact, he would come in. This is when they changed the rehearsal schedule so everything was crammed into three days. Strings on Wednesday, everybody on Thursday, two rehearsals on Friday and then Saturday. So, I didn’t �care for it because you find out what you really need to work on Friday or Thursday and you don’t really have time to rehearse or prepare. Whereas, if we did the runthrough the week earlier you knew what you needed to work on. So my understanding is that he flew into town Wednesday afternoon right before that first rehearsal and I am pretty sure that I was told, it could or could not be true, that he drove back to Denver that Saturday after the concert or after the reception if they had to do a reception that day. He also had in his mind that the Casper players were lacking, you might say. And by the time he left, he told us when he was hired that he was only going to stay three years and that is what he stayed. By the time he left Richard Turner and I were the only ones in the woodwinds section from Casper. Rebecca: And that would be Richard Tuner, principal bassoon? Delores: Correct. Rebecca: Yeah. Delores: And everybody else was an import and it just kind of trickled down so that those people were in those positions. So then when we got the next conductor, who did like Casper and did like local musicians. Those other players were already situated and it just has not changed. Rebecca: Okay, let me just back up a minute the first non resident conductor was I believe Jonathan Shames is that right? Delores: Yes, that is right. Rebeca: I don’t recall who the next one was. Delores: Matthew Savery. Rebecca: Oh, Savery already in the mid 2000’s. Delores: Yes, because I think he was here for about 10 years. Rebecca: That seems about right to me. �Delores: And I don’t think there was one in between. I can't remember another one. Rebecca: YeahDelores: I am getting old and senile but I- I think those are the only two. And of course now they have Christopher. Rebecca: Christopher Dragon. Delores: Yeah, and he is a very good conductor. He knows his stuff but he too is a stepping stone, he is using the symphony as a stepping stone. I don’t know because he is the resident conductor for the Denver symphony now. Every time there is an opening I am sure it used to be, well I shouldn’t say I am sure because I don’t know, but I think they advertised in the Casper paper. Now when there is an opening they advertise throughout the Rocky Mountains you might say. So, of course, a local player doesn’t have much opportunity against a doctoral candidate or a Doctor [Doctor of Musical Arts] from Colorado. I think the last time I counted there were 14 Casper people in the symphony. You add the Wyoming people and you will probably come up with another five or six and of course many of those people teach in Laramie but don’t live in Wyoming. That is a guess, I might be talking out of school. I might be incorrect. Rebecca: Well, I wrote an article on the symphony a few years ago and my research indicated that this was the trend. That is, people were from Wyoming they had a Wyoming connection or Wyoming roots but were very possibly living somewhere else like Colorado or Nebraska or Idaho. Delores: Yeah Rebecca: Yeah, okay let’s see. Let’s go to your musical experience with the symphony. Do you recall high points or favorite pieces? Or just in general, how it was to play in the symphony from a standpoint of music making? �Delores: I- I thought it was really good. Even back in the day when we had Curtis and it was a local group I thought we put on good performances and I think we sounded good. Then when Johnathan Shames came, and again this is just my opinion, he really liked modern music. Especially modern music that was written by his friends. Many times we couldn’t even find a YouTube recording of these pieces. And one time I even had a friend of mine from the Bureau say ‘We left at intermission because it was just ugly.’ Rebecca: (Laughs) and I was going to say how are they going to keep an audience. Delores: Well, and we didn't. I think our audience went way down. And then when Matthew came in I think he played to the audience. He was picking music that they would want to hear and our audience built up. Of course, now we still have a good audience because we have extremely fine players. But I really thought when we lost the local players that we would lose some of the audience because a lot of people come to hear their teachers, neighbors, and friends. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have gone to the symphony all last season and they have good audiences. So I guess I was wrong about that. And I know their quality has risen. How could it not rise when you have mostly doctoral musicians in there? Rebecca: A former long time member of the symphony ... told me. With Christopher Dragon in that it is really hard for locals, well you just told me this, to beat somebody who is practicing six hours a day. These people are auditioning up here because they want Dragon to notice them because of what he is doing in Colorado. Delores: (laughter) That could be very true. Last time they had a string bass rehearsal, I mean audition. We have a local string bass who is very good and did play in the symphony for a lot of years. But he was up against two doctoral candidates or full doctorals and he was not chosen. It would have been so much cheaper, but whatever. �Rebecca: Yeah I know when a local person is excluded and they are perfectly competent that is hard to watch. Delores: It is, it is. Rebecca: But there is not questionDelores: And that is why I retired because it wasn’t fun anymore. In fact, that last season I played was the pandemic season and I didn’t play with the regular oboes one time. And I didn’t play with the same oboes, I don’t think, more than once. You know because they were excluding everybody so maybe the regular oboes chose not to play because they didn’t want to be exposed or whatever. But it’s not fun to play when you are playing with different people every time. You don’t learn how to mesh and play together. It just wasn’t fun anymore. Rebecca: So you are saying you would probably be playing in the symphony still if things were different? Delores: Um, probably, probably. What I would have liked to have done which of course is never going to happen. I would have liked to move down to second chair and let someone else have the stress of [playing] principal. Then I would still be playing, but of course they aren’t ever going to do that. And the second chair is quite capable of playing principal but she isn’t going to audition against the doctoral people; it's humiliating anyway. And certainly if she would have gotten it I wouldn’t have auditioned for the second chair against the doctorates because that would have been humiliating. (laughter) Anyway, that’s my sad story. Rebecca: Casper has a really really really good orchestra to listen to but to me it sounds like the direction that Teton Music Festival has gone. Well I guess they didn’t really go that direction because they started that way which isn’t really part of Wyoming it just happens to be geographically located in this state. �Delores: I think that is a true statement. And I don’t even think the Cheyenne Symphony is a whole lot of Cheyenne players either. I think they mainly come up from Colorado as well, but I don’t know that for a fact. Rebecca: Well I have had that impression for a while and I think it is true. In fact, let me think when I was researching for the article I did on the symphony I ran across a very irate letter to the editor. I sure hope this is right. The conditions in the Cheyenne Symphony that it was really the Northern Colorado Symphony with only a few people from Wyoming in it. Delores: Well you know we joke a little bit that it would probably be cheaper for the symphony to move our rehearsals to northern Colorado. Instead of bringing all the imports up here. Rebecca: Yeah, I guess its a measure of the monetary support that the symphony has that they can afford to import so many people, and at such a high standard. I must say when I was a kid, the imports were housed in private homes and it was a very informal, low-cost arrangement. No one complained about [it]. I mean the imports didn’t complain being housed in private homesDelores: Yeah I remember that. Rebecca: My parents often hosted people so I remember that from high school when I was playing in the symphony. And college, coming back from UW. Okay, great soDelores: And now they probably import 30 or 40 people every time. It’s a lot, but now they have people that- I can’t even think of the right word. They choose a player and donate toward that player, sponsor and maybe that’s where they are getting some of that money but yeah. Rebecca: Well yeah that fills in the picture. So let’s go back to your musical experience, do you have any pieces that were your favorite to play or that were really wonderful. And do you remember what those pieces were? �Delores: Um…. Well, I played the L’eseini Suite that is a lot of flute stuff so that was challenging. Rebecca: What suite? Delores: It’s like L-’-e-s-e-i-n-i or something like that L’eseini Suite. I can't even remember who it’s by now. Because that’s where my names are, my names are what I am losing. But, Carmen was always a lot of fun to play. Rebecca: Alright, the Carmen suite [a selection of pieces from Carmen, an opera by Georges Bizet, 19th century French composer] Delores: Yeah- they actually did that last season and Christopher did, there are two suites, and he did both of them. So it was like ten movements and I thought it was way too much. [a movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition] But I enjoy playing the symphonies, you know Mozart and the Haydn. I enjoy all of it. Certainly much more than the modern stuff. [Franz Joseph Haydn, 18th century Austrian composer] Rebecca: Which has pretty much stopped? Delores: I’m sorry what? Rebecca: Does Dragon include classic pieces or does he stick with audience pleasers, if I am being quite frank? Delores: No I think, I am trying to think if I played any modern pieces with him. I am sure he plays a few more contemporary pieces but he sticks with a lot of the regular stuff I think. It’s an enjoyable experience to go to the symphony. I haven't heard anything that was really ghastly, well in my opinion. Sometimes the modern music you can’t even find a melody in it. You know, it’s just not pretty and I don’t recall hearing anything like that so far. �Rebecca: Now I have been involved in this discussion of contemporary music for many years now and I always lose to the people who say, “Oh, you just aren’t being open minded enough,” “You’re closed minded,” “You are mired in the ways of the late 19th century.” And I guess that is exactly where I want to be, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms and I just can’t apologize for it. Delores: See and that’s me too, and I played with the Casper College Band last semester because they didn’t have a flute player. So, I got to do it and he really likes modern music. Contemporary music maybe one would say and some of it is really, really nice. Some of it is really, really hard and some of it is just uck- I don’t like it. A lot of modern music is really repetitive. You have the same measure that you play ten times and then you have another measure that you play ten times. I don’t know, I am stuck with the old classics as well. Rebecca: Yeah, I am trying to formulate a thought here about this…but it has escaped me. I guess I won’t. It will come back to me right when you are in the middle of something. But, I do want to back up I am going to define ‘suite.’ Carmen was an opera by Georges BizetDelores: Oh yeah. Rebecca: And a suite is a selection from a larger work, I am thinking about The Nutcracker Ballet. There is a whole lot in The Nutcracker Ballet and the Nutcracker suite is taken from that but it is certainly not the whole ballet. Delores: Right, and it is usually 3, 4, or 5 pieces. Rebecca: Yeah short. I did not know there were two suites from Carmen. Delores: You know, I did not know that either and he put them together and apparently they aren’t consecutive because they were interspersed between each other. Because I would hear a movement, “oh yeah I know that one” then I would hear one I had never heard before. So obviously I never played the second suite, but anyway. It was just a whole lot of the same, 10 �movements is just too much. In my opinion, I guess I don’t have the attention span for 10 movements. Rebecca: (laughter) Okay so, does one performance stand out to you or jump out as the most exciting, the most wonderful, maybe the most challenging but rewarding? Delores: Now that is a difficult question. I don't think I have an answer for that one. Rebecca: Too many such moments? Is that why you don’t have an answer or is there another reason? Delores: Oh no, I like them all I just don’t have one thing I remember where I was “Oh wow! That was certainly the best one ever!” I think they were all good. I enjoy playing. Rebecca: Yeah, I know what you mean; I do too. Okay I am looking at my notes. Does anything come to mind that you would like to say about your time with the symphony? Delores: Um, I think- I think I loved it even through the Jonathan Shames days, I have always enjoyed playing. And I think like I said if I could have gone down to second that I would still be playing, but you know I am old and my fingers don’t work as fast and my eye-sight isn’t as good and like I said it wasn’t fun and it was time for me to get out so I did. Rebecca: Yeah, I rememberDelores: I would say it is certainly more fun to play than to listen, but I still go and listen. But I still keep thinking, “boy I wish I were up there playing.” Rebecca: Yeah I know what you mean. Playing, there is nothing like it. Unless it is a struggle. I have been in positions, not recently or for quite a while, this was early in my career, where I was over my head. That was not fun. Oh well. �Delores: Yeah, I don’t recall ever feeling like, “boy I really screwed up that performance big time.” Which is good I guess. That is another reason you should get out when you can so they don’t have to tell you, “Delores it is time for you to step down.” Rebecca: Well wind players are in a little different of a position than string players because frankly in a string section it is a little bit easier to hide. To fake it if you have to or if you are slipping last longer because you have the entire sound of the section to camouflage your shortcomings. Delores: Yes, true that. Rebecca: And for woodwinds and brass you guys are basically in a solo position where whatever you play is heard. You are the only one playing the part. Delores: Yes. That was the case with the band this last semester because I was the only flute. So, although the group is so small now he is always playing these pieces that only have five parts so there is always someone who has the same part. It wasn’t a flute, but yes it is stressful. To be out there hanging out there alone. Rebecca: It keeps you- I am sure it keeps you on your toes. I remember when I spent, at one point in my career I think it was a full year and three months playing in only orchestras and it wasn’t very good for my playing because you can’t hear yourself as well as if you are playing chamber music for example. I should mention for the non-musicians that chamber music is when there is one person on a part, you can’t possibly hide or fake your way through. Delores: Right, Right- Playing a quintet or a chamber group is fun and I still do that. I am a- I don’t know what you would call me but we have a little group that is two flutes, bassoon, and a piano and they still allow me to do that because no one is going to come up from Colorado to play at a nursing home for an hour or a half an hour. So I guess I am still an honorary member �and I really enjoy doing that. Playing in the small groups for different groups like nursing homes and assisted living and stuff. Rebecca: That is really cool, if it is a group of two flutes, a bassoon and a piano do you guys do transcriptions of other pieces then? Delores: Do we do what? Rebecca: Transcriptions of other pieces, not written for that combination. [To transcribe is to arrange a musical composition for some instrument or voice other than the original] Delores: Oh, um. Yes because we do a lot of chamber music and a lot of it was written for you know two violins and bassoon or cello and piano that kind of stuff. Rebecca: Yeah. Delores: And of course we do that through the symphony. The symphony does the job for us and sends us out. Rebecca: Oh, I didn’t know that. Delores: Yeah, it is called Music on the Move. We used to play, we used to do a lot of schools. But of course since the pandemic we haven’t done any of that. But I think that we did like three nursing homes, assisted living homes, in May and June. Nope this is May so it must have been March and April. (laughter) So anyway we are getting out there still which is fun. Rebecca: That is great. Okay, well it is kind of fun for you to tell me that you didn’t have a high point because it was all so much fun. That is not a common answer but it sure makes sense to me. Delores: (laughter) Well that’s good, I mean none stick out. I always felt good after I left a performance. �Rebecca: Okay, I am scanning my notes. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up? Delores: Um- No I don’t think so. Rebecca: Okay, well thank you very much for making yourself available. Delores: And thank you for including me. Rebecca: Well sure, I will talk to you later. Delores: Okay, Bye-Bye. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Delores Thornton Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-06-14 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Delores Thornton. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on June 14, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource M4A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Delores Thornton Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_Delores_Thornton_6-14-22_Condensed Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource M4A https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/94efdf89093a74dc872fb0a8e2de473b.mp3 889eb1e7d0275a1d6cd6b238ca3490fd https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9959218010dbddb6b6f82f8b686afaf5.pdf 50bcb11b7429602ab2a8e22a751ae19f PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Holly Turner, September 13, 2022 Date transcribed: October 19, 2022 Rebecca: Okay. Thank you for making yourself available today. Holly: Pleased. Rebecca: Let's start with your name and how you became affiliated with the symphony. Holly: Okay. My name is Holly Turner. And when I moved to Casper, I worked for the Nicolaysen Art Museum for a year. And then I heard the symphony was looking for an executive director. So I applied for that job and got the job. And so I became an executive director of the symphony after Dale Bohren was the director. Rebecca: What year was that? Do you recall? Holly: Oh, dear. Shoot. I can look up my resume here. Let's see if I can find it here. I can look forward as we continue the interview, Rebecca. Uh. Okay. How have you been? Can you hear me, Becky? So I started in, I started with the symphony as the executive director May of 1995 to May 2002. Rebecca: Okay. And what made you decide to apply for the job? Holly: Well, I love the arts and I love music and I loved the symphony. I had been, and so I thought it would be a great opportunity to try and be the executive director. And I loved it. Rebecca: Okay. Great. What did you have to do as executive director? Holly: What was part of my job duties? Yeah, well, the number one with a lot of executive directors that I've had jobs, being an executive director is, of course, raising money. And you have to have, you know, when you have a budget, you have to make sure that you can raise the money to pay the musicians, to pay the salaries, to pay the electricity bill. And so fundraising was a major part of my job. So I know managing the whole office and managing the season ticket sales and managing all of the aspects of social media, well, we didn’t have social media back then that much. But but managing all of the office duties and the concerts and making sure everyone got paid and fundraising, making sure that we had our bills paid were some of the major duties and getting, and working with the conductor to help with the season, help with the marketing of the season and a lot of fundraising. I was in charge of all of the the fundraisers that we had, like the Symphony Balls and we did the Dream House, we did the Symphony Dream House. We did, we sold raffle tickets for an RV, I think, [and] a car one year and so that was a big job is the fundraising and then working with the board of directors to of course raise the money and work with them to manage and operate all the operations of the symphony orchestra. Rebecca: Did you have any office staff at any time when you were the executive director? �Holly: When I first was hired, no, I didn't have any staff. And then I got a senior citizen helper that was no charge from the Senior Citizens program, and they helped me with answering the phones and things. And when we moved our office from on Second Street to the downtown office, I still had a senior person, and then I didn’t. Before I left, I did have an administrative assistant that helped me with all the finances and some of the office work. And I was a one woman show for quite a while. Rebecca: That was my understanding. Holly: Yeah. Rebecca: So let's see. You did mention fundraising. I was going to ask you a little bit more about that. You know, there was what you might call routine fundraising and then special projects, is that right? Holly: Mmhmm. The routine fundraising: So to raise money for the orchestra, there's a lot of ways to fundraise. One of them was grant writing, so I did a lot of grant writing with the Wyoming Arts Council, Wyoming Community Foundation, those kinds of places and foundations. And wherever I could find grants, I would try to apply for grants for the symphony. Grants [were] one way. Season tickets was another way to raise money. Donors. Donors would donate money. And then we'd have our special event fundraisers like the Symphony Ball, the Symphony [Christmas] Home Tour and we did the Symphony Dream House. Those kinds of things were special. Rebecca: Yeah. Now, the ball and the home tour were annual events. Is that right? Holly: For a long time, yes. The Symphony Guild was active at the time when I was there and they helped me and we put on the Symphony Ball, we put on the Symphony Home Tour. Those are the two major fundraisers for the symphony, from what I recall. Yeah. And they were fun. It really brought, it really involved the community with the symphony also. Rebecca: Yeah. And I remember when you gave me an interview when I did my article on the symphony, and you went into some detail about the Dream Home Project. Could you tell me about anything you'd care to tell us about that? Holly: Well, I know, you know, getting enough money to be able to pay the musicians more money and to be able to support the symphony, you know, as far as the budget. We needed more moneys, and I remember coming up with the idea and talking with Rocky Eades [of Eades Construction] in Casper that maybe we could build a home and they did it at their cost. So then all of the moneys would go to the symphony. But we sold 4000 tickets at $100 each, and that was a very difficult ... it took us quite a while to do that, and we had never done that before. So it was a lot of issues that we had to work [through]. And I know Rocky really helped us with the house, of course, and having his, all of his people donate or maybe, you know, have everything at cost. So we went to everything we could think of from big shows at the [Casper] Events Center, and I got on radio and TV and and I was everywhere with a booth trying to sell these symphony ... dream house tickets. And we did it. We sold them all. And I remember we were on the steps of the house right after the Moody Blues concert, and we had the drawing and it was so exciting. We had music playing from the Moody Blues. You guys had just played with them, the �symphony had just played, the musicians had played with Moody Blues; it was a very exciting evening. And then we were giving away the Dream House and and the winner was actually there when we drew the winner, I think it was Dan and Chris. I think it's Chris, Galles, won the dream house. And so it was just a very exciting time for the board and for all of us. And I know we raised over, I think $130,000 was net. So we, it was a significant fundraiser for the symphony, maybe even close to $200,000 that, I, if my memory is ... trying to remember exactly what we raised. Rebecca: It sounds like it was a historic fundraiser in the sense that there probably had not been any one effort that had netted that much before. Holly: Exactly. Yeah. And I don't think anyone since, I don't know that they've ever given away a house before. So it was something that was very unique for the symphony. And I it brought, I think people were so excited all around Casper and the state, you know, that they could win a house. And they still, I think, call it the Symphony Dream House, which is pretty wonderful that they still call it that, because I have a friend that I think, it's sold several times, but they were so proud that they were in the Symphony Dream House. Yeah. Rebecca: Well, I, I have always been impressed by that achievement because it was, sounds like it was a special and sort of a super effort where people had to work much harder than they normally did on a fundraiser. Holly: And yes, people just didn't, couldn't quite grasp that they could win a house. And so for $100, you know, they were like, what about the taxes? And I said, well, you know, you you can sell the house and pay the taxes and still come home with quite a bit of money. You know, and I think the people that won it stayed in it a couple of nights and then they did sell it and I think they paid off their house or something. And so it was just a wonderful opportunity for somebody and it was a definite big job to sell that many tickets at that price because at that time, that was a lot of money to take a chance. Rebecca: Yeah for some people, that always will be a lot of money. Holly: Exactly. Rebecca: Okay. So you mentioned also raffling off a car. Do you recall anything about that? Holly: I think it was after me that they raffled off a car, but I think we had raffled off, I know there was, seems to me, I think after me also because I think I was pretty burned out after raising [indistinguishable], but I think they did do an RV. They sold raffle tickets for an RV. And I think that was successful too. But I don't think quite ever was as much [as] was raised as the Symphony Dream House. Rebecca: And it probably helped the image of the symphony quite a bit, boosted the visibility of the organization, would you say? Holly: Yes, I think, you know, everybody was just enamored and just excited. And this, that dream, that thought of that, oh, my gosh, I could win a house. You know, I think that really captured everybody's attention as far as in the community, because I don't think it had been done �before. It was a unique fundraiser. So I think from all the TV and radio and newspaper and all of us selling those tickets at the house and at different events, it really got the symphony's name out there in the community that we were doing that to increase the quality and the reach of the Wyoming Symphony. Rebecca: Yeah, and when you think about what it takes to build a house, all the different people or types of professionals, like the architect and the carpenters and the foundation layers and the siders and the roofers and the electricians and you name it. Holly: All of that. I know. And luckily, Rocky Eades and Lisa Eades were experts at that. And so they handled a lot of the actual building of the home. And we handled, of course, all the marketing, the promotion and the sale of the tickets. So, but it was a true partnership with the community and with a donor that really wanted to give back and and really help the symphony with its operating and raising those monies. Rebecca: Yeah. And did that have a direct effect on what we could afford for guest artists, for example? Holly: Right. And that was another cost that, you know, we couldn't afford, maybe. So I think our average was around $1,000 to $2,000, if we were lucky. You know, and I think this afforded us the opportunity to get some amazing guest artists like Mark O'Connor, as you remember, and some caliber musicians of that quality is what it’s helped us with. I know we could pay the musicians [more]. I know that it just helped us in all ways with the operations of the symphony. Rebecca: Yeah. Hold on. I'm making a note here. Sure. So there was a Moody Blues concert under you then? Holly: Yes. Dale had had one under him also. Dale Bohren. And I was, I just thought that was wonderful. And I, in my tenure also, we brought in Three Dog Night. We brought in Kansas and then the Moody Blues and the orchestra played at the Events Center with all three of those bands. In that time I was there and it was really, I think, a wonderful opportunity for also reaching out to the community and people maybe decided maybe they didn't know about the symphony and maybe they didn't know about coming to a concert, but oh my gosh, they're going to play with, they're going to be playing with Moody Blues or Kansas or Three Dog Night. I know those groups and I'll come check it out. And we did have a direct correlation after those concerts of an increase in sales for our concerts. And then people thought, Oh, I love those concerts and maybe I'll try a Beethoven concert or I'll try the Beethoven in blue jeans. I remember we did, it was fun and I'll never forget a woman called me and said, “You're serious? I really can wear jeans to a symphony concert? I go, I've always wanted to go,” she said. “But my husband doesn't want to dress up and really he can wear blue jeans?” And I said, “Of course you can.” That's Beethoven in blue jeans. And so at the time we really tried to reach out to the community and just to have different kinds of concerts that would really kind of kick people's interests and make them want to give us a try. And, you know, at the time there's this thought, I think that maybe the symphony wasn't for them or that it wasn't for everyone. And it truly is. It's a beautiful, the music is just incredible and it is for everyone. And I think those other special concerts really intrigued people. And they came and then they gave us a try on them on the regular concert season. �Rebecca: So was there a significantly better attendance at the bluejeans concert? Holly: Yes, I think that was our season opener and we had a ice cream social out front and that was really fun. So people had ice cream out on the lawn of the NC [Natrona County High School, Casper] and they came into the concert, they could wear blue jeans. It was casual. And I think sometimes the symphony gets a bad rap that it's high brow or something. You have to know something about the subject to be able to come. But truly, everyone can enjoy music and does enjoy music. And that's, if you just come to the symphony and just listen, you will love it. And there's just so much variety in the quality of classical music. And the more classical concerts you go to, I think the more you enjoy the classical concerts and your ear develops. And so I think these other concerts just brought people in and gave them a chance to try it out or made them feel comfortable and welcome in the concert hall. Rebecca: Yeah. And I would venture to say that once a person has heard live music, they realize how much better it is than any recording they could ever listen to. And they want to hear that more. Holly: Exactly. Oh, yes. In live music, there's something about a live concert that you just cannot, I mean, you love hearing music on the radio and your albums and things like that. But truly, the intensity and the the joy and the musicians, all those wonderful musicians working together with the conductor and the guest artists, it's a magical thing. And there's nothing like a live performance. Rebecca: Yeah. I'm looking at the duties you listed, and one of the things I'd like to ask you. I know you did this for Mark O'Connor, but was it part of your duties to meet the guest artists at the airport and drive them around and make sure they had everything they needed logistically and all that? Holly: Definitely, yes. It began with contacting their agents and then I would contact them and then I would actually talk with the artists, the guest artists. I would pick them up at the airport. I would take them to their hotel, I'd pick them up for the rehearsals and things and and make sure that they drank enough water because it's very dry here and all that. So I really enjoyed that so much because the artists came from all over and they had such amazing stories to tell and they were just incredible people. And I remember one of, one of the gentlemen, I think a violinist, had a Stradivarius and Guarnerius and something like that. So I got to actually see a Stradivarius and a Guarnerius violin, and they were just incredible. And I think at the time our budget was about $400,000. I think we had, we had gone up from about $250,000 to $400,000. So that was something, you know, to be able to raise those kinds of funds for the guest artists and for all the [indistinguishable] symphony. Rebecca: Yeah. I have a question about, well, I have a couple of questions. One is, in addition to Mark O'Connor, which I want to come back to him. Were there memorable guest artists that you've had really interesting conversations with or whose company you especially enjoyed or anything like that? Holly: Oh, gosh. Yes. Trying to think, there's so many. I remember. Oh, gosh. The Broadway stars that came from New York. That was wonderful. We sold that concert out. So there were �three Broadway stars, and I think he was the second Phantom. But I his name escapes me right now. But I. I know there was. Oh, gosh. ... Wu Han and David Finckel, I think was another, they were wonderful and just the, you know, the collaboration with University of Wyoming. [Han is a Taiwanese-American pianist; Finckel, her husband, is an American cellist] And then to have, be able to afford those, the quality of artists. I think it was incredible also. And just to hear, you know, their journey from, you know, maybe going to Julliard [prestigious music school in New York City] or wherever to then to have them be able to come to Casper. I remember also we had a group called Flash Cadillac. They were fun too, and then I think Wynton Marsalis’ son, or brother, was one of the Marsalises came also and and they were wonderful. [Wynton Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer and music instructor; currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.] And usually after the concert or before the concert, we’d go out for dinner and we’d just talk about the music and we’d talk about their their lives as a musician. And it was one of my favorite things is to meet the musicians and, and enjoy conversation with them. The guest artists. But Mark O'Connor probably stands out. Above all, though, he was amazing and I think we brought him here several times. And then when I went to the job of Wyoming Symphony, I mean to the Nicololaysen Art Museum. I remember bringing Mark O'Connor to Nic Fest and have, he performed at Nic Fest. And so we loved him so much here that we brought him back and even in a different capacity. Rebecca: Well, I remember he was one of those guest artists that, though his exceptional talent really set him above the rest of us, he didn't behave that way as a person. It seemed to me he was very, I don't know, one-to-one with his fans. You know, he didn't despise them because they couldn't play the fiddle as well as he did or couldn't play it at all. And he was, [being] up there on stage with him, you know, I could tell that he just wasn't arrogant about who he was and what he could do. Holly: He really wasn't. He was a wonderful person. And I think he came from humble roots, you know, and he would travel around [to] all those the fiddle competitions, I think. And then when he when he made the leap to work with orchestras, I think he just enjoyed it so much. And I think the music making was, he loved it and he loved playing the violin. And it was pretty exciting to watch how amazing he was and how accomplished. But you're right, he was just so down to earth and friendly and it was just a pure joy to have him visit and play with us. Rebecca: Yeah, and you got, relatively speaking, quite a lot of his company because you were the person that drove him around and made sure he got meals and all the rest of that, right? Holly: Exactly. And made sure that he was taken care of. And I think he suffered a little bit from some major headaches. And so, you know, you get to know these musicians and what they go through with stress and with their practicing and with what goes into being a guest artist of that quality is pretty amazing. The dedication and the work they put in for their craft and their art. Rebecca: Yeah. And then after the concert he sat out in the lobby for, I don't know how long signing CDs and programs and that just amazed me. And the same thing happened in Laramie when he was there. I forget what year, a few years later. There were him and the people that played with him out there available to talk to anybody for as long as ... so he really knew how to look after his fans. �Holly: Yes, he really, I think that's what he loved so much is to hear the stories of his fans and to hear, you know, to be with people that enjoyed his music. And I think he he loved that. Rebecca: Okay. So, how did all the, I don't know what to call them. I suppose they were pops concerts, the ones that you did with the various rock groups like Flash Cadillac, Three Dog Night and Kansas. How did the board view that? And did they help or were they just kind of tolerant of it? Or do you not want to say. Holly: Well, it was, that's always a question with orchestras, you know, how much pops do you do and why do you do pops? Is it dumbing down? Is that, those were all conversations, I think, that were held throughout the years. But from what I saw, I think, you know, pops really reaches out to the, you know, the community and to people that maybe just don't know about the symphony. And I think it's just a way to bring them in. And I think, you know, it's fun. It's fun. And I think the musicians, I was worried about the musicians. I think at some point I was like, “Oh, no, they don't want to do that.” But every concert we had with the Moody Blues or any of those, the orchestra seemed to really enjoy it. So that made me really happy that the musicians enjoyed it and the community enjoyed it, the audience loved it, and it really just brought more people to the symphony. And that's what my goal was, always was to spread the joy of the music and get people to come because there's nothing worse than an empty hall and you're not sold out. Concerts are a full hall when you're, you know, you're playing this incredible music and all the work you all, all the musicians put into it. I just think, it's, it's just that was my goal is to get as many people as possible into that hall and to enjoy this incredible music. Rebecca: Yeah. I have a note here. A little bit ago, you said something I would like you to clarify, please. You mentioned collaborating with UW [University of Wyoming] to get guest artists. Can you go into a little more detail? Holly: That's right. They had a larger budget than we did as far as bringing in guest artists for their orchestra program. And I think somewhere along the line, I must have, there was a tour, I think, Barry Douglas [Irish pianist and conductor] was one of those, and I think Marcus Roberts [American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader and teacher] was also part of some of that. And it's maybe not necessarily him, but Wu Han and David Finckel were part of that also. And some of these artists we could never afford. I think UW had this program where they wanted to outreach into the community of Wyoming. And I contacted them and they said, yes, we'd love to play with with the Wyoming Symphony. And they were trying to take these musicians around the state. And, for example, I think they might have cost maybe 10 to 15, $20,000 for these guest artists, and we only had to pay $2,000. So it was just an amazing opportunity for us to have the quality of of guest artists that maybe we couldn't afford at that time. And that partnership really was a wonderful one. I'm not sure if they do that anymore, but I thought it was a great collaboration with the university to do outreach into the state with that kind of program. Rebecca: Yeah, that's a really good example of the university serving the community, basically the statewide community. That's wonderful. Holly: Right �Rebecca: Okay. I just want to get back a minute to guest artists briefly. I noticed as a musician, when we had a soloist, you could kind of tell, they didn't have to say much, you could just tell whether they were kind of, just folks. They, they didn't, they were like Mark O'Connor, you know, they they were. Holly: Mhm. Rebecca: They didn't let their superior musical ability give them a swelled head around lesser musicians, community musicians. And then there were others that I sort of got the strong feeling that they were lowering themselves by even being on the stage with us. So I don't know if you ran into that with all the contact you had with guest artists or not, the sort of being grudging. Holly: I kind of felt that too, a little bit. And, but they were so professional. Usually most of them were so professional. You could kind of tell just by their, you know, their reactions a little bit. But they never said, I don't think I ever heard anyone say, oh, my gosh, I'm lowering myself to play with this, with a community orchestra. And there are a few times I do have to say, though, that maybe, we weren't maybe as prepared as they would have liked or something. But then I think it all worked out beautifully. You know, but the conductor, you know, that was part of their job is to get everybody ready. And so, but that's always the dance with the guest artists and, you know, to be prepared and to be open to what they needed or wanted or how they wanted to do something. So it's a collaboration between all of you. You know, the conductor, the musicians and the guest artists. So it was always fascinating how these, some of these rehearsals went and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is going to happen. And then it all worked out. So luckily it all happened and was okay. Rebecca: Right. So there might be some junctures at which the best the person could say would be no comment or “All’s well that ends well.” Holly: Yes. You know, and but they really, for the most part, from my experience, is all the musicians have maybe never been, the guest artists had not been, maybe to Wyoming. And they enjoyed the experience of a different state and a different orchestra. And, you know, and that's the challenge of the, of bringing the imports in that we had to from all over the state and from Colorado, is that we had such a short rehearsal time with the orchestra all together and with the guest artists. So that was always a challenge. And that always just was amazing to me that, you know, you all musicians, everybody was so professional and it all worked out beautifully and it seemed like it always was magic when the concert happened. Rebecca: Yeah, I think people kind of rise to the demand of playing for an audience no matter what happened in the rehearsal. Okay, I have a question, then I have a related question. When you were driving back from the airport, unless it was night, did you get comments from people about Casper Mountain? Because the view from the airport road is really something. The drive to Casper. Holly: They always just thought it was beautiful out here. They had never seen such skies. I mean, the sky was a big, was a mention, the mountain was there. And I'd always usually take them out to Lookout Point [on Casper Mountain Road] and I'd give them a little tour of the Casper area. And they just seemed to fall in love with Wyoming and they really thought �Wyoming people were friendly and welcoming. I did play a few practical jokes on them about the Jackalope. I have to admit that was the funniest thing. I would say, “Now you have to watch out for those jackalope, those little horns. They'll come after your ankles.” Yeah, I had some of the guest artists going pretty well, and then I go, “Oh, no, I'm just kidding. The little Jackalope horns are not going to get your ankles.” [It was] pretty funny. But though, I remember that a lot because there was a few questions that people would say, “What were those jackalopes?” That was pretty funny. And then, you know, there's the dryness here and just taking care of those musicians so that they had a good time. And the wonderful hotels here put the musicians up, too. They took care of the musicians wonderfully, too. And they just, they seemed to really enjoy being here and, you know, traveling and meeting people from all over. So I think that was truly wonderful to to meet them and to hear [the] places all over the world that they had been and where they had traveled. Rebecca: Yeah. Given that there were a certain percentage of the soloists were wind, brass or vocal, did you get comments or possibly complaints on the problem of having to accommodate themselves to 5,000 feet altitude, maybe rather suddenly for some of them? Holly: Definitely, yes. And that was always the situation where they were worried about their instruments, sometimes because of the dryness, then also their voice and making sure they drank enough water so that their voice was, you know, that that they could sing or, you know, play their instrument. But there was comments definitely about the altitude and how they were either out of breath or it just, it surprised them, I think, that it affected them as much as it did. So yeah, that was always a common, it seemed like when the guest artists came. Rebecca: Yeah. Well, you hear about Olympic athletes, like when, when the Olympics are slated to be in Mexico City, coming there a month ahead of time just to acclimate themselves to the altitude. But musicians do not have that luxury, seems to me. Holly: Exactly. And, you know, just the lung capacity too, when you're used to a certain, you know, they are athletes, too. Also, you know ... it was. But I think everyone did really well. And, you know, there was a little bit of altitude, you know, I think it affected, I don’t remember, altitude type sickness. I don't think anyone that I knew really ever got sick sick. But that definitely they could tell. Rebecca: Now, they could probably especially tell when you took them out to Lookout Point, which is what, probably at least 7000 feet at that point. Holly: Exactly. Rebecca: Okay, great. Let's see. Oh, yes. The conductor search, which would have been about 2001. Something like that? Holly: Because I think I left right when we had hired Jonathan Shames as our next conductor. Rebecca: Yeah. So it's my understanding that you actually went and took a training on how to conduct or how to do a conductor search. �Holly: Yes, I did. Right. The American Symphony Orchestra League was a wonderful resource for me and for the orchestra. And they had a conductor training workshop in Chicago. And I think Becky Mothersbaugh [Concertmaster of the Wyoming Symphony (first chair, first violin and leader of the string section)] and I went, and we could see many conductors conducting at that time with an orchestra there. So we got to see a lot of conductors that were searching for an orchestra and interviewing and things. So we and we went to a few the classes are like, how do you do a conductor search and what's the best way? And they really helped us with that because we had not had a search in a long time. I'm guessing, thinking that Curtis [Peacock] had been there, what, 30 some years, 30, 40 years. And so. But it all went really, really well. And I know we had quite a few, over 75 to 100 applicants for the position and that was, I think the concern or the worry of the board is, would, you know, who would want to come and interview here for this position? But it's like every conductor needs an orchestra. And so that's what they pointed out to us, is there there are many conductors and, you know, they needed orchestra. And that was, I think, at the time too when it was starting to change a little bit, where maybe a conductor would have a couple orchestras, two or three orchestras, because we could not afford to pay, you know, a salary where they could live, a living salary for them. And they were to have another orchestra maybe of a larger community, and then they would come to us. And that's what Jonathan did. Jonathan worked at a college, I think, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, maybe? He conducted an orchestra there, and then he would fly in and conduct the week of the concert and he would fly in and conduct here. And that seems to be the norm now for orchestras our size, because I know I went through the conductor search several times. Even when I was with another organization, I still was part of the the conductor searches. I was part of Matthew Savery's conductor search. And also we just hired Christopher Dragon. And I'm now on the board of directors for the last ten years of the Wyoming Symphony as a board member now. So I've kind of come full circle and seen, been through the process a few times and be able to help them, you know, go through those searches. Rebecca: Yeah. Did I hear you right? You've been on the board for the past ten years. Holly: Yes, I have. Can't believe it. Yeah. So, yeah, I've been through. Yeah. Search for Matthew was our conductor. And then just most recently, this last year was Christopher Dragon. And he's the associate conductor of the Colorado Symphony. So it's been perfect and wonderful that he can zip up here, you know, and be our conductor also. Rebecca: So you have seen a change from a community orchestra to a more or less semiprofessional orchestra that is largely imports and many of them not from Wyoming and all those associated changes. Holly: Yes, I've been able to see all of that and there's growing pains in all of that. And it's just, it's, you know, that's the question, is how do you grow and how do you include. But I know that for the foremost, we are wanting the Wyoming musicians to be playing in the orchestra. And I know that there's consideration and thoughtfulness into wanting Wyoming musicians. But with our size of our state and with the, you know, not as many musicians available in Wyoming, yes, we have quite a few orchestra members that are from outside the state that come from Colorado and surrounding states. But I'm not sure what the percentage is right now. That would have to be something the office would know. �Rebecca: So I looked into that a little bit when I did the article, and it's still—the article on the history of the symphony for WyoHistory.org. So I think it worked out to about a third out of state people, some of them who had Casper or Wyoming roots. Then maybe a third Casper people and a third non Casper, but Wyoming people. That's just a guess. That [was] not quite as drastic a transition as I thought. Holly: Right. Right. And I think that was the worry. I know back when I was there also, that was always the worry of, you know, you want it to be a community orchestra with the musicians living here. But Wyoming being the least populated state is kind of a real challenge to find those musicians to grow the quality of the orchestra and to still be involved in the community. So, so it seems to be working. That's what I think is wonderful. And I know the quality of the orchestra is really, I've been impressed with the the growth there and everything. So, and they still really do care. They play, when they play, they play for the Wyoming Symphony. So I, I think they love us and they love Casper and they love playing with the Wyoming Symphony. From what I gather. Rebecca: I've kind of inferred or gathered that Christopher Dragon has attracted a fair number of pretty good Colorado musicians one way or another. Is that right, would you say? Holly: I think so. I think he has. I mean, he travels all over the country and is from Australia originally. And so, and he's done very, very well with the Colorado Symphony. And I think in his conducting and travels, that knowledge and that collaboration that he has done there and the partnerships has helped us, I think, also get some quality musicians, you know, that he would know of or whatever. And that, brings that knowledge, everything to us and helps our organization also. It seems like it's been a great partnership. Rebecca: Well, from what I can tell, from having interviewed musicians, the symphony here seems to be, Christopher Dragon seems to be the one that they have liked the most out of all the conductors that they've played under in the Wyoming Symphony. Holly: Wonderful. Yeah, I, I kind of have got that same thought on that. Also, they, they seem to really enjoy him and want to play their hearts for him, you know? So I think it's all working well. And we are in the process right now of searching for an executive director. Rachel Bailey was with us for ten years and now she has gone on to another position. So I'm involved in the search also for the executive director right now. On that committee. Rebecca: So when did Rachel resign? Holly: She left a month or so ago. Couple of months ago, maybe. She is now with the Wyoming Food Bank, I think. Rebecca: So you haven't been without an executive director all that long? Holly: Yes, she's been there a long time. And I, I just thank her for all of her service. And for me, it was just a pure joy to see, you know, when you have an amazing director and, you know, executive director and an amazing conductor and how it all just seems like it was, it all came together and it was all working so well. And the symphony is really in a good place, I think, for the next step. ... It's just, is financially well, is doing well. I think we just gave a raise to the �musicians and looking forward to, we're hoping that at some point to get a new hall that I know they're working like crazy on raising money for the Lyric to have, us, the symphony, to have a true home and they have their own hall. So that's one thing I know that I'm very excited about and I am hoping that happens because, I think, and see as it's wonderful is, still, it's a place there at the NC high school [Natrona County High School] needs their stage and needs their hall for their activities and things. And it's very, very hard to plan ahead more than a year to get the quality of guest artists and booking and everything with this, with the challenge of not getting the dates that we need. So I know that's been a huge challenge. So I'm hoping in this next stage that we'll have a new hall in the next five, ten years here and [that] would be wonderful. Rebecca: And the Lyric is the old Iris Theater Building? Holly: Yes, it is. There's a wonderful plan. And Lindsey Grant is the executive director and they're in a quiet phase right now talking to donors all over the state and raising money for that hall. And I've seen the plans and I think it would be about a thousand seat hall and it would be fantastic acoustics and would be able to bring in all kinds of Broadway shows and bring in all of those performances. And from the local community, all the kids, all the kids’ shows and dance and ballet and opera and all those things where they don't have a home. So I think it would be a wonderful addition to Casper and of course, a home for the symphony. Rebecca: I'm sure that the scheduling has been one of the hardest things, having to share the space with someone else who has priority. Holly: Exactly. And I know it's prevented us from maybe getting some of the artists that we would like to get. I've heard about that these last years, as you know, trying to get these these guest artists booked way out. And for us to not have dates, that's been a real problem. So I'm hoping that in the future that would be another just amazing thing for the symphony to have a hall and and the downtown is just exploded with energy and excitement with David Street Station. And it's right there across the street. And I think it would be a, a wonderful asset for Casper and for our community. Rebecca: Now, I remember I interviewed a past executive director who mentioned that the guest soloist could not rehearse with the orchestra, I think it was on Friday night, in the [concert] hall. He had to rehearse with them in the Natrona County High School band room because [there] was a talent show or something going on. That's the soloist’s nightmare, you know, not being able to get a feel of the acoustics of the place you're going to be performing in until the performance. Holly: Oh, my gosh. Yes. And those kinds of things happened. And this was just so hard, is to work around that kind of thing. And, you know, those high school kids have so many things going on over there, all the plays and all the, you know, their orchestra, you know, their musicians and all the things that they have going on in the high school. It's just really a tough thing for everybody to try to, and I think we're one of the last, the symphony’s one of the last to be able to even use that hall because it's, they're so busy with what they need there. Rebecca: Yeah. Now the year of the remodel, [remodel of NCHS auditorium] the symphony performed at Casper College, I believe. Holly: Yes. �Rebecca: But it was a small hall, right? Holly: It was a smaller hall. So we had to do two performances to be able to get the amount of people. We did an afternoon, a Sunday afternoon performance and a Saturday night performance. And the acoustics are beautiful there. But it was, it has challenges also with the seating and with the two days. So, yeah, it was, so I know the hall renovations are beautiful and everything for this. I think now the time has come, I feel, for for Casper to have our own hall, you know, [here] in the middle of the state. We have such a great orchestra and we have so many organizations that could use a hall with really quality acoustics and great seats and, you know, to be able to have a glass of wine or whatever with intermission or beforehand or after in the beautiful lobby area, which I think would be wonderful. Rebecca: Well, that would certainly solve any problem there might ever be for where to have the after concert reception. Holly: Exactly. We've been moving things around all over the place, the different restaurants and venues and yeah, it just I think it would be wonderful for the symphony to have a home to call, you know, its own and and to have the quality of the stage and enough room. And for ballets, we'd like to do more ballet and opera and those kinds of things, but we just don't have the room at NC [NCHS] stage. Rebecca: Right. The only time, well, I remember playing in the so called pit for Nutcracker and various things like the Messiah. [By George Friedrich Handel, late 17th and early 18th century German-British composer] Holly: Uh huh. Uh huh. Rebecca: Uh. We did an opera that was commissioned from some Wyoming composer on the famous lynching on the Sweetwater River of a couple of people that were innocent but unlucky. We were all on the floor between the stage and and the seats, which, if that's the best you can have, that's the best. It worked. Holly: But yeah, there's been challenges. I know quite a few challenges with all the ballet companies we've brought in and there just is not the room and and the orchestra does not have the space in the pit. And it's been challenges all around. And so this new hall would have all those things and. And the quality and the you know, the kinds of performances we could do and bring in would be incredible. Rebecca: Yeah. There was an actual pit for the orchestra at Central Wyoming College, I think it is. We did Swan Lake [ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer] up there one time on a runout. I'm not sure if you were the executive director then or not, but it's an amazing difference to have all your own space and the only person in the pit that can see the stage is the conductor. So you are removed from the temptation of glancing at the stage when you're not supposed to anyway. As a musician, it's much better all around. Holly: Mm hmm. Right. Definitely. So yeah, I've seen the, I've seen a lot of full circle things with the symphony and it's just been wonderful to see it grow and, and just thrive. So it's, been �one of my joys just to be part of the orchestra as a director, executive director, and then to be a board member. Rebecca: I think I wanted to ask you, although you may already have answered this question. Events, first fundraising, and then after that, the musical events that jump out at you as being an absolute pinnacle, a high point of your time, of your relationship with the symphony. Holly: What would those be? What were some of the high moments? High moments? Rebecca: Yeah. And for example, let's start with fund raising. Holly: Okay. Fund raising. Well, I really enjoyed just bringing people together in the community. I kind of got crazy with the Symphony Balls, and we didn't have a place to hold them because we didn't have a home. So we would find these crazy venues. And I remember the Boogie Woogie Bugle Ball was one of the highlights for me as far as events, was held out in the hangar, the Jim Good hangar out at the airport and people dressed in World War II dress. We had a 20 piece big band and we had big American flags and planes that we dined amongst. And it was that, the light was filtering in on those, on everybody. And it was just a stunning evening. It was really fun and people enjoyed that. So that was one of the highlights. And then I did a Bel Air ball in the White Mountain Chevrolet, Bel Air. We had Bel Air cars and they cleaned up the bays where they work on the cars and we actually had people there and that was really fun. Then there was an old abandoned building, the Prairie Publishing building. We did the Bootlegger Ball there and it was, a our challenge was, there was no heat and it snowed that night and we had to have [indistinguishable] codes to get in. People had to whisper a code to get in, you know, be like in the Prohibition era. And we were a little chilly in there. We were in our flapper outfits and dresses and things. So it was, it got a little crazy trying to find some. And then I finally found the Industrial Building [at the Casper Fairgrounds] and we had the Buckaroo Ball there and the Buckaroo Ball which for many years I think, and we had wagons, covered wagons and tepees in there. We had enough room and people dressed up in their fancy western gear and outfits. And so we had a lot of fun with, with the B’s, the B, the Buckaroo Ball, Bootlegger Ball and all those and people seemed to really enjoy coming out, having a great time and raising money for the symphony. And of course, the dream house stands out. There is one of the, the highlights. The [Christmas] Symphony Home Tours were always fun. People opened their homes in the community and merchants would decorate and interior designers would make it wonderful. And I think people really enjoyed shopping and seeing something for the holidays and that was really fun. Truly enjoyed some of the, you know, those concerts, those special concerts. I think Mark O'Connor probably was one of my highlights as far as. Kind of a transcendence of the music was so beautiful. And he played, it just, it was just magic. So that was one of my favorite concerts, along with the Broadway stars from New York. That was a sellout. I loved the ballets. Those all stand out in my mind, as you know ... we did some photo choreography above the symphony was always fun. We did Billy the Kid and Rodeo Copland, [Aaron Copland, 20th century American composer and conductor] and that was so Wyoming and western. And we had this beautiful scenery above the symphony as the symphony played. I truly enjoyed those. And the kids concert scene, the little kids enjoyed the Magic Circle Mime Company along with the symphony. And I think we did Peer Gynt also [opera by Edvard Grieg, 19th and 20th century Norwegian composer and pianist], for the holidays and they loved that as well as Amahl and the Night Visitors [Christmas opera in one act, by Gian Carlo Menotti, 20th century Italian composer] was �something different. We tried to collaborate with all kinds of the community. And I know that one week we collaborated with some folks at Casper College, several of those so, so truly it was an enjoyable, magical job. And I loved it and loved the music. And I have wonderful memories of all of it. Rebecca: That's really great to hear. This has been so very interesting. Do you have anything else to, I know, I have one more question for you. You have been on the watch, so to speak, you've been involved with the symphony, one way or another, from the time when there was a conductor that lived in the community through the times, now, since Jonathan [Shames, the first non-resident conductor], when the conductor was not a resident. Right. So can you comment on that, that transition or that trend and the difference and so on? Holly: Right. And yeah, I, I had really thought when we went through the search, I really had thought we were going to try to find someone that would live here. But it seems like it's worked. It seems like it's worked out okay. I think the conductors coming in as part of their contract to come in other times also and to get involved with the community. And so I know all the different conductors have been at the Rotary ... you know, other fundraising events in the community and then on TV and radio. And I think, you know, the community still has gotten to know those conductors and feel they’re, and I think they feel part of of Casper. And they bring to us too also all their experience and knowledge from somewhere else, too. So I think it's a kind of a double edged sword, but I think it seems like it's worked. And that's what other orchestras are going through in the changing times and. So it would be interesting if I don't hear that happening as much where they're living in a community the size of ours. And so that way we, we benefit, I think, in some ways. And then maybe, you know, not as much, maybe if they were living here, but it seems like it's worked. Rebecca: Good. I'm really glad to hear that. I keep thinking of things, and one of the things that I have thought of is Christopher Dragon, is fairly young. As conductors go, would you say? Holly: One of our youngest. Yeah. Rebecca: Susan Stanton, who has played violin with the orchestra forever, told me that he was in a video that went viral where he was dressed up as a dinosaur. Holly: Yes. Rebecca: Jurassic Park. He's just, he's not a dignified guy. It's like he's not impressed with his own dignity at all, which I think is great. Do you have anything to say about that or what the board, does the board know about it or. Holly: Yes, they do. And that's was what the, when we were looking at all of the different videos and things, when we were interviewing and we had over 100 and some applicants from all over the world and and his stood out because that was one of the reasons, we saw the video of him in the dinosaur costume and I think was for Jurassic Park, is a John Williams that did the score I think for Jurassic Park and that he was willing to do that. And I think he's dressed up in Star Wars outfit something. And just recently we had Pops in the Park and we did a Queen cover band. So the Queen was a group out of Canada and they played a lot of songs by Queen [British Rock band], of course. And he put, he sported a mustache, too, like Freddie Mercury. So he is a �very playful, is very fun and playful. And I think he really loves what he does and he has an amazing energy. So I think we are so lucky to have him and and he really loves the music, loves the orchestra, loves the musicians and loves what he does. And it's very apparent when you see his energy when he conducts. And so I truly invite everyone to come out. I think we have a great season coming forward and yeah, just come and the Pops in the Park is another just wonderful thing that I forgot to mention that we used to play up at Bear Trap Festival [held annually at Beartrap Meadow on Casper Mountain] up there was a Bluegrass festival and I remember bringing the symphony up there under a tent and everybody's like, What was the symphony doing up there? And Oh my gosh, there was so much crossover there too. And people just loved going up to the mountain to hear the symphony play and so many other musicians, you know, people and community members that maybe had not heard the symphony got to hear them up there. And the same is true with the Pops in the Park with, we got an extension on the Washington Park band shell, we wrote a grant for that. And so then I think the eclipse [solar eclipse of August 2017, when Casper was in the path of totality] was one of our first times when we had the extension so that the orchestra could play and we had thousands of people there for that. And and I think we had close to 1600 to 1700 people just recently for the Pops in the Park. So I think that's going to be, is becoming soon, a wonderful favorite tradition with the food trucks and when the beautiful summer evening to be outside in and hear the symphony orchestra is just a wonderful treat. So it's a [indistinguishable] I think wonderful things that's happened, that's happening, you know, with the symphony and reaching out to the community and being part of our community is, is, you know, and the orchestra is beloved, as far as I can tell. And people enjoy what the symphony brings to Casper and the quality of life. What would Casper be without the Wyoming Symphony? It would not be [the same]. Is a wonderful place, that's for sure. Rebecca: Yeah. And from rather humble beginnings as the Casper Civic Symphony quite a number of years ago. Holly: Right. Right. And. Yeah. And it's just exciting to see, you know, and I just, I look forward to what's next for the symphony. And I think they're growing and doing well. And professional in acting the way they act and the way they play and the way they care. So I think that's just a wonderful kudos to the musicians and our community and our state. And I look forward to seeing what's next. Rebecca: Okay. Do you have anything else you would like to tell us? Holly: Well, I think we've covered a lot. I'm guessing one thing I noticed on my mind when I was looking at the symphony and what I’ve done. I'm really, really proud of that. We started an endowment also for the symphony. So I think our endowment, our goal is to reach a million, you know, which would generate over $40,000 a year for operations. So I know that the board is working on that, trying to raise the endowment as far as. But that was something back in the day that we really wanted for sustainability for this orchestra. That was so important to have an endowment and it's growing and growing every year. So it's just a wonderful asset to have for the symphony. Rebecca: Yeah. It's always best when an organization can get away from hand-to-mouth funding to something a little bit more secure. �Holly: Exactly. And I'm also, I also serve on the Wyoming Arts Council, and I just am proud to always talk about what the symphony is doing and how well they're doing. When I report and I see what's going on all around the state, too, so I've been on the Arts Council for ten years also. And, and it seems like the arts are alive in Wyoming and doing well. And we've got the Teton Music Festival. We've got, I think the Powder River Symphony is still playing, the orchestra here. There's the symphony in Cheyenne that's doing well and the University of Wyoming [symphony orchestra]. So it's encouraging that all these music organizations are still doing well and and continuing to bring beautiful arts and music to Wyoming. Rebecca: It's an achievement for a sparsely populated area to have different cultural things going on. Holly: I think that's all I had. Well. Rebecca: I really appreciate your giving us all this time today. It's been great. Holly: Thank you. I really enjoyed talking with you, Rebecca, and thank you for all your beautiful music that you brought to us also. Rebecca: Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Holly Turner Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1922-09-13 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Holly Turner. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on September 13, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Holly Turner Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_Holly_Turner_9-13-22_Condensed Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/51fed0e006770376d2ef43600afd05df.m4a aecbb17012547bbf1eb69467d6e5a03d https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/a281046467fab130405b6a85679684a1.pdf a23697ad43ed520c1bb11f73c1478c68 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing John Stovall, April 6, 2023 Date transcribed: July 12, 2023 John: A sister too. Rebecca: Go ahead. John: Do you have a sister also? Rebecca: A year older than me, Barbara, she plays violin. John: Yeah. Yeah. Rebecca: Okay Well, it's not often that I have the luxury of having been able to read somebody's bio before doing these, these interviews. John: Uh huh. Rebecca: So I have some questions related to that. Anyway, let's start with your name. Well, first of all, thank you for making yourself available for this interview. John: Oh, certainly. Yeah. My pleasure. Rebecca: Okay, great. Let's start with your name, your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument. John: I'm John Stovall, and I play the double bass and I studied piano early on, started piano when I was five years old and was steered to the cello when I was in fifth grade. But it didn't take with me and I played sports instead. And then in ninth grade, I started playing the bass. And I initially started studying with Rex Eggleston. Rebecca: Okay. I didn't know he taught bass. John: Yeah, he was. He was the general, do you remember Rex? Rebecca: Oh, very well. Yeah. John: Yeah, Because he, I think he started the the string orchestra programs in the public schools in Casper. And he was, you know, he was a general music educator, and he did, he he got me started on the bass. Rebecca: I see. Okay. And, and sorry, what grade were you in when you switched? John: I was in ninth grade. I think it was, it was right before I went into ninth grade. I, it was during the summer. Rebecca: Okay. And were you then and are you now a French bow bass player or a German bow? John: Yes, I am a French bow player. �Rebecca: Okay. Could you go into the, just a little bit for the non-musicians who might be listening to this recording? John: Yeah, there are two different styles of of bows for the bass and one is called the French bow, and that's normally referred to. That's what cellists play with, with the French. bow. It's the French bow grip, which is the, the hand is over the top of the, the stick of the bow and the other bow that bass players use is called the German bow. And it's also referred to as an underhand grip because you, you are holding the bow from underneath the stick instead of on top of the stick and that is used, German bow is definitely more prevalent in European orchestras, but in America, in the American orchestras and American bass players there, there's been quite a barrage of German bow players and a lot of the new players coming up are German bow players. Rebecca: Okay, thanks. Now let's, let's go on to whatever you whatever you remember about before college, being in Casper, playing in the Youth Symphony and the Civic Symphony. John: Yeah, well, you know, I studied with with Rex for probably a year, and then I was steered toward Dale Bohren. And I don't know if you remember Dale. Rebecca: Sure. John: But he, he taught me during high school. And Dale, he was very gifted. And Dale went to the Congress of Strings. I remember he was. And that was a national string program where he played in an orchestra. And he, it was sponsored by the Music Union. [Casper chapter] And his experience out there kind of inspired me because he had a chance to, you know, play with with a lot of different players from around the country because it's a national program and so he you know, he was hip to what was going on in the the bass world and music world, you know, sort of nationally. So he taught me through high school. And then he was studying with Curtis [Curtis Peacock, then the strings instructor at Casper College and also conductor of the Casper Civic Symphony and Casper Youth Symphony] at the time and my senior year of high school, I actually enrolled in Casper College because I had enough credits from high school. So my senior year was spent at Casper College and I switched to Curtis Peacock and Curtis was, was also a very inspirational teacher and amazing, he was a very good violinist, but his bass playing technique was also very good. And he really, you know, showed me a lot of good stuff on the bass and also just musically, because he was a very good musician. So my last year of college or my last year of high school spent at Casper College was with Curtis. And that, he was very helpful in actually steering me to some really, you know, top notch teachers around the country. He, he basically guided me when I finished, to my teacher, who was Stuart Sankey and in college. I don't know what you want me to say about that at this point. Rebecca: Well, I'll make a note here. We can come back to that. John: Yeah. Rebecca: You, there was still a youth symphony when you were in high school, is that right? John: Yes, The Casper Youth Symphony. Rebecca: And did you play in the Youth Symphony? �John: I did play in the Youth Symphony. And I also played in, Rebecca: Do you have memories? John: That now I also played, I have more memories from the, from the Casper Symphony. Rebecca: Okay. John: Playing in the section there. Just trying to think because, you know, Curtis was conducting at the time. So it was a good opportunity that, being in the Casper Symphony because I remember playing the Brahms Symphony Number One with Curtis. [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] And that just really got me very excited about, you know, pursuing a career in music. And I think having that opportunity, you know, was definitely a launching pad. The my memories are vague about playing in the in the Youth Symphony, though, because I had more experience playing with, with the Casper Symphony and the Casper College ensembles also also because there was a string orchestra associated with Casper College that I got to play in when I was there for the year. Rebecca: Yeah, I played in it when I was in high school. I don't think it could have quite functioned without local people one way or another. John: Yeah. Rebecca: Now you've mentioned Congress of Strings. John: Yeah. Rebecca: Your bio on the Boston Symphony site says you went to Congress of Strings. John: I did. My when I was 16. I, you know, set up through the union and I won a position there. I think, I don't remember if I had to audition or how it actually worked, because it was a scholarship that that, that you had to get through the union and it entailed, it was a two month course and it was out at the University of Washington in Seattle. And so I was out there for two months and the bass teacher was actually a, was the principal bass player from the Detroit Symphony. And he you know, so he really knew his stuff. And there were, I think, six other bass players in that section, and they were all, some guys from California and I remember Texas and a couple of guys from Idaho, but they all had, you know, good teachers and there was a lot of good playing and we had good conductors and we got to do a lot of different repertoire through the summer. And so it was a great learning experience and I know even a lot of people in the Boston Symphony have actually gone through the Congress of Strings, a lot of string players. So it's sort of one of the first, you know, training grounds for for musicians hoping to to, you know, further their education. Rebecca: Right, yeah, well, I was always under the impression, although I must be wrong because you're saying there were a couple of people from different states. I always thought it was one student per state. John: But yeah, I don't remember the exact details, but it's, I remember there was a wide range of people and also there was a wide range of talent too, because I was I was low man on the totem �pole because I had just, I hadn't been playing the bass that long. I think I was 16 when I went there. And I remember there was a kid from L.A. and he was like a prodigy. That's what he seemed like to me. He, he actually I know him now. He plays in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but he used to, instead of bass lessons, he would go and play tennis with the bass teacher. That's, that's what they would do for their lessons. (both laugh) Rebecca: Yeah, they are Congress of Strings. I remember too. I went when I was, I think, 19. I do remember being at the very back of the cello section and feeling just [that it was] the absolute best musical experience I'd ever had. John: Yeah. Rebecca: Do you remember what pieces you guys played that summer? John: Oh, I know we did a lot of string pieces like, you know, Barber, Adagio for Strings [Samuel Barber, 20th century American composer] and so I think it was mainly a string camp, if I recall. Rebecca: Yup. John: Now I have all the programs, but I don't remember what other stuff we did. But, you know, there, there's there's a quite a bit of string music that, you know, for string orchestra that we did do. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay, great, thanks. So let’s see...there had to have been a young artist competition associated with the symphony when you were in high school. John: Yes. John: I competed in it and I did not win. Trying to think who, who won, but I don't remember. I remember playing the Dittersdorf [bass] Concerto [Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, 18th century Austrian composer; a concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment] Rebecca: Okay, now let's see. Now I can go back, from Casper College you went to study with Stuart Sankey? John: Yes, at the University of Texas. Rebecca: Okay. What do you remember about that period? John: Well, that really, I mean, propelled me because Stuart used to be on the, the faculty of Juilliard, [the Julliard School of Music in New York City, one of the most prestigious music schools in the country] and he, he was in the … [NBC Symphony] Orchestra with Toscanini. [Arturo Toscanini, late 19th and early 20th century Italian conductor] So and when … [Sankey] left Juilliard, he went down to Texas. And he was a great pedagogue. And I know in his studio he had 20 bass players and he was really committed to teaching. And he really also, he did a lot of editing of music for International Music Company. And he he really was the one that that built a solid foundation for me, just as far as, you know, upping the ante on, on, on my technique and �just learning how to play the bass in general. So and I studied with him for two and a half years, or I guess it was two years at the University of Texas. And then he was actually leaving to go to Indiana University and asked me if I wanted to go there. And I decided not to. And I auditioned for the New England Conservatory in Boston and got in. So when he left Indiana, I came to Boston and finished my undergrad degree at New England Conservatory. Rebecca: Yeah, and I think your bio said that your teacher was the assistant principal of the Boston Symphony. John: Yeah, right. Yeah. Larry Wolfe was my teacher and he still is in the orchestra and he's still the assistant principal. So we, you know, we go way back together. Rebecca: Yeah, well, I noticed that in your bio, after you finished your bachelor’s, you successfully auditioned for the Houston Symphony, the New Orleans Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphony. John: Yes. Yeah, I had three, three different jobs, with the first job that I actually won was in Houston, and that was a year's position down there. And from Houston, I was, after I finished the job there, I was kind of idle just figuring out what I was going to do next. And a friend of mine was the principal bass of the New Orleans Philharmonic at the time, and they had an opening for six months. So he, I didn't actually audition, but he knew me and he said, Why don't you come down to New Orleans and play for six months, which I did, and that was a blast. And from there I was taking, actively taking auditions. But from there I auditioned for the Indianapolis Symphony and won a position there, a permanent position. But I was only there for a year and a half, and that's when I auditioned for Boston and got into the Boston Symphony. Rebecca: Okay. So looks like you were 30 years old when you got into the Boston Symphony. John: Yeah, that is correct. Rebecca: Okay. So it only took you, what, maybe 15 years to get your skills from beginning bass player to Boston Symphony. John: Yeah, that's, that's about the correct time frame. Rebecca: Yeah. And jumping from piano to a stringed instrument, that's a big jump, so I know you played piano for a long time before you took bass, but it's still, John: Yeah. Rebecca: very impressive. Yeah. So for the, for the classical music people who will be listening to this oral history later, can you tell us what pieces in general are on the audition lists for bass. John: Like, yeah, yeah I will. Most of the lists for the auditions are pretty standard and across the board for all orchestras, but with, with few variations. Well, what's interesting to me is that, you know, I was auditioning, you know, almost 40 years ago, and, you know, I'm teaching, you know, these students today and they bring in these lists and they are basically a lot of the same things that that I had to audition with. So those would be like Beethoven symphonies, like Beethoven Symphony Number Five and Beethoven Symphony Number Nine. There are a lot of excerpts for �the bass out of those two symphonies, the Mozart symphonies, Number 35, the “Haffner” Symphony, and the Symphony Number 40 also of Mozart is also a very popular audition piece. Schubert, “The Great” C Major Symphony Number Nine is also a big audition piece [Franz Schubert, 19th century Austrian composer] Richard Strauss “Ein Heldenleben” is a very popular audition piece for bass players, as is “Also Sprach Zarathustra” or 2001 The Space Odyssey as everyone—[Richard Strauss, 19th and 20th century German composer and conductor (son of Johann Strauss of “Blue Danube” fame.)] Rebecca: Yeah John: Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique” is a very popular piece also. [Hector Berlioz, 19th century French composer and conductor] Oh, Brahms symphonies. Even any of the Brahms symphonies are usually asked on an audition as well as, you know, a solo piece of your choice. And also it's very popular on auditions for bass players, usually a movement from a Bach cello suite [Johann Sebastian Bach composed six suites for solo cello. On the bass, they are much harder to play than on the cello. The suites each have six movements, which are mostly stylized dances, except for the Prelude] And that's that's pretty much standard rep that you'll see on a, on an audition list for any of the major orchestras in America. Rebecca: Yeah, you know, it's not so very different from some cello auditions. John: Yeah. Rebecca: [That] obviously are less familiar with way back in the day. John: Yeah No, that's true. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see, before we move (pauses) oh, wait a minute. Maybe backing up a little bit. I'm not sure at what point … your bio mentioned Aspen, the Aspen Festival, The Grand Teton Festival and Tanglewood. John: Yes. Rebecca: I want to cover all those. Maybe in chronological order. John: Yeah, sure. Let's see. The Aspen Festival. When I was in Texas, my first year in Texas that summer, I auditioned for the Aspen Festival, and that was under the encouragement of my teacher, Stuart Sankey, because he taught at the Aspen Festival [Summer music festival in Aspen, Colorado]. So I auditioned and I got a scholarship there my first year, and I studied with him in the summer, and then I went again the following summer and I studied with a, with the principal bass player of the New York Philharmonic. I, of course, asked Mr. Sankey if I could have permission to study with him, and he encouraged it. And this, the principal bass of the New York Philharmonic at the time was this Russian, and his name was Eugene Levinson. And he made quite a splash because he immigrated to America. And when he first came, his English was quite poor. And I remember we, where I lived in Aspen, we lived with, in a condo with three other bass players, and we all studied with him and he would come over and we would always tease him about his English because he would say, “Now use the bow like spoon.” And we could never understand what what the hell he was talking about. (both laugh) But he would, he would spend �all afternoon at our condo and, you know, we would make cookies or brownies with him. And we he was a really great teacher. And I learned a lot from him that summer at Aspen. But, but and also we, we’re friends to this day, too. Whenever we play Carnegie Hall in New York, I usually will see him. And he always asks me about Wyoming because he knew I was the kid from Wyoming. So he was very friendly. But after the Aspen experience, when I came to the New England Conservatory, the summer after my first year at New England, I auditioned for the Tanglewood Music Festival and I got into that festival. And that's, that's a highly competitive festival to get into. And they take seven bass players every year. And I went for two years and my teacher, Larry Wolfe, is also, because it's part of, the Boston Symphony summer home. A lot of the players from Boston will teach there also, so Larry was teaching at the time. And that, that really, the level of playing in the Tanglewood Music Center, the student orchestra, is just extremely high. And a lot of people that have played there play in major orchestras, like in Boston Symphony, I would say at least more than half of the people went to Tanglewood, and I know eight out of the nine bass players in this section all were at Tanglewood. So, you know, it's a springboard, you know, into national orchestras for sure. Rebecca: Yeah, Well, with the high standard it’s not surprising. John: Yeah, Yeah. The standard was really high. But then after Tanglewood that was in, I think my last year at Tanglewood was 1983 and I graduated from college at that point, and from 1983 through 1985, 88, I should say, I went to the Grand Teton Music Festival [Summer music festival in Jackson, Wyoming] and played in that festival for five summers, and that was with the the Chinese conductor Ling Tung, that was his festival, he started the festival. And that was, that was a conglomeration of musicians from around the country in major orchestras would go there because a lot of orchestras are off in the summer. So I know there were a lot of people from Houston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Indianapolis. So there were just, you know, a lot of different people coming together from across the country playing in that orchestra. Also, the New York Philharmonic had a few people also. Rebecca: Yeah, let's back up briefly, unless you have more to say about the Teton Festival. John: Yeah, Teton Festival was really great. I mean, it was for me because it was like, you know, being home again. And it was good also because I got to play a lot of chamber music up there, which was nice, with smaller ensembles and also you get to kind of mingle with different guys from different orchestras and, you know, find out what's what's going on there. And not to mention, you know, the you know, being in Jackson for the summer is always a lot of fun. Rebecca: Mhmm. John: And so that that, that aspect of it was really great. But the music making was also very good. You know, they had, you know, really topnotch soloists . And, and the programming was always very good. And the audiences, you know, because it's such a small hall, I think it's 900 seats, you know, they would always have a full audience for the concerts, which is always, you know, inspiring for for the players. �Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. Briefly back to Aspen and maybe at Tanglewood also. But I auditioned for the Aspen, for a fellowship to the Aspen Festival a couple of times. Never did make it, I wasn't quite up to it, technically, apparently. John: Yeah. Rebecca: So can you say a little bit about the fellowship, what it covers, and what you got to do as a student there, as well as just having the private lessons and what the opportunities were for listening and so on. John: Yeah. You know, once again, that was an eight week festival and I know the scholarship cost, you know, was room and board basically. And, and your lessons and your place, you have to audition because there are several different student orchestras in Aspen. There's like a chamber orchestra, which is the, the top notch one where you get to play with, with most of the teachers playing in the orchestra also. And then there's the big festival orchestra, which is a larger orchestra and not as many teachers playing it. But I know a lot of the teachers do play in that one also. That's the one I played in. And you're you're given an op—you're given an opportunity to play a lot of different repertoire. So we would give, you know, I think at least two concerts a week in the, in the tent up there in Aspen, which was a nice setting also. But there was also a lot of chamber music that you could attend. So, you know, all of that stuff was free to students. Once again, there were master classes that you could go to and a lot, lot of different opportunities to perform for, like for us, for fellow bass players in master classes, we would play for each other, which is always helpful and, you know, lots of constructive criticism and also lots of different levels of playing. So you could see, you know, guys that were really accomplished and sort of strive for that, see what those guys are doing and, and pick their brains and yeah, that's about it. It was, you know, lots of opportunities to to play and be heard. That's what I remember. Those are my biggest memories from Aspen. Rebecca Okay. And how about Tanglewood? More about what went on there and, [Tanglewood is the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its training academy, the Tanglewood Music Center, as well as the Boston Pops. Located between Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts] John: Yeah, Tanglewood. That, everyone that goes out, comes out of Tanglewood, the experience is very unique because the scheduling at Tanglewood, it's eight weeks, and you are scheduled, basically your hours during the day are spent playing, whether it's with a chamber group or with orchestra or with lessons or with master classes, they really don't get, hardly give you any time to practice. You know, when you do practice, you have to do it, I mean, we would practice at night so that we would have, you know, 10, 12 hour days of, you know, rehearsals and then your own personal practice. But the, everyone that comes out of that, it's funny because you don't realize the benefits of the, of Tanglewood until September or October because you have to get away from it. And that's when you realize how much you've absorbed. And I think that's, it's funny because you talk to people about their experience there and, you know, basically everyone will say that was saying I don't remember what happened, you know, it was such a blitz. But then when you settle down and start working on your own again, you realize what you've learned, You �know, what kind of experience you've gotten out of it. And I mean, because you're working with some really, you know, top notch people and just I mean, it was, definitely expanded my my playing to a level, you know, that that got me to where I am. I mean, I really think it was, you know, totally responsible for, for getting me a job, basically. Rebecca: Okay, great. I'd like to back up just briefly. John: Sure. Rebecca: For people who might not know what a master class is in addition to, in addition to your fellow students being present, can you say a little more John: What was the last part, Becky? Rebecca: Can you say a little more about master classes in addition to the fact that there are a lot of students present? John: Yeah. Rebecca: What actually goes on? John: Yeah, in a master class. Okay. Usually master classes are held for all instruments, but usually there will be a specific instrument focus for a master class. So for us at Tanglewood, I remember one of the master classes was with Eugene Levinson, who was the principal bass of the New York Philharmonic. So he was the guest speaker. So he, a master class, he will he'll run the class. And basically what it is, maybe two or three students are asked to prepare, like either a solo piece or specific orchestral excerpts, and they will come in and with an audience they will play what they prepared for the person for the master class who was Mr. Levinson. And then he does a critique of what you're playing. He will do some playing for you, so you'll get to hear how he interprets what you just played and and provide constructive criticism. And and he will take questions about, you know, what he's done or his choice. You know, he'll use a certain fingering that you, you know, kind of helps, you know, make certain passages easier or he will suggest, you know, different bowings so that you know, to make things more musical or make it easier and you know the master classes and then you know he'll open up the floor after everyone's played. And so you really get a taste of what, you know, a different perspective, I should say, during master classes. [A fingering is a marking in the music specifiying which finger should play which note. A bowing is a marking specifying which way the bow should be drawn (to the right or to the left) on which notes] Rebecca: Well, that's very interesting because in all the master classes I've ever observed or participated in, I do not remember feedback being solicited from the attenders; it was more like a public, public one-on-one lesson. John: Yeah, that that's, that's how it starts. And it can open up. It depends who's running the class I guess. Rebecca: Yeah. �John: Because I've been doing master classes with Yo-Yo Ma before and it, he really runs them like, you know, one-on-one lessons which are, you know, very interesting to watch. You see the, you know, the transformation of a student. You know, it gives them like a magical fingering, you know, that that really changes things up. [Yo-Yo Ma, a contemporary American cello soloist and teacher; a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half.] Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. Briefly, I want to jump back to Casper. John: Yeah. Rebecca: Does any one performance or rehearsal or musical experience from your time in Casper jump out at you as being a high point or something you still remember? John: It's funny because I do. I do think of the Brahms symphony that I played with with the Casper Symphony. It's one of the things that really got me excited, and that was that was kind of like a high point for me. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. And a related question for the entire scope of your career, can you identify a musical high point? John: I've had quite a few, but I think, you know, having the opportunity to play with, you know, some really great conductors like, you know, Seiji Ozawa was our was our principal conductor in Boston. A big part of my career. I mean, we played some great concerts with him. [Seiji Ozawa, Japanese conductor and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 29 years] But in particular, we had a guest conductor whose name was Bernard Haitink, and he was from the Netherlands, and we did an opera, a Wagner opera called the Götterdammerung from the Ring Cycle. [A four-opera series by late 19th century German composer Richard Wagner, based on Norse legends] And his interpretation was just like, it was out of this world. And it's a performance that I will never forget in my life. He has since died, but his interpretations, Wagner interpretations, were just unbelievable. [Bernard Haitink, Dutch conductor and violinist, and the principal conductor of several international orchestras, beginning with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961] Rebecca: Okay, Wagner then. Very interesting. That was, Götterdammerung is one of the longer of the four, isn't it? John: Yes, it is. Yes. Rebecca: Hours or something. John: Those operas can be very long. Rebecca: (laughs) John: I know Wagner, Parsifal, and also Parsifal is like five and a half hours. I've never played any of those that were that long. Yeah, they can be. [Parsifal is a stand-alone opera, not part of the Ring Cycle] �Rebecca: Okay. All right, let's see. I have one more question before I will ask you if there's anything else you want to tell us. And that question is coming out of my own experience with the few bass players I know. They typically do not stick with classical music only, John: Yeah. Rebecca: but they go across the board into jazz and other genres. What's your experience on this question? John: (laughs) Yes, it's funny you ask because I, in high school I was, I played a lot of electric bass and I used to play with Jim Cox and the Outlaws. I don't know if you remember that name, but we would play at the Elks Club or, you know, VFW on the weekends. And I remember, my friends in high school, they would be pumping gas all week and I would play these gigs on the weekend, and that's what I was doing to make money. So I did a lot of that. And I also played with the Salt Creek Jazz Band with and if you remember, Bob Bovie, the pianist, and he was, he conducted the Natrona County High School Orchestra, [in Casper]. And I played with that band a lot on the electric bass. As an aside, I have to say that Bob Bovie was also another big influence on what good musicianship is because he was really a fine pianist and a really fine jazz pianist too. So he he taught me a lot about timing and rhythm. Then after that, I'm trying to think, Oh, I used [to] I did a lot of jamming with jazz bands in Casper, a lot of jam sessions that I think Dale Bohren actually [indistinguishable] a lot of these people like Tracy Pfau that we used to play with. So that was a lot of fun. [In a jam session, musicians typically play informally together, improvising, and planning the session as they go] And I kept the electric bass through college. And when I when I showed up in Boston and started going to school, I, I wanted to play a little bit, but there was a jazz department at New England Conservatory, and I heard so many good bass players—and jazz bass players—that I sort of figured out that unless you dedicate yourself to either jazz or classical, you know, it's really hard to do both of them well. So I dropped the electric bass at that point. Rebecca: Okay, that reminds me, somewhere along the way, did you also drop piano? John: Yeah, I played piano through my year. One year at Casper College. I studied with Paula Hitt, I think was her name, at Casper. And I played a couple of recitals up there, and then I stopped taking lessons at that point. But it was good for testing out of all the piano labs at college. [Many music majors, no matter what their major instrument is, are required to achieve a basic level of piano proficiency for their bachelor’s degree] Rebecca: Yeah. John: Which was nice. And I still, I still play a little bit of piano. My mother was also a very good pianist. She was a good influence. Rebecca: Okay. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your life as a bass player? John: I mean, just looking back at it, it's been, you know, an incredible way to, I don't know, to get through life. I mean, making money and doing something that you really love, you know, at this level has been, you know, it's like a dream come true for me and, you know, to be a hard one �to replicate. But, you know, I feel like I've been very lucky and blessed to be able to do this at this level. And, you know, couldn't think of anything better, you know, that that would happen. I mean, there's, you think of the, you know how things work out and there's there's a lot of work involved with with being successful, a lot of work involved. And also there's there's a, bit of luck involved, too. And, you know, being the audition process is really hyper-competitive. And, you know, you’ve just got to go in the day of the audition and hope that it's your day, you know, hope that all that all the cylinders are firing. But when you do get that job, I mean, it is, there's nothing like it. And it's given me opportunities. You know, I've traveled around the world and I've played in so many different countries and seen a lot of different things, you know, played a lot of excellent music, you know, played with some of the world's best soloists and conductors. And musicians in general are a pretty particular group. And they can be very difficult and they can be a lot of fun. And just being able to experience that and, you know, have a have artistic view of how the world works has just been, you know, enriching for me, it's been a lot of just happy memories. That's that's how I view how things have worked out and just, you know, I'm grateful for everything. I never take anything for granted. Rebecca: Yeah. Now, you jogged my memory. There was a question I almost forgot to ask, which is, traveling with a double bass. I mean, I have flown with my cello enough times to know what that's like, but the bass is so much bigger and I'll just hand over to you at this point. Can you tell us about that? John: Yeah. Well, during the, you know, auditioning process, when I was out of school, you know, in college, you take an audition, you would have to buy a seat on the airplane when when you would fly with the bass to an audition. Of course, after 9/11, all of that went down the tubes. Now you have to, as a student, students have to put their bass in a trunk and, you know, check the trunk into the plane and go to the audition. It's much more difficult. But once you get into an orchestra, you're, it's, it becomes so much easier because they they have these big travel trunks that we stick our instruments in. Basically, you just have to show up at the the hall where we're playing and everything is set up for you. And they have a big stage crew. So we just, you know, they, they transport all of our belongings and concert wear and our instruments to the venue. So your job is to show up being, you know, fed and refreshed, you know, ready to play a concert on tour. And they make it very easy for you and you really get spoiled when you go on tour with the orchestra. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess I'm going to stop the recording. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Stovall Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2023-04-06 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player John Stovall. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on April 6, 2023. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; John Stovall Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_John_Stovall_4-6-23 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource M4A https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/f62068f3d3e7d85590b7a54b0438c444.mp3 8665569d0607e672d4600e9b4b2d21ad https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/660ee38e5128d2e1f2e3d0e5c6e0b24f.m4a 1db8c3ca2f56acd6e6c3ddada1a9b937 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/77e219d941798cb0a86c4e426b4c4c0a.pdf 2bf4166c9c492255be38a5a9bdc40957 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Tom Rea interviewing Rebecca Hein, September 21, 2022 Date transcribed: February 17, 2023 Tom: So, Becky, could you tell us about your, when-when did you first start playing with the with the, was it the Casper Civic Symphony still when you started? Rebecca: Yeah, I had been playing the cello since fourth grade 'cause that was when we had the chance to join orchestra or band and choose our instrument. And, during at least some of that time, I'd been taking private lessons. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And I guess the the string teachers in town kind of knew who might be ready to play in the Civic Symphony. I'd been playing in the Youth Symphony. Well, I don't know, maybe I joined the same year, my sophomore year? Anyway, I was invited to play in the Civic Symphony, and my interest in the cello and music was at kind of a low point. And what I was really on fire about at the beginning of that year was a possible trip to Spain that my second year Spanish teacher was talking about. So my mother, who of course didn't want to see me quit music, sort of—and I wasn't going to be able to earn enough money for this trip just working at the family business. I was going to have to find some other source of money, so she very casually pointed out, since I had declined to play in the symphony, that they paid. So of course I joined. Tom: (chuckles) Rebecca: And played the first concert, I think it was probably in September. And Rex Eggleston was conducting at that time. He was the conductor, I think Curtis Peacock came to town that year. That would have been the fall of ... 1971? Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And he [Peacock] was, I think the the assistant conductor or something like that. Rex Eggleston, E-G-G-L-E-S-T-O-N, was, at that time, the head of the public school strings in Casper. A really excellent violist, principal viola in the symphony when he wasn't conducting, and a really wonderful guyTom: Yeah. Yeah. �Rebecca: So, I had a really great start, playing under Rex that year. Tom: Oh, okay. And who did you, before we get into the symphony, so who who did you have for a teacher? Before, you know, before then? Who did you take lessons from? Rebecca: Well, I remember studying with Dorotha Becker, who was also concertmaster [first chair, first violin, and also leader of the entire string section] of the Civic Symphony at that time, and kind of the mainstay of string teaching in town. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: I remember she taught orchestra at Grant School when I was in fourth grade, and when it was time for me to take private lessons, that was, I think she was the only person in town who could really do that, until a cello teacher came to town whose name was Rebecca Rennecker. I'm not sure how her last name was spelled. And she became principal cello of the symphony. There was a little bit of trouble over that because the existing principal cellist, who had served long and well and was quite competent, his name was Sidney Wallingford. Was kind of pushed aside, I felt, and he felt, and I think he continued to play for a few years before he quit. Anyway, Rebecca Rennecker was my teacher through the rest of high school until I switched, I must have switched at the beginning of my senior year to driving down to Laramie to study with the cello professor there, David Tomatz T-O-M-A-T-Z. So all through the winter, Sid Wallingford and I drove down to Laramie together, we would take turns driving, to take our lessons. Tom: Did you spend the night down there? Rebecca: No, I think we drove home the same day. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: I'm sure we did. Tom: I remember listening to you play the cello in Barbara Dobos' living room when you were about 18. Rebecca: I remember doing that, yeah. Tom: You were a wonderful cello player for a long time. We'll get to that later, so. Where was, there, when you were in, at Grant School, when you were in the schools in Casper, was there, was there music instruction in the schools? Just orchestra, not private lessons through the �schools, right? But the kids could be in bands and was that part of the instructional day? Or was that like a after school activity like sports? Rebecca: No, that was a class during the day, as I recall. Tom: Right, so you could be in a orchestra class or a band? Yeah, that's sort of the, I guess, when our kids were there, too. And so, you started with Rex and then Curtis comes in when you're still in high school, were there are very many other high school kids? And you were in the cello section. You were not yet principal cellist. Is that right? Rebecca: Correct. Tom: And were there any other high school kids in the symphony then? Rebecca: Yeah, I recall Debbie Johnson, who's now Debbie Bovie. Tom: Oh. Rebecca: She's about my age, and she went to Kelly Walsh [high school in Casper]. Tom: Yeah, I know her, uh-huh. Rebecca: And John Niethamer, N-I-E-T-H-A-M-E-R, he was a year older than I was, but he was in the symphony. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I’m trying to think what other cellists, there was a principal bass for a while, a very nice man named Joe Corrigan, and Joe had a younger brother named Gaylen. I think G-AY-L-E-N, who was around my age, and I'm sure Gaylen must have played [cello] in the symphony at some time 'cause I remember playing with him and it wouldn't have been in high school orchestra, I know that. So it had to have been either Youth or Civic Symphony, or, more likely, both. Tom: So these were all cello players or these were a variety of instruments? Rebecca: Cellists. I had plenty of violinist friends as well, whose names I recall, if you want me to mention them. Tom: Sure. �Rebecca: OK, well, there was a student at Casper College whose name was Carol Tumbleson. She was really good. There was a, I don't know if she was a student at Casper College or older, but she wasn't that old. Her name was Lynette Ketcham, K-E-T-C-H-A-M. I'm seeing the photo of the symphony from this time, I think it was from when I was a senior in high school and I'm just seeing their faces. There was Jane Gerberding. Her husband or excuse me, her father was a Lutheran pastor in town, and he used to review symphony performances in the ‘80s [for the Casper Star-Tribune]. That was later on. But Jane was a good friend of mine. She was a year older than me. Susan Cheney, I looked at the math and I figured she must be either a younger sister of Dick Cheney or maybe a cousin. I don't know. Tom: Hm. Rebecca: She went to Kelly Walsh. There was a girl who was really talented; her name was Sharon Street. She was a violist. A really excellent violist, just one of these people, it's like, it seems like they never practice and they're always better than you are. And maybe she did practice and I just didn't know it, but she was extremely talented. And then also in that photo, I saw somebody in the trombone section by the name of Brian Brown, who was my age. And I can't think of who else. Tom: That's a lot. I wonder what they're all doing. That's interesting. And your mom was in the orchestra, right? Rebecca: Correct. She played viola. She took up viola in mid-life because, expressly because, orchestras never have enough violas, and she knew she was not going to be able to get really good if she took up the instrument, you know, not as a child. And so of course, she indeed had the opportunity to play in the symphony, because it's quite true that there's kind of a chronic shortage of good viola players. Tom: And so, had she-she never played strings before taking this instrument up when she was in her mid-life? Rebecca: I don't know. In her late 40s probably. Let me think, she played piano forever. She had played piano since she was a little girl, so she was a musician already. But it's a pretty big jump from piano to a stringed instrument. Tom: Yeah, I'll say wow. When I knew your mom, she was playing in the symphony. So what was it like being in the symphony with your mom? Rebecca: Oh, it was fine. It was great. I was so happy that she had a way to enjoy herself by playing in the orchestra, 'cause she, she and my father were very supportive of the orchestra and �would house import players and sell season tickets at their family business, Lange's Bookshop, and contribute. At least, well, their names in the program are pretty high-up in terms of the list of donors, so they were contributing in that way. At a higher proportion of their income than a lot of people. But you have to remember that a lot of those people that showed up at sort of modest levels of contribution, some of them showed up at the symphony balls and the other fundraisers and spent a lot of money at the auctions and things, and that didn't really show up in the list of contributors in the program, and those lists were sorted according to how much money the people gave. Tom: Yeah, different levels of, yeah, right. That's interesting. And was ... [there] already a symphony ball every year by then? Rebecca: I think probably, yeah. Tom: And were there any other adults in the symphony who you knew through your parents, or who were friends or parents of your friends or anything like that, you know? I'm trying to see if, you know, if it felt like these were people you knew anyway, some of them. You know what I mean? Rebecca: Well, of course I knew Sid Wallingford. Rick Rongstad would come up from Colorado. He wasn't that many years older than me, but I suppose he qualified as an adult. I guess, at that point, there was a woman named Mildred Brehm. B-R-E-H-M, I believe. She, I think, was principal second violin for quite a while. And of course, Rex. When he wasn't conducting, he was right there at the head of the viola section. And I just cannot overemphasize what a wonderful man he was. He was such a good teacher and so encouraging and so goodnatured. He was a real asset to the musical scene in Casper, I think. Tom: That's nice. Yeah. I knew him years later when I was the school's reporter for the [Casper] Star-Tribune and Rex was the head of I think not just music, but all arts stuff for the district, for the school district. Rebecca: Oh. Tom: Yeah, Mildred Brehm. B-R-E-H-M? Rebecca: That's correct. Tom: I wonder if she might have been the husband of the guy that my father-in-law, Derb Scott, worked for in the oil business? The wife? Did I say husband? Okay, that's interesting. Rebecca: Oh, and Rex’s wife, Connie, played principal bassoon for a while. �Tom: Okay. So, you started your sophomore year, junior year, senior year. And then you went to and so, did the orchestra change at all or you did? Were you feeling you were getting better During that time? Rebecca: Well, let me tell you what happened to me at the end of my sophomore year. First of all, throughout the year I became so in love with playing in an orchestra that I pretty much forgot about the trip to Spain. And all year long, every Sunday afternoon, I would play string quartets [two violins, viola and cello] with friends of mine from the Youth Symphony in my parents’ basement. Every Sunday afternoon as I recall, and we would play for hours and hours and hours and we had our fun pieces, our favorite pieces that we played every week, so you can imagine we got pretty good at them. Especially with Susan Cheney on first violin, she was quite good. So there was a particular Mozart quartet, I do not remember which one, but we were playing it one day. We’d been playing it for weeks, and there was a moment at which it was perfect. We-we were all together. There was no effort involved. We were all feeling the beat together and the sound we were putting out was perfectly blended. I swear it just was just one of those moments where everything comes together and and I was, I was struck. I don't know how else to put it. It felt like the sky had opened up, and a beam of light had come down and focused itself on the top of my head. And I was, I was like the Ancient Mariner or something, you know? [Referring to the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in which the Ancient Mariner had one story to tell, and had to tell it to everyone he met.] I couldn't think about anything else. Suddenly I had this moment of wanting moments of beauty like that, as many as I could have for the rest of my life. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: And-and I, and my-my brain put it into a sort of a mathematical statement, like, "Okay, you want more of these beautiful moments? This particular beautiful moment happened because our collective skill had reached a certain point." So the way to predispose or, you know, raise the odds, for more of those beautiful moments is to increase my skill, and the way to increase my skill is to practice as much as I can, and and literally overnight I became a practicing dynamo and I kind of pushed aside my, um, studies. For the next few years of high school, I didn't flunk out, but my grades probably could have been better than they were. And every spare minute I had, I practiced. And that, in practical terms, that meant for my last two years of high school, I would go to school and then I would walk downtown and work at the family business until closing time, come home, eat supper, help with chores, practice the cello till bedtime, not do my homework. Yeah. Because I-I wanted a career in music, in performance, and I knew I was really far behind to have that ambition. You're supposed to start when you're 5 or whatever. Here I was, 17 years old, or 16, I guess, and I knew I had to catch up and so I was both inspired, and I was also, I guess you could say, worried or knew how hard I was going to have to work. So in that �moment of perfection in the string quartets, I think basically I got my vision for my life, even though I hadn't been conscious of being on a vision quest or anything like that. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So I ... just had to major in cello performance. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And a lot of people. Not a lot, a few, including my teacher at UW [University of Wyoming], they sort of tried to talk me, not exactly out of majoring in cello performance, but into adding teacher certification. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So that as my teacher said, "Suppose you get married and your husband moves to a little town and there aren't any playing opportunities, what are you going to do? If you have your teacher certification at least then you'd be able to teach in the schools." Well, I knew I would be miserable teaching in the public schools, so I said no, I want to perform. I held to that for a very long time. Well, and I never did teach in the public schools. And there are very few performers who don't teach, both because they, I think, to some degree get pulled into it 'cause it's interesting and they want to share what they know, and to some degree because it's additional income. Tom: Sure. Ah, that's- thank you for telling me that story. That's how wonderful and so um. You went to UW? Rebecca: That's correct, for three years. And during those three years, I came back to the Civic Symphony as an import for many concerts, maybe all of them. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: That was fun. Tom: And were you majoring in cello performance at UW? Rebecca: I was. Tom: And who was your teacher there? Rebecca: David Tomatz T-O-M-A-T-Z. He was also head of the department. �Tom: Oh yeah, you mean? Yeah, I think you mentioned him in your Casper article, [article published on WyoHistory.org about the history of the symphony]. Was he a conductor in Casper? For a while also? No? Rebecca: No, he was conductor of the University Symphony. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: The main things he did was teach the cello lessons, play in the Western Arts Trio, which was the faculty piano trio at UW, and teach a few students. [a piano trio is piano, violin and cello] Tom: So you were aRebecca: And fair amount-go ahead. Tom: You were a private student of his as well, or you were, or you were, or that was part of your ... regular UW education? Rebecca: Yeah, that was part of my, you could take it as a class, basically. Private lessons, well, they’re one-on-one. I forget what they-applied, that was it, [they called them] applied lessons, for a certain number of credits. Tom: Uh-huh. And was he a good teacher? Rebecca: He was all right. I think his mind was elsewhere than teaching and performing. He was okay, but at the end of three years, I was frustrated by two things. I felt like I wasn't learning enough in my lessons and I was, I think, the only cellist of any ability in the department, so I didn't really have colleagues. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I wanted to be in a situation where I was surrounded by student cellists who were better than I was. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So [that] I had room to learn and a teacher who was a better teacher and a better performer than David Tomatz was. He was really made for schmoozing money out of little, old- �rich, little old ladies. That's really what he was made for. And that's really what he did best. Probably, you know, raised quite a lot of money for the department and the university orchestra. He was a very good looking man and he was charming and you know, I'm sure he knew how to schmooze money out of people. So he was divided. So at at the end of three years I transferred to the University of Oregon. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: Because in the region, I'd been to music camps in Montana, and I'd heard about the cello teacher at Oregon and been impressed with what I'd heard. And actually, I think it was during my sophomore year at UW, that I flew out there, spent my own money to do it. I had a friend that I'd gone to high school with who I’d been corresponding with, who was going to the University of Oregon, who met me at the airport, put me up in her apartment, gave me a ride to the university so I could do my audition to be admitted to the School of Music and so on. Tom: So the man that taught cello out there? Rebecca: Robert Hladky. H-L-A-D-K-Y. (pronounced Lad-kee) Wanted me to be with him for two years. So he admitted me as a junior rather than a senior and I could see his point. He really couldn't do much with me for just one year. So I it took me five years to do my undergraduate degree and I had to finance the last year myself 'cause my parents had told me and my sisters that they would put us through four years of undergrad school and support us during that time. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So they did that and then I had to finance that last year. But it was a really good move because, um, Dr. Hladky had studied with some really good teachers and had a really organized approach to playing and technique, and that's what I felt like I needed was, how do I play better, not, how do I be a better musician. That didn't worry me so much, it was, how do I get the notes to come out sounding in tune and on time and so on? Tom: Why isn't that a better musician? Why is? I don't understand the difference. Rebecca: Well, the difference is, you can have, you can know your way around the fingerboard and you can play in tune, and you can play on time, and you can play well with other people, 'cause your sense of rhythm is good and your sound is good and you know how to blend, and so on. But there's this added ingredient of, what would you call it, heart. Tom: Mmhmm. �Rebecca: Soul, swing. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: I know Swing is a Jazz term, but it's been co-opted by classical musicians to mean that little extra special something that makes you want to listen to somebody and they-how they handle the music, like let's say the [Johann Sebastian] Bach unaccompanied suites for cello. There are six of them. Each suite has, let me think, a Prelude and then stylized dances, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and then a pair of Minuets, or in some cases a pair of Boureés and then basically uh, a Gigue, G-I-G-G-U-E. Tom: Right. Rebecca: So all six of the Bach Suites have those and Bach, he could do so much with so little. He was all about chords, basically. And he would break up the chords for the cello, which you can't play all four notes at onceTom: Mmhmm. Rebecaa: -like you can on a keyboard or a guitar. Rebecca: And he would write these wonderful, wonderful pieces based on really nothing but-but chord progressions. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And so, you know, if if you're a good musician, you can play those, conveying to the audience by how you play them, where the important parts are, where the sections begin and end, where the chords change. Well, what's the melodic line and what's the bass line and things like that. And all I can do is share a story about, this was a cello festival I went to in Evanston, Illinois, where I lived for three years, when I went to Northwestern University for one of those years to get my master's in performance. So this cello festival was put on and there was a hotshot guy from Champaign Urbana. I guess that would have been the University of Illinois. And of course, because he was so good, he'd gotten this job, and he played, he performed for us, the attendees, at this little festival. And I had, I was in Evanston, not 'cause I-no, I didn't live there then, I had traveled down, that's right, 'cause I traveled to take a lesson with the new cello instructor at Northwestern. I was up in Wisconsin at that time, teaching at the university and in their Suzuki program. Anyway, I was down there for this-the weekend. So this guy played and he played one of the harder Bach Suites, one of the later ones. And just kind of, you know, knocked out the notes really good and really fast and really clear, but without an iota of �understanding of where the melodic line was, where the bass line was, what the chord progressions were, what-what the music was. He he had technique. He could play all the notes, but-but I just. ... I was kind of offended. I don't know. He was so good and so looked up to and selected to play this solo and I knew I was not his equal as a cellist in terms of getting around the instrument. So when I went to have my lesson with this new teacher at Northwestern, I said, "Was that as bad as I thought it was, musically?" And he shook his head, and he said "There's somebody who had no idea at all what he was doing." Tom: Hm. Rebecca: So, I think non-musicians pick these things up. They know it, whether they can articulate it or not, I don't know. But we all have music in our soul and I think, on some level, we know the difference between somebody who's basically a very good gymnast and somebody who's really taking the music up to the level of music. Music making. I don't know if that clarifies the question at all. Tom: You know, let's say that, that's really, I think I know what you mean. Yeah. Rebecca: It it makes you want to come back and listen to them again and again and again, yeah. Tom: Right. Right. Yeah. Rebecca: No, I had. Even if they miss a few notes, they're still going to call you back by how they play. Tom: Okay. So you went to UW for three years, you went to University of Oregon, Eugene, I guess, right forRebecca: Correct. Yeah. Tom: Two more years, you had a bachelors in music performance and then you went to Northwestern to go to graduate school? Rebecca: Well, something happened in the meantime. Let me look at my notes here. Oh, there was a summer internship orchestra. It wasn't quite the great gig that getting a fellowship to the Aspen Festival, Aspen Music Festival was. [high-powered summer music festival in Aspen, Colorado] If you got a fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival, you got full room and board and a pretty good stipend and you were at the Aspen Music Festival. Which, you know, the luminary musicians that were there and the things that went on, it was just incredible. So I auditioned for the Aspen Music Festival and did not make it. But this other summer internship orchestra, based �in Evergreen, Colorado, was called at that time the Colorado Philharmonic. I think before that, for a while had been called the National Repertory Orchestra. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: Most of the time musicians, when they play auditions, they have to pay the expense of traveling to where the audition is held. So anytime you can drive, you know, 100 miles, or down the street or around the corner or whatever to take an audition, you do it whether you're ready to or not. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So I knew about the Colorado Philharmonic and I auditioned for it. And I got in. Kind of an interesting, I have always thought it was an interesting story. I was at the audition. There were two people traveling around the country holding auditions. And this-this is kind of a story of getting in over my head musically, which I have a couple of things about that to say, but I-I was sitting there and I played some of the required excerpts that we knew we would have to play, they sent out the list. And I played about two notes of one of them. I'd been working really, really hard on tone production and in this slow excerpt, I think it was the slow movement of Brahms Second Symphony, which is standard, was a standard at that time for a lot of audition lists. [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] And both of them, both of these auditioners did a double take. I started playing, they looked up from their notes and stared at me. So that was interesting. And then when it came to doing the sight reading [playing a piece of music you've never seen before], I was really mentally engaged. I looked very carefully, the way my teachers had told me, to [indistinguishable] the music before I started to play it. I mentally played the first few measures to know what I was about to do. And I noticed that in this particular excerpt there was a a subtle difference in the notation between one phrase and another. And I wanted to make sure to make that difference very, very clear when I played it, so that they would know that I had seen that difference in the printed music. So I did that and got another double take. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So what happened was, and they based, they seated the sections, the string sections according to the auditions, was that I got fourth chair in this really good orchestra. Which, there was probably a ten-cello section, a very good string section, really excellent, and found myself rehearsing a piece by Claude Debussy, the [19th and 20th century French] Impressionist composer. The piece [was] La Mer, The Sea. It's a beautiful piece and it's got a cello quartet in it, where the rest of the section does not play, and the first four chairs of the cello section do. I had never seen the piece before. I had never heard it before. There I was, having to play the part. Uh, �it was, it was scary. It was stressful. I did okay, but that's sort of a borderline case of having landed myself in hot water. Anyway, that-that was what I did. The summer after my two years at University of Oregon no, wait Tom: Hm. Rebecca: Yeah, I was supposedly going to come back and do a masters. And then I made it [in]to the Colorado Philharmonic. And then we had guest conductors at Colorado Philharmonic. We're going to probably run more than an hour. Is that alright with you? I've got a whole page of notes. Tom: I have somewhere [I] have to be at, I have to leave at about, well, I was thinking maybe we should do a second session. Rebecca: We could. Tom: Let's see where we are by 3:00 and then make sure. Rebecca: Yeah, well, let's see. Colorado Philharmonic, let me think. Tom: So what happened next? Rebecca: Oh, right. We had guest conductors all summer long and and many of them were from professional orchestras. It was just wonderful, and one person got a job offer. Because of how well he played principal viola in the Colorado Philharmonic. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And they [the guest conductors] would hold audition seminars in the afternoon. See, we had a really compressed schedule. We performed every other night. In Evergreen, Colorado. We had, I think, Sundays off. I can't remember, but the rehearsal schedule was rehearse in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon. And then the day, the concert, rehearsal in the afternoon, perform in the evening. Or it might have been sometimes we did a matinee, in which case we would rehearse in the morning and perform in the afternoon. So, you know, very few rehearsals, very, very hard music, very high powered. So conductors would come through and guest-conduct concerts and hold these audition seminars. On the, in the chunk of time during the concert weekend when we weren't rehearsing and the better players in the orchestra would play their prepared auditions for, they were preparing for professional orchestras, and the conductor would critique. Well, I was never good enough or prepared enough to play these excerpts. So I would listen and, you know, take it all in. But then one conductor, he did not conduct the orchestra, but he was on a tour of the United States, well the upper 48, he had just been hired to conduct the �national symphony of Puerto Rico 'cause they wanted a, basically a European-standard national orchestra, even though they didn't have enough Puerto Ricans, so he was having to come up here and audition people, so I auditioned for him and they offered me a contract. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: As this was my life ambition to play the cello for a living, Tom: Right. Rebecca: I didn't hesitate at all. So that was at the end of the first Colorado Philharmonic season. At the end of that summer, I went down and played for nine months for a season basically in the Colorado or excuse me, the Puerto Rico Symphony in the section. Tom: I remember. I learned that a couple years ago that you had played in the Puerto Rico Symphony, and what was-what was it like there? Rebecca: Well, uhm. Tom: You were there for nine months and then you came back? Rebecca: Yeah, uhm. It was okay. It was well within my ability. It was a lot like playing in the Civic Symphony, although it was a better orchestra, I think, than the Civic Symphony was, somewhat better, good enough to do Beethoven's Ninth. And other Beethoven symphonies. It was fine. I always felt like I was living in a foreign culture. Just because Puerto Rico is part of the United States, politically, they're a commonwealth, I learned, when I lived there, but it's, culturally, of course it's part of Latin America. Tom: Sure, yeah. Rebecca: And I would have experiences, like I would address people on the street for directions or whatever. Or my colleagues in the orchestra. There were some really sweet older men. And I would-I would try my Spanish on them and ... I made such terrible mistakes. And they would, they were so patient. And-and, whimsical with me about it. It was really cool. Uhm, but I had a good stand partner, which is very important in an orchestra. Tom: Ah, and was it a new orchestra? Rebecca: No, I think they'd been going for a while. �Tom: Okay. And did you get a chance to, did you, did you not want to stay a second year, or did they not offer you a job for the second year or? Rebecca: Well, what happened was, I thought for sure I was going to stay more than one year. The money wasn't. It was enough to live on playing in the orchestra, but I also had many opportunities to play in the recording studios in San Juan, and that's where the real money is. I mean, recordings paid pretty well. And then there was the occasional one where it takes you ten minutes to record a jingle for a commercial, and you get paid $200. So that was fine. But then near the end of the year there was a the usual, I found, every year the orchestra as a whole negotiated with management for a better contract. I had learned and observed throughout the year that there were, as a whole in the in the population ... of Puerto Rico, people who wanted to continue as a commonwealth, people who wanted Puerto Rico to become a state, and people who wanted Puerto Rico to be an independent country. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I guess there's a lot of history about the commonwealth situation that was quite distasteful to the Independentistas. I never really knew the details or if I did, I've forgotten them. But we had some Independentistas in the orchestra, one man in particular I'm thinking of, who really resented the presence of the ‘gringos.’ Resented us, I mean absolutely could not stand that we were in the orchestra. So when the time came to negotiate, he told us right out - it was a meeting, an orchestra meeting - told all of us 'gringos’ that we had no right to have any voice in this because it was not our orchestra. So, that was the first time in my life had I ever been or felt dismissed and hated and stereotyped because, really, of the color of my skin and where I was from. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And it was, I didn't think I could work with him. He wasn't the only one. He was just the most outspoken one. And I started feeling like there might be better places for me to be. So I originally spent the whole year thinking I would spend another year there at least, and at the very end of the year I decided, no, I'm gonna go back somewhere, move to a big city where there are many teachers and many orchestras and a good professional orchestra for me to listen to and learn from and so on. So that's what I did. I moved to Evanston, Illinois, to be near the Chicago area. Tom: Okay. And so did you have a job in Evanston or did you go back to school? Rebecca: Uhm, Okay, you've asked me some questions about Evanston. I wanna jump back to high school, �Tom: Okay. Rebecca: 'cause I was in early college 'cause there were some things I wanted to say. Tom: Okay. All right. Rebecca: The first thing I want to say is that as a senior, I competed in a young artist competition in Casper and Cheyenne. And I was beaten by the same person, a pianist, who was pretty good. I was okay too, for my age and my level. And what to me is the interesting thing, and what was the beneficial thing to me about this was that all the string teachers who were concerned, that being the violin professor at University of Wyoming, who was one of the judges in Cheyenne, my teacher at University of Wyoming, uh, Curtis Peacock in Casper, who was not only the conductor of the Civic Symphony, but also the string instructor at Casper College. And maybe some other string teachers that I don't remember, said, they all said the same [thing]: "A pianist at the same level will always sound better than a string player because the string player at that level is still learning to play in tune. Still learning tone production." And while pianists do have to work on tone production, they don't have anything to say about whether they're in tune or not. They don't have to learn that. For obvious reasons. Tom: Right. Rebecca: So they all kind of felt that at least I should have been, should have won, or I don't know how it would have been worked. Anyway, I lost to this person. Curtis said to me, "Uhm, you worked really hard on your concerto. How would you like to play it, perform it with the Casper College Baroque ensemble?", which was really, you know, their chamber orchestra. "Furthermore, how would you like to perform it here in Casper and on tour?" So of course I said yes, I'd love to. And so I got a better deal than the winner. I didn't have the prestige of playing with the symphony, but in terms of practical experience, it's a wonderful opportunity to be able to, if you're being a soloist, to have more than one crack at it. [A concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment] Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So, you know, we played on tour and we played in Casper and I still remember playing in some little tiny town up in the northwest part of the state like Frannie or Deaver, or one of those. I just have this very clear memory of sitting on some stage with a tiny handful of people in the audience and-and performing my concerto. So it worked out really well for me. Tom: So the concerto was you and not the whole, and the Casper College orchestra. �Rebecca: Correct. Yeah. Tom: Huh. Great. Rebecca: Yeah, and there was another opportunity I had that I'll just add, many string students [in Casper] also have had. Let me think, Rick Rongstad; cello and bass, Dale Bohren; bass, Andrea Reynolds DiGregorio; cello. And a few violinists, probably, whose names I can't recall now, we all went to this music camp called Congress of Strings. It was a national effort. I think it was probably one string player from each of the 50 states. A huge string orchestra, a really big deal, really very high level of music making. Tom: Where was this? Rebecca: Well, it was held at UCLA for quite a while, and then the year that I went, it was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And it was a full scholarship. And they may also even have paid our transportation. I don't remember. I just know that I got to go and it didn't cost my parents anything. And it was eight weeks long. And it was um, a tremendous opportunity 'cause you're there with some really amazing performers. I remember one of the cellists that was there, he ended up in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul, Minnesota. That's one of the premiere orchestras in the world. And he ended up in that cello section. So I was of course very low on the totem pole, but I didn't really notice 'cause the music we played was so wonderful. We played, I mean you're restricted as a string orchestra to just a few pieces. And one of them is the [19th century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich] Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings, which is just one of the most lush, showy, beautiful pieces in the world. And then Mahler, Gustav Mahler, a German composer of the late 1900s. His Fifth Symphony, the slow movement is for strings and harp. And they dredged up a good harp player from somewhere. At Congress of Strings. And we played that, and there's nothing like Mahler. He's he was just drunk with the beauty of music, and you could tell by the way he composed. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So I will never forget playing those two pieces. It was really something and the local, there's a Musicians' Union Chapter [in Casper, the American Federation of Musicians] provided the scholarship. So because, as a direct result of my involvement with the symphony as a high school student, although I was at the end of my sophomore year in college, or was a freshmanfreshman year of college when I went, I still got the benefit of that scholarship. �Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So that was-that was something. Tom: When you mentioned, I just wanted to ask, did you ever know John Stovall? Rebecca: Yes, he ended up with the Boston Symphony. Tom: Yeah, right was. He's younger than you probably, right? Rebecca: About a year or two, yeah. Well, let’s see, you wanted to know what I did after Puerto Rico, right? Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: Well, I moved to Evanston, Illinois, so that I could go to the Chicago Symphony [concerts]. And I found out once I moved there that they had what they called was a training orchestra for the Chicago Symphony. It was actually a very excellent youth orchestra. I auditioned and got into that. I got an office job in Evanston part time so that I could work till about 2:00 in the afternoon, take the elevated train that turns into a subway partway there downtown, get to orchestra hall, rehearse, come home, eat supper, practice. Uhm, do it all over again. I did that for a semester till Christmas I think, and then I was just too tired. So I went full time at the office that I was working, and quit the Civic Orchestra and just took lessons and practiced. And then that year I applied for some graduate programs and got into the masters program at Northwestern, right there in Evanston. Tom: Yeah, Okay. Rebecca: Well, that's what I did. The second year I was in Evanston, that would have been, let me think, ’79- ‘80 was Puerto Rico, ‘80- ‘81 was being in Evanston [the] first year, ‘81- ‘82 was the year I did my masters. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: That was great. Tom: So you got a masters in cello performance at Northwestern? Rebecca: Correct. �Tom: That’s a one year program? Rebecca: Right. They had, they were so expensive they had to do something. So that's what they did. They reduced their requirements to the scope of a year. Tom: And then you spent another year in Chicago? Rebecca: I did. Um, I have to tell a story about my masters degree recital. I had a really fun teacher at Northwestern and he and I both knew that some of the music I was going to perform at my recital was a little beyond me, so I was lamenting to him, you know, everybody’s gonna hear that it was, uh, by Tchaikovsky, the Rococo Variations, this very showy, highly difficult piece. I said, "They're going to hear that my technique is not up to this piece. It's not going to be a perfect, note perfect recital." And he agreed. No, not quite. But yeah, you're here to learn. He tried. And I said, "Okay, as long as it's not boring, you know, it can be anything. I can miss some notes. Not many, but as many as I'm going to. It can't be boring." So then, I don't remember if he told me this before or after my recital, but he told me he had a terrible tussle with himself how he was going to break it to me that my playing was boring. (laughs) Tom: Really? Rebecca: I have always been glad that he was honest with me. Because one does not want to be a boring performer. So now I have to jump ahead. Now let's see the third one. I'm not going to jump ahead. There's just a continuation of this "boring" story. So then I completed my master's degree and the office that I'd been working at, I ended up working there during spring break and summer and things like that. So they were-they found room for me when I graduated and I went part-time. The year after my masters. Thinking I'd wasted time and money, 'cause I all I had was two little tiny teaching jobs at community schools of music in the area. And I was sure neither of them would ever go anywhere. One of them was a Suzuki teaching job. And one of them was a regular, just regular non-Suzuki, and the Dean of the School of Music at Northwestern had said to me, when I had started there, that my chances of getting a college teaching job were greatly increased if I had some Suzuki experience, because at that time the Suzuki movement was really taking off. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So, you know, I took this little dinky job that had like three students for which I had to drive an hour one way. Figuring it would never go anywhere, and also feeling like I didn't know enough, so I took a Suzuki pedagogy class on my own initiative, paying out of my own pocket, down at DePaul University, which I had to take the El, [elevated train] I don't know, 45 minutes �south to Loyola University. It wasn't that far, I guess, but a fair way to take part in a Suzuki pedagogy class. Which, to make a long story short, I ended up with a job at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh teaching University students and Suzuki students combined to make a full time position for me because I took that said ... pedagogy course. And the other community school of music, for which I traveled an hour one way and taught a few more students. It turns out that that was a very respected community school. It was called the Jack Benny Center for the Arts and about more than 50 percent of the music faculty at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Music Department - when I went up there to audition and interview for the job - more than 50 percent of them had first of all, gone to Northwestern. Had nostalgic feelings about that. Second of all, had taught at the Jack Benny Center, and also had nostalgic feelings about that, which certainly didn't hurt me. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: At this interview. So it was great. I spent that whole year feeling like a failure and like I'd wasted my time and was I ever going to be any sort of professional. I dropped the idea of trying to play in an orchestra because, there were kind of two reasons. Playing in an orchestra as a string player, it's kind of bad for your playing as a as a rule, if you do too much of it, 'cause you can't hear yourself the way you can if you're playing chamber music, for example, or playing as a soloist. And I discovered that, playing in the Colorado Philharmonic after University of Oregon, then in the Puerto Rico Symphony. And then again in the Colorado Philharmonic before I moved to Evanston. So more than a year of playing just in an orchestra or mostly in an orchestra. I could tell it was starting to hurt my playing, but the real reason was, to audition for orchestras you have to practice certain orchestral excerpts, just like you would practice a concerto until you have every single note perfect. Well, that's not so bad for excerpts from Beethoven's Ninth, excerpts from Brahms symphonies and things like that. [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] But when it comes to tone poems by Richard Strauss, those things, it's not just that they're hard, they're just not very rewarding musically. [Richard Strauss, 19th and 20th century German composer and conductor (son of Johann Strauss of “Blue Danube” fame.)]The cello parts that you have to learn, at least I found them not rewarding, and I discovered that I just didn't have the motivation to spend the hours and hours and hours and hours preparing those kinds of excerpts and, I don't know, I noticed that it was a really competitive thing. I mean, I always knew it was, but I had a friend in the Puerto Rico Symphony. She was a gringo. She had been in the orchestra for quite a while and she had been trying to get back to the upper 48 for quite a while and she was really good and she was one of these people that could make herself practice these excerpts and she flew, of course, at her own expense, to Texas. I forget, to audition for which major professional orchestra there, and she told me she played a note perfect audition. I mean, she didn't miss a single note, and did not get the job, and that was when she learned that something more was needed. So that, I think that gave me pause, along with the fact that what I really wanted to play was Beethoven quartets and, I don't know. Chamber music was very �attractive to me, and the only way you can really play chamber music is if you're part of a university faculty. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: Unless you get really lucky and you're really, really, really good and you get a place in a professional string quartet. But they often also have teaching positions somewhere. So I applied for this, well, the person that was in this Suzuki pedagogy course that I got to know, was commuting up to Oshkosh to teach in their brand new [Suzuki] cello program. They were paying for her to rent a car and drive up on Saturday morning, teach all day Saturday, and then drive home. Well, I just wasn't going to do that. I just, was not going to do that. And she was thinking of stopping. And I contacted them and I said, you know, I know this woman who's been coming up to teach your students. If you can offer me a full-time job where I can become a resident of the community and live on what you pay me, I'm interested. Well, lo and behold, there was a fireball up there. Who was in charge of the Suzuki program, who went to the university people, who [the Suzuki program] ... was housed in the university music department at that point, and said let's get together. You guys need a cello professor, and you don't have enough students. And we need a cello teacher and we don't have enough students. But together, can we put together a position? And they did. They came up with the money, they came up with, it was a University of Wisconsin system faculty job I had. They had to advertise it. And I had to audition and interview. And there was one other person who was also selected to audition and interview, and I got the job. Tom: And that's in Oshkosh, not Madison, right? Rebecca: That was. There are so many campuses of the University of Wisconsin. It was just incredible [to me at the time], how many. There are little centers all throughout the state in little areas and four-year branches. Many in many places. I told that to my mother, she said, Yeah, Wisconsin is a very progressive state. Tom: Yeah, that's true. That's been. I hope it gets back to that. Okay. So you were in. So how long did you have? Maybe we should. Let's see. How much notes do you have left there, Becky? I got somewhere I need to be about 3:30. Rebecca: Oh, we might be able to wrap up by 3:15 maybe? Tom: Okay, alright. Rebecca: Should we try? �Tom: Yeah, let's. Okay, so where did you go after that? Rebecca: Well, let's, I want to tell one story about being at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: Well, it was, I began playing regular faculty recitals. I'd been doing this for a few years and people always come backstage afterwards, and congratulate you and so on, and tell you how much they enjoyed it. Well, one person said, "There are two kinds of recitals, one where you're sitting there looking at your watch, wishing it would be over, and another one where you don't want it to end. And your performance was the second kind." Tom: That's nice. Rebecca: So I knew that the practicing I had been doing in the interim had been working. Tom: So not boring? Rebecca: Evidently not. I mean, that person had no reason to schmooze me. No reason at all. Tom: Good. Rebecca: Okay. Tom: I'm sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead. Rebecca: No. So we're done with University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Uhm, I want to say yeah, go ahead. Tom: How long were you there? Rebecca: Seven years. Tom: Oh, I didn't know that, okay. Rebecca: So yeah. Tom: And did you work that? Was it a tenure track position? �Rebecca: No, no. It was a one year renewable contract. It was adjunct. Well, I don't know. I guess I was an adjunct faculty. I don't know what they called it because I was a hybrid. I was, the Suzuki program was not part of the university, administratively. They just used their offices. So I don't [know]. All I know is my contract ran a year and then was renewed. Tom: Been talking a lot there. Do you need to get a drink of water or something? Rebecca: I don't know. I'll try to manage, I can. I want to say something about, something I faced as principal cellist of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. I became principal cellist in the fall of 1992. And what I faced, of course, was having to share the stage with Mark O'Connor, playing a piece that I'd never seen before and it was really hard. Tom: Right. Rebecca: -but I want to go back to something that I did, I'm not sure what year it would have been. I got married and my husband got teacher certification in natural science. And we ended up in Tecumseh, Nebraska. He was teaching science at their combined middle school and high school. ... So it's not that far from Lincoln and Omaha. I decided I would try to get into some of those orchestras that were up there. So I got some audition music and I looked at the deadline and started learning it, and we decided that I if I did any work outside the home, it would be playing the cello. So, I got this audition music and I ran into a piece that I'd never seen before on an audition list. And it was unbelievably hard. And there are two ways of tackling something like that. One is, you learn the notes and then you sort of beat it up to tempo. You set the metronome at the tempo you can play it at and you play it, then you up the metronome one click which is, I don't know ... but it's a few more beats per second [indistinguishable]. Yeah, and you play it again, and then you up the metronome again. You play [it] again. You work it up to speed as best you can that way or you change your technique so that you can play better and more easily. And that changing of technique is a long process, long and intensive. And I looked at the deadline for that audition and I decided I would rather change my technique than play that audition. So I did. I engaged in some very focused, very intensive practicing. One of the things I worked on was my sitting posture where, you know, you sit, you pick up the cello. Your back might be really good, your back muscles might be great, you know, and you start to play and everything starts twisting up and tightening up in bad ways. You have to have some muscle support when you play, so you can't talk about being completely relaxed 'cause then you wouldn't even be able to push the strings down or hold the bow, but managing your muscles so you don't distort what they're best for. That's what I tackled in that practice session with no knowledge of the future, you understand? No, no crystal ball that told me I was going to be onstage with Mark O'Connor about, I don't know, eight years later or something. Facing a piece that was nearly too hard for me. So that was very satisfying practicing and it really put my playing- headed me in a different direction. So that I was a much better player. And playing was much more easy, and my sound �was better, and a whole bunch of other things were better. Playing fast was easier. So that when I landed in Casper as the principal cellist of the symphony, I was ready for it. The principal cello ... solos that you have to play, things like the William Tell Overture by Rossini. [19th century Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's Overture to his opera, William Tell] That's best known, of course, as The Lone Ranger theme. But the opening is slow and it's a cello quartet, and the principal cello has the most wonderful and hardest part of the four cellos. I enjoyed that so much. I enjoyed playing that solo and I did it really well and I know I did. So I wasn't in over my head at all. It was comfortable, it was a comfortable job and we did a Brahms Piano Concerto. I ... [think] the second one? John Browning, who is a world class pianist, was our soloist. We played that in Oshkosh too. I was principal of the Oshkosh Symphony. And there's a very, very beautiful principal cello solo in the slow movement of that piece, I'd played it before. There is an easy part of it and then there's a harder part of it and it's just gorgeous and I played it. And then you sort of hand over to the piano after you play the second part of the solo. So I looked at John Browning when I was done, and he nodded at me and smiled, when he started playing, so I knew I had done a really good job. That, moments like that, were just wonderful and I never felt like I was over my head. Okay, so. Are we going till 3:15 'cause I think, probably, we can finish up in that time. Tom: What? Okay. Ah, alright, I have someRebecca: Will that work for you? Tom: Some, I'll have some questions, but maybe we could have a second session for those. I don't know that they'll take much time. So how did you end up? Are you going to tell me how it is you came to leave Nebraska and come back to Casper? Rebecca: Oh yeah, well, so my husband, Ellis, was teaching science and there were some unbelievable behavior problems in his classroom. You wouldn't think of it in a little town, but it was the case. And he had a very unsupportive principal who just didn't back him up in discipline. So he quit. He-he burned out faster than I've ever seen anybody burn out on teaching. He quit in March of that year, just broke his contract, and we moved. I'd been in touch with my father. My mother had died in ‘84, and this was ‘92, spring of 1992, and he told me they didn't have a principal cellist in the symphony, and that they were paying more or less a professional rate they'd had to cut down on what they were paying, but it was sort of our only safety net because Ellis was not going to teach school again. That was a very bad experience. He lost thirty pounds. He had insomnia for the only time he's ever in his life had insomnia. It was just terrible so we couldn't wait to get away. So we moved to Casper and I auditioned for the principal cello position and got it. And Ellis started remodeling houses and all that. Being a former farmer, he had a lot of carpenter skills and things like that. Maybe your questions are more important than what I have in my notes, except about O'Connor. �Tom: Do that. Yeah, no. Okay, tell me about Mark O'Connor. Rebecca: May of 1997, I had never heard of Mark O'Connor. I just knew he was our guest artist, and the music librarian whose job it was to get our music into our folders and let us know when we could come to the symphony office to pick them up, said, “Guess what? You're playing a duo with this guy, just you and him. And he supplied a tape recording.” Okay well, shrug. I was conscientious so I always picked up my folder as soon as it was ready and got busy on the music. So I got my music and I looked at this part and I played through it and it didn't look so bad. And I played the tape, and the tempo was so fast on the tape that I didn't recognize it, didn't realize it was the piece until I did, suddenly realize how fast I was going to have to play this piece. And the problem of course, which I couldn't help but notice [was] the length of the fiddle fingerboard, or the violin, is about half the length of the cello fingerboard. And I pretty much had to match Mark O'Connor note-for-note in this piece, "Limerock" was the name of the piece. So it's like he had to run the 50 yard dash and I had to run the 100 yard dash, and I had to come to the finish line at the same time that he got to the finish line. Tom: Right. Rebecca: -and he was by far the better player, in addition. ... and I had, the style was alien. So we get to the dress rehearsal. Tom: Had he, had he never performed this before with a cello, did he? Rebecca: Oh, many times. He had performed it with Yo-Yo Ma. They often programmed it. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: So we played it at the dress rehearsal and I was sweating. Of course, I was just sweating it because it was so hard. I was pushing to the very outer limits of what I could do. So I played it note-for-note at the dress rehearsal. He stopped and he looked at me, looked kind of puzzled and said, "you know, Yo-Yo had trouble with this piece." And my reaction was, well, as if I didn't. Just 'cause you can't see it. So Holly Turner was the manager, the executive director of the orchestra at that time, and it was her job to make sure that the guest artist got where he or she needed to go at the right time, so she was driving him around and taking him out for meals and things like that. And he told her a bunch of stories about past performances of this piece, or past attempted performances, including somebody, some principal cellist somewhere, who had been unable to play the piece and had - they had to take it off the program. And I think it must have been a case of not practicing it hard enough. �Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: As this person was way above me in the profession, and you don't get to the point that she was at without being really good and auditioning successfully, and a bunch of other things. So sort of a case of the tortoise and the hare. Tom: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Rebecca: So that was, that was not comfortable. It was too scary, too stressful, [to be comfortable] but it was worth doing. Tom: Yeah, yeah. ... That's great. [indistinguishable] Rebecca: Now I have a couple of associated stories, but I don't know if I try to tell them now, should I? They're short. Tom: Yeah, sure. Okay. Rebecca: After I was done, that is, had played "Limerock," there was more of the concert, including Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Concerto for Fiddle and Orchestra. And in that, the last movement of the concerto, there was a cadenza. And for the non musicians, I'll just say that the cadenza is the part where in a concerto where everything stops and the soloist has a chance to show off, and in the 19th century, cadenzas were improvised. Classical soloists improvised cadenzas. But then that got out of fashion and cadenzas started being written out, and the soloists just played the cadenza that was written into the music. Well, Mark O'Connor, of course he improvised his cadenza. And of course I could enjoy it completely because I was done with the hot-water part of it and it was one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life to sit, what, ten feet away from him, and watch him, and listen to him improvise this amazing cadenza. So one more O'Connor story, if you have time. And then a couple of post-concert, post-Mark O'Connor's concert stories could have stayed with me. First of all, Mark O'Connor was in Laramie, oh four, five, six, years after he was in Casper, and of course I went down to hear him, took my children. And he takes care of his fans. He sits out in the lobby after the concert and signs CDS, signs programs, and so on. For as long a line as there is. So I got in line. I didn't want a signature, but I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, programming "Limerock" in a community orchestra. What was he thinking that he did that to me? That was sort of the purport, and he looked kind of blank. He said, "Well, community musicians play well." I said, "yeah, but do we play that well?" That was his firm belief that in spite of having, not having every cellist that he played with be able to play it. I mean, Yo-Yo Ma could play it. He just had a little trouble with one section. When I saw the YouTube uhm, video of them, I saw what he did to to solve that problem. And it made sense. So I was invited to the reception after the concert. �Tom: Okay. Rebecca: Yeah, and somebody at that reception said something. Maybe it was a board member that said it, I don't know. I didn't know the members of the board, and they didn't hold receptions for the whole orchestra at that point. I was invited at the last minute 'cause I was a kind of soloist at that concert. Anyway, uhm, this person said "You know, I noticed that you didn't smile until it was all over." And I didn't say it, but I thought, "it's not my job to smile." (laughs) "It's my job to play the cello. Don't expect me to smile" 'Cause it was scary and stressful. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: I was thrilled that I had done it, but I can't say that it was fun like playing [the] William Tell solo or something like that. Tom: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Rebecca: So the other thing, I'll be quick 'cause I know you have to go. Somebody at that reception congratulated me and said I had really, distinguished the whole symphony and the whole city and so on. And I said, "Well, great, how about, how about a raise? How about hazardous duty pay for work dangerous to my ego and reputation?" Yeah, I thought it was a harmless quip. Well, you never experienced such a chilly tide of disapproval as swept that room. Tom: So this was, this was after you played the "Limerock" or this was six years later in Laramie? Rebecca: No, it was after, was at the reception Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: -for that concert. It-it was a joke, I thought a harmless little quip. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: But apparently to some people money is so important that you do not joke about it. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: I don't know. It was a major social gaffe, that I just did not see coming and didn't understand after it had happened. �Tom: Well, that's really interesting. I'd like to, maybe if we could have another conversation, ask you some more about your departure from the symphony, and about your feeling of the symphony as an organ, as a institution over all that time. I mean, you were connected with it off and on for a long time. And that's really, that's rare. Rebecca: Sure. Tom: So if we could maybe talk more about some of those things. Rebecca: That’d be fine. Tom: Other time I don't 'cause I don't want to squish them up now and I know you have a lot more stories you could tell me too. So this stuff is really interesting. Thank you so much, and I'm learning so much that I didn't know, which is always fun. So thanks. Maybe off the tape we can talk about another time when we can both do this again. Rebecca: Yeah, I don't know how to end the meeting and keep us talking. I suppose you could call me. Tom: Yeah, why don't we? Or maybe just? Rebecca: To end the recording. I'm not sure how to stop the recording and continue the meeting. You want me to try? Alright, let me see. Recording… � https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/0499323f738a300f1bd6afb34e5cb214.pdf 2a0a1e7efe0914bfd045dc0f3e83283f PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Tom Rea interviewing Rebecca Hein, September 21, 2022 Date transcribed: February 17, 2023 Tom: So, Becky, could you tell us about your, when-when did you first start playing with the with the, was it the Casper Civic Symphony still when you started? Rebecca: Yeah, I had been playing the cello since fourth grade 'cause that was when we had the chance to join orchestra or band and choose our instrument. And, during at least some of that time, I'd been taking private lessons. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And I guess the the string teachers in town kind of knew who might be ready to play in the Civic Symphony. I'd been playing in the Youth Symphony. Well, I don't know, maybe I joined the same year, my sophomore year? Anyway, I was invited to play in the Civic Symphony, and my interest in the cello and music was at kind of a low point. And what I was really on fire about at the beginning of that year was a possible trip to Spain that my second year Spanish teacher was talking about. So my mother, who of course didn't want to see me quit music, sort of—and I wasn't going to be able to earn enough money for this trip just working at the family business. I was going to have to find some other source of money, so she very casually pointed out, since I had declined to play in the symphony, that they paid. So of course I joined. Tom: (chuckles) Rebecca: And played the first concert, I think it was probably in September. And Rex Eggleston was conducting at that time. He was the conductor, I think Curtis Peacock came to town that year. That would have been the fall of ... 1971? Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And he [Peacock] was, I think the the assistant conductor or something like that. Rex Eggleston, E-G-G-L-E-S-T-O-N, was, at that time, the head of the public school strings in Casper. A really excellent violist, principal viola in the symphony when he wasn't conducting, and a really wonderful guyTom: Yeah. Yeah. �Rebecca: So, I had a really great start, playing under Rex that year. Tom: Oh, okay. And who did you, before we get into the symphony, so who who did you have for a teacher? Before, you know, before then? Who did you take lessons from? Rebecca: Well, I remember studying with Dorotha Becker, who was also concertmaster [first chair, first violin, and also leader of the entire string section] of the Civic Symphony at that time, and kind of the mainstay of string teaching in town. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: I remember she taught orchestra at Grant School when I was in fourth grade, and when it was time for me to take private lessons, that was, I think she was the only person in town who could really do that, until a cello teacher came to town whose name was Rebecca Rennecker. I'm not sure how her last name was spelled. And she became principal cello of the symphony. There was a little bit of trouble over that because the existing principal cellist, who had served long and well and was quite competent, his name was Sidney Wallingford. Was kind of pushed aside, I felt, and he felt, and I think he continued to play for a few years before he quit. Anyway, Rebecca Rennecker was my teacher through the rest of high school until I switched, I must have switched at the beginning of my senior year to driving down to Laramie to study with the cello professor there, David Tomatz T-O-M-A-T-Z. So all through the winter, Sid Wallingford and I drove down to Laramie together, we would take turns driving, to take our lessons. Tom: Did you spend the night down there? Rebecca: No, I think we drove home the same day. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: I'm sure we did. Tom: I remember listening to you play the cello in Barbara Dobos' living room when you were about 18. Rebecca: I remember doing that, yeah. Tom: You were a wonderful cello player for a long time. We'll get to that later, so. Where was, there, when you were in, at Grant School, when you were in the schools in Casper, was there, was there music instruction in the schools? Just orchestra, not private lessons through the �schools, right? But the kids could be in bands and was that part of the instructional day? Or was that like a after school activity like sports? Rebecca: No, that was a class during the day, as I recall. Tom: Right, so you could be in a orchestra class or a band? Yeah, that's sort of the, I guess, when our kids were there, too. And so, you started with Rex and then Curtis comes in when you're still in high school, were there are very many other high school kids? And you were in the cello section. You were not yet principal cellist. Is that right? Rebecca: Correct. Tom: And were there any other high school kids in the symphony then? Rebecca: Yeah, I recall Debbie Johnson, who's now Debbie Bovie. Tom: Oh. Rebecca: She's about my age, and she went to Kelly Walsh [high school in Casper]. Tom: Yeah, I know her, uh-huh. Rebecca: And John Niethamer, N-I-E-T-H-A-M-E-R, he was a year older than I was, but he was in the symphony. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I’m trying to think what other cellists, there was a principal bass for a while, a very nice man named Joe Corrigan, and Joe had a younger brother named Gaylen. I think G-AY-L-E-N, who was around my age, and I'm sure Gaylen must have played [cello] in the symphony at some time 'cause I remember playing with him and it wouldn't have been in high school orchestra, I know that. So it had to have been either Youth or Civic Symphony, or, more likely, both. Tom: So these were all cello players or these were a variety of instruments? Rebecca: Cellists. I had plenty of violinist friends as well, whose names I recall, if you want me to mention them. Tom: Sure. �Rebecca: OK, well, there was a student at Casper College whose name was Carol Tumbleson. She was really good. There was a, I don't know if she was a student at Casper College or older, but she wasn't that old. Her name was Lynette Ketcham, K-E-T-C-H-A-M. I'm seeing the photo of the symphony from this time, I think it was from when I was a senior in high school and I'm just seeing their faces. There was Jane Gerberding. Her husband or excuse me, her father was a Lutheran pastor in town, and he used to review symphony performances in the ‘80s [for the Casper Star-Tribune]. That was later on. But Jane was a good friend of mine. She was a year older than me. Susan Cheney, I looked at the math and I figured she must be either a younger sister of Dick Cheney or maybe a cousin. I don't know. Tom: Hm. Rebecca: She went to Kelly Walsh. There was a girl who was really talented; her name was Sharon Street. She was a violist. A really excellent violist, just one of these people, it's like, it seems like they never practice and they're always better than you are. And maybe she did practice and I just didn't know it, but she was extremely talented. And then also in that photo, I saw somebody in the trombone section by the name of Brian Brown, who was my age. And I can't think of who else. Tom: That's a lot. I wonder what they're all doing. That's interesting. And your mom was in the orchestra, right? Rebecca: Correct. She played viola. She took up viola in mid-life because, expressly because, orchestras never have enough violas, and she knew she was not going to be able to get really good if she took up the instrument, you know, not as a child. And so of course, she indeed had the opportunity to play in the symphony, because it's quite true that there's kind of a chronic shortage of good viola players. Tom: And so, had she-she never played strings before taking this instrument up when she was in her mid-life? Rebecca: I don't know. In her late 40s probably. Let me think, she played piano forever. She had played piano since she was a little girl, so she was a musician already. But it's a pretty big jump from piano to a stringed instrument. Tom: Yeah, I'll say wow. When I knew your mom, she was playing in the symphony. So what was it like being in the symphony with your mom? Rebecca: Oh, it was fine. It was great. I was so happy that she had a way to enjoy herself by playing in the orchestra, 'cause she, she and my father were very supportive of the orchestra and �would house import players and sell season tickets at their family business, Lange's Bookshop, and contribute. At least, well, their names in the program are pretty high-up in terms of the list of donors, so they were contributing in that way. At a higher proportion of their income than a lot of people. But you have to remember that a lot of those people that showed up at sort of modest levels of contribution, some of them showed up at the symphony balls and the other fundraisers and spent a lot of money at the auctions and things, and that didn't really show up in the list of contributors in the program, and those lists were sorted according to how much money the people gave. Tom: Yeah, different levels of, yeah, right. That's interesting. And was ... [there] already a symphony ball every year by then? Rebecca: I think probably, yeah. Tom: And were there any other adults in the symphony who you knew through your parents, or who were friends or parents of your friends or anything like that, you know? I'm trying to see if, you know, if it felt like these were people you knew anyway, some of them. You know what I mean? Rebecca: Well, of course I knew Sid Wallingford. Rick Rongstad would come up from Colorado. He wasn't that many years older than me, but I suppose he qualified as an adult. I guess, at that point, there was a woman named Mildred Brehm. B-R-E-H-M, I believe. She, I think, was principal second violin for quite a while. And of course, Rex. When he wasn't conducting, he was right there at the head of the viola section. And I just cannot overemphasize what a wonderful man he was. He was such a good teacher and so encouraging and so goodnatured. He was a real asset to the musical scene in Casper, I think. Tom: That's nice. Yeah. I knew him years later when I was the school's reporter for the [Casper] Star-Tribune and Rex was the head of I think not just music, but all arts stuff for the district, for the school district. Rebecca: Oh. Tom: Yeah, Mildred Brehm. B-R-E-H-M? Rebecca: That's correct. Tom: I wonder if she might have been the husband of the guy that my father-in-law, Derb Scott, worked for in the oil business? The wife? Did I say husband? Okay, that's interesting. Rebecca: Oh, and Rex’s wife, Connie, played principal bassoon for a while. �Tom: Okay. So, you started your sophomore year, junior year, senior year. And then you went to and so, did the orchestra change at all or you did? Were you feeling you were getting better During that time? Rebecca: Well, let me tell you what happened to me at the end of my sophomore year. First of all, throughout the year I became so in love with playing in an orchestra that I pretty much forgot about the trip to Spain. And all year long, every Sunday afternoon, I would play string quartets [two violins, viola and cello] with friends of mine from the Youth Symphony in my parents’ basement. Every Sunday afternoon as I recall, and we would play for hours and hours and hours and we had our fun pieces, our favorite pieces that we played every week, so you can imagine we got pretty good at them. Especially with Susan Cheney on first violin, she was quite good. So there was a particular Mozart quartet, I do not remember which one, but we were playing it one day. We’d been playing it for weeks, and there was a moment at which it was perfect. We-we were all together. There was no effort involved. We were all feeling the beat together and the sound we were putting out was perfectly blended. I swear it just was just one of those moments where everything comes together and and I was, I was struck. I don't know how else to put it. It felt like the sky had opened up, and a beam of light had come down and focused itself on the top of my head. And I was, I was like the Ancient Mariner or something, you know? [Referring to the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in which the Ancient Mariner had one story to tell, and had to tell it to everyone he met.] I couldn't think about anything else. Suddenly I had this moment of wanting moments of beauty like that, as many as I could have for the rest of my life. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: And-and I, and my-my brain put it into a sort of a mathematical statement, like, "Okay, you want more of these beautiful moments? This particular beautiful moment happened because our collective skill had reached a certain point." So the way to predispose or, you know, raise the odds, for more of those beautiful moments is to increase my skill, and the way to increase my skill is to practice as much as I can, and and literally overnight I became a practicing dynamo and I kind of pushed aside my, um, studies. For the next few years of high school, I didn't flunk out, but my grades probably could have been better than they were. And every spare minute I had, I practiced. And that, in practical terms, that meant for my last two years of high school, I would go to school and then I would walk downtown and work at the family business until closing time, come home, eat supper, help with chores, practice the cello till bedtime, not do my homework. Yeah. Because I-I wanted a career in music, in performance, and I knew I was really far behind to have that ambition. You're supposed to start when you're 5 or whatever. Here I was, 17 years old, or 16, I guess, and I knew I had to catch up and so I was both inspired, and I was also, I guess you could say, worried or knew how hard I was going to have to work. So in that �moment of perfection in the string quartets, I think basically I got my vision for my life, even though I hadn't been conscious of being on a vision quest or anything like that. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So I ... just had to major in cello performance. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And a lot of people. Not a lot, a few, including my teacher at UW [University of Wyoming], they sort of tried to talk me, not exactly out of majoring in cello performance, but into adding teacher certification. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So that as my teacher said, "Suppose you get married and your husband moves to a little town and there aren't any playing opportunities, what are you going to do? If you have your teacher certification at least then you'd be able to teach in the schools." Well, I knew I would be miserable teaching in the public schools, so I said no, I want to perform. I held to that for a very long time. Well, and I never did teach in the public schools. And there are very few performers who don't teach, both because they, I think, to some degree get pulled into it 'cause it's interesting and they want to share what they know, and to some degree because it's additional income. Tom: Sure. Ah, that's- thank you for telling me that story. That's how wonderful and so um. You went to UW? Rebecca: That's correct, for three years. And during those three years, I came back to the Civic Symphony as an import for many concerts, maybe all of them. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: That was fun. Tom: And were you majoring in cello performance at UW? Rebecca: I was. Tom: And who was your teacher there? Rebecca: David Tomatz T-O-M-A-T-Z. He was also head of the department. �Tom: Oh yeah, you mean? Yeah, I think you mentioned him in your Casper article, [article published on WyoHistory.org about the history of the symphony]. Was he a conductor in Casper? For a while also? No? Rebecca: No, he was conductor of the University Symphony. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: The main things he did was teach the cello lessons, play in the Western Arts Trio, which was the faculty piano trio at UW, and teach a few students. [a piano trio is piano, violin and cello] Tom: So you were aRebecca: And fair amount-go ahead. Tom: You were a private student of his as well, or you were, or you were, or that was part of your ... regular UW education? Rebecca: Yeah, that was part of my, you could take it as a class, basically. Private lessons, well, they’re one-on-one. I forget what they-applied, that was it, [they called them] applied lessons, for a certain number of credits. Tom: Uh-huh. And was he a good teacher? Rebecca: He was all right. I think his mind was elsewhere than teaching and performing. He was okay, but at the end of three years, I was frustrated by two things. I felt like I wasn't learning enough in my lessons and I was, I think, the only cellist of any ability in the department, so I didn't really have colleagues. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I wanted to be in a situation where I was surrounded by student cellists who were better than I was. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So [that] I had room to learn and a teacher who was a better teacher and a better performer than David Tomatz was. He was really made for schmoozing money out of little, old- �rich, little old ladies. That's really what he was made for. And that's really what he did best. Probably, you know, raised quite a lot of money for the department and the university orchestra. He was a very good looking man and he was charming and you know, I'm sure he knew how to schmooze money out of people. So he was divided. So at at the end of three years I transferred to the University of Oregon. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: Because in the region, I'd been to music camps in Montana, and I'd heard about the cello teacher at Oregon and been impressed with what I'd heard. And actually, I think it was during my sophomore year at UW, that I flew out there, spent my own money to do it. I had a friend that I'd gone to high school with who I’d been corresponding with, who was going to the University of Oregon, who met me at the airport, put me up in her apartment, gave me a ride to the university so I could do my audition to be admitted to the School of Music and so on. Tom: So the man that taught cello out there? Rebecca: Robert Hladky. H-L-A-D-K-Y. (pronounced Lad-kee) Wanted me to be with him for two years. So he admitted me as a junior rather than a senior and I could see his point. He really couldn't do much with me for just one year. So I it took me five years to do my undergraduate degree and I had to finance the last year myself 'cause my parents had told me and my sisters that they would put us through four years of undergrad school and support us during that time. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So they did that and then I had to finance that last year. But it was a really good move because, um, Dr. Hladky had studied with some really good teachers and had a really organized approach to playing and technique, and that's what I felt like I needed was, how do I play better, not, how do I be a better musician. That didn't worry me so much, it was, how do I get the notes to come out sounding in tune and on time and so on? Tom: Why isn't that a better musician? Why is? I don't understand the difference. Rebecca: Well, the difference is, you can have, you can know your way around the fingerboard and you can play in tune, and you can play on time, and you can play well with other people, 'cause your sense of rhythm is good and your sound is good and you know how to blend, and so on. But there's this added ingredient of, what would you call it, heart. Tom: Mmhmm. �Rebecca: Soul, swing. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: I know Swing is a Jazz term, but it's been co-opted by classical musicians to mean that little extra special something that makes you want to listen to somebody and they-how they handle the music, like let's say the [Johann Sebastian] Bach unaccompanied suites for cello. There are six of them. Each suite has, let me think, a Prelude and then stylized dances, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and then a pair of Minuets, or in some cases a pair of Boureés and then basically uh, a Gigue, G-I-G-G-U-E. Tom: Right. Rebecca: So all six of the Bach Suites have those and Bach, he could do so much with so little. He was all about chords, basically. And he would break up the chords for the cello, which you can't play all four notes at onceTom: Mmhmm. Rebecaa: -like you can on a keyboard or a guitar. Rebecca: And he would write these wonderful, wonderful pieces based on really nothing but-but chord progressions. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And so, you know, if if you're a good musician, you can play those, conveying to the audience by how you play them, where the important parts are, where the sections begin and end, where the chords change. Well, what's the melodic line and what's the bass line and things like that. And all I can do is share a story about, this was a cello festival I went to in Evanston, Illinois, where I lived for three years, when I went to Northwestern University for one of those years to get my master's in performance. So this cello festival was put on and there was a hotshot guy from Champaign Urbana. I guess that would have been the University of Illinois. And of course, because he was so good, he'd gotten this job, and he played, he performed for us, the attendees, at this little festival. And I had, I was in Evanston, not 'cause I-no, I didn't live there then, I had traveled down, that's right, 'cause I traveled to take a lesson with the new cello instructor at Northwestern. I was up in Wisconsin at that time, teaching at the university and in their Suzuki program. Anyway, I was down there for this-the weekend. So this guy played and he played one of the harder Bach Suites, one of the later ones. And just kind of, you know, knocked out the notes really good and really fast and really clear, but without an iota of �understanding of where the melodic line was, where the bass line was, what the chord progressions were, what-what the music was. He he had technique. He could play all the notes, but-but I just. ... I was kind of offended. I don't know. He was so good and so looked up to and selected to play this solo and I knew I was not his equal as a cellist in terms of getting around the instrument. So when I went to have my lesson with this new teacher at Northwestern, I said, "Was that as bad as I thought it was, musically?" And he shook his head, and he said "There's somebody who had no idea at all what he was doing." Tom: Hm. Rebecca: So, I think non-musicians pick these things up. They know it, whether they can articulate it or not, I don't know. But we all have music in our soul and I think, on some level, we know the difference between somebody who's basically a very good gymnast and somebody who's really taking the music up to the level of music. Music making. I don't know if that clarifies the question at all. Tom: You know, let's say that, that's really, I think I know what you mean. Yeah. Rebecca: It it makes you want to come back and listen to them again and again and again, yeah. Tom: Right. Right. Yeah. Rebecca: No, I had. Even if they miss a few notes, they're still going to call you back by how they play. Tom: Okay. So you went to UW for three years, you went to University of Oregon, Eugene, I guess, right forRebecca: Correct. Yeah. Tom: Two more years, you had a bachelors in music performance and then you went to Northwestern to go to graduate school? Rebecca: Well, something happened in the meantime. Let me look at my notes here. Oh, there was a summer internship orchestra. It wasn't quite the great gig that getting a fellowship to the Aspen Festival, Aspen Music Festival was. [high-powered summer music festival in Aspen, Colorado] If you got a fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival, you got full room and board and a pretty good stipend and you were at the Aspen Music Festival. Which, you know, the luminary musicians that were there and the things that went on, it was just incredible. So I auditioned for the Aspen Music Festival and did not make it. But this other summer internship orchestra, based �in Evergreen, Colorado, was called at that time the Colorado Philharmonic. I think before that, for a while had been called the National Repertory Orchestra. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: Most of the time musicians, when they play auditions, they have to pay the expense of traveling to where the audition is held. So anytime you can drive, you know, 100 miles, or down the street or around the corner or whatever to take an audition, you do it whether you're ready to or not. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So I knew about the Colorado Philharmonic and I auditioned for it. And I got in. Kind of an interesting, I have always thought it was an interesting story. I was at the audition. There were two people traveling around the country holding auditions. And this-this is kind of a story of getting in over my head musically, which I have a couple of things about that to say, but I-I was sitting there and I played some of the required excerpts that we knew we would have to play, they sent out the list. And I played about two notes of one of them. I'd been working really, really hard on tone production and in this slow excerpt, I think it was the slow movement of Brahms Second Symphony, which is standard, was a standard at that time for a lot of audition lists. [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] And both of them, both of these auditioners did a double take. I started playing, they looked up from their notes and stared at me. So that was interesting. And then when it came to doing the sight reading [playing a piece of music you've never seen before], I was really mentally engaged. I looked very carefully, the way my teachers had told me, to [indistinguishable] the music before I started to play it. I mentally played the first few measures to know what I was about to do. And I noticed that in this particular excerpt there was a a subtle difference in the notation between one phrase and another. And I wanted to make sure to make that difference very, very clear when I played it, so that they would know that I had seen that difference in the printed music. So I did that and got another double take. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So what happened was, and they based, they seated the sections, the string sections according to the auditions, was that I got fourth chair in this really good orchestra. Which, there was probably a ten-cello section, a very good string section, really excellent, and found myself rehearsing a piece by Claude Debussy, the [19th and 20th century French] Impressionist composer. The piece [was] La Mer, The Sea. It's a beautiful piece and it's got a cello quartet in it, where the rest of the section does not play, and the first four chairs of the cello section do. I had never seen the piece before. I had never heard it before. There I was, having to play the part. Uh, �it was, it was scary. It was stressful. I did okay, but that's sort of a borderline case of having landed myself in hot water. Anyway, that-that was what I did. The summer after my two years at University of Oregon no, wait Tom: Hm. Rebecca: Yeah, I was supposedly going to come back and do a masters. And then I made it [in]to the Colorado Philharmonic. And then we had guest conductors at Colorado Philharmonic. We're going to probably run more than an hour. Is that alright with you? I've got a whole page of notes. Tom: I have somewhere [I] have to be at, I have to leave at about, well, I was thinking maybe we should do a second session. Rebecca: We could. Tom: Let's see where we are by 3:00 and then make sure. Rebecca: Yeah, well, let's see. Colorado Philharmonic, let me think. Tom: So what happened next? Rebecca: Oh, right. We had guest conductors all summer long and and many of them were from professional orchestras. It was just wonderful, and one person got a job offer. Because of how well he played principal viola in the Colorado Philharmonic. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And they [the guest conductors] would hold audition seminars in the afternoon. See, we had a really compressed schedule. We performed every other night. In Evergreen, Colorado. We had, I think, Sundays off. I can't remember, but the rehearsal schedule was rehearse in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon. And then the day, the concert, rehearsal in the afternoon, perform in the evening. Or it might have been sometimes we did a matinee, in which case we would rehearse in the morning and perform in the afternoon. So, you know, very few rehearsals, very, very hard music, very high powered. So conductors would come through and guest-conduct concerts and hold these audition seminars. On the, in the chunk of time during the concert weekend when we weren't rehearsing and the better players in the orchestra would play their prepared auditions for, they were preparing for professional orchestras, and the conductor would critique. Well, I was never good enough or prepared enough to play these excerpts. So I would listen and, you know, take it all in. But then one conductor, he did not conduct the orchestra, but he was on a tour of the United States, well the upper 48, he had just been hired to conduct the �national symphony of Puerto Rico 'cause they wanted a, basically a European-standard national orchestra, even though they didn't have enough Puerto Ricans, so he was having to come up here and audition people, so I auditioned for him and they offered me a contract. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: As this was my life ambition to play the cello for a living, Tom: Right. Rebecca: I didn't hesitate at all. So that was at the end of the first Colorado Philharmonic season. At the end of that summer, I went down and played for nine months for a season basically in the Colorado or excuse me, the Puerto Rico Symphony in the section. Tom: I remember. I learned that a couple years ago that you had played in the Puerto Rico Symphony, and what was-what was it like there? Rebecca: Well, uhm. Tom: You were there for nine months and then you came back? Rebecca: Yeah, uhm. It was okay. It was well within my ability. It was a lot like playing in the Civic Symphony, although it was a better orchestra, I think, than the Civic Symphony was, somewhat better, good enough to do Beethoven's Ninth. And other Beethoven symphonies. It was fine. I always felt like I was living in a foreign culture. Just because Puerto Rico is part of the United States, politically, they're a commonwealth, I learned, when I lived there, but it's, culturally, of course it's part of Latin America. Tom: Sure, yeah. Rebecca: And I would have experiences, like I would address people on the street for directions or whatever. Or my colleagues in the orchestra. There were some really sweet older men. And I would-I would try my Spanish on them and ... I made such terrible mistakes. And they would, they were so patient. And-and, whimsical with me about it. It was really cool. Uhm, but I had a good stand partner, which is very important in an orchestra. Tom: Ah, and was it a new orchestra? Rebecca: No, I think they'd been going for a while. �Tom: Okay. And did you get a chance to, did you, did you not want to stay a second year, or did they not offer you a job for the second year or? Rebecca: Well, what happened was, I thought for sure I was going to stay more than one year. The money wasn't. It was enough to live on playing in the orchestra, but I also had many opportunities to play in the recording studios in San Juan, and that's where the real money is. I mean, recordings paid pretty well. And then there was the occasional one where it takes you ten minutes to record a jingle for a commercial, and you get paid $200. So that was fine. But then near the end of the year there was a the usual, I found, every year the orchestra as a whole negotiated with management for a better contract. I had learned and observed throughout the year that there were, as a whole in the in the population ... of Puerto Rico, people who wanted to continue as a commonwealth, people who wanted Puerto Rico to become a state, and people who wanted Puerto Rico to be an independent country. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: And I guess there's a lot of history about the commonwealth situation that was quite distasteful to the Independentistas. I never really knew the details or if I did, I've forgotten them. But we had some Independentistas in the orchestra, one man in particular I'm thinking of, who really resented the presence of the ‘gringos.’ Resented us, I mean absolutely could not stand that we were in the orchestra. So when the time came to negotiate, he told us right out - it was a meeting, an orchestra meeting - told all of us 'gringos’ that we had no right to have any voice in this because it was not our orchestra. So, that was the first time in my life had I ever been or felt dismissed and hated and stereotyped because, really, of the color of my skin and where I was from. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And it was, I didn't think I could work with him. He wasn't the only one. He was just the most outspoken one. And I started feeling like there might be better places for me to be. So I originally spent the whole year thinking I would spend another year there at least, and at the very end of the year I decided, no, I'm gonna go back somewhere, move to a big city where there are many teachers and many orchestras and a good professional orchestra for me to listen to and learn from and so on. So that's what I did. I moved to Evanston, Illinois, to be near the Chicago area. Tom: Okay. And so did you have a job in Evanston or did you go back to school? Rebecca: Uhm, Okay, you've asked me some questions about Evanston. I wanna jump back to high school, �Tom: Okay. Rebecca: 'cause I was in early college 'cause there were some things I wanted to say. Tom: Okay. All right. Rebecca: The first thing I want to say is that as a senior, I competed in a young artist competition in Casper and Cheyenne. And I was beaten by the same person, a pianist, who was pretty good. I was okay too, for my age and my level. And what to me is the interesting thing, and what was the beneficial thing to me about this was that all the string teachers who were concerned, that being the violin professor at University of Wyoming, who was one of the judges in Cheyenne, my teacher at University of Wyoming, uh, Curtis Peacock in Casper, who was not only the conductor of the Civic Symphony, but also the string instructor at Casper College. And maybe some other string teachers that I don't remember, said, they all said the same [thing]: "A pianist at the same level will always sound better than a string player because the string player at that level is still learning to play in tune. Still learning tone production." And while pianists do have to work on tone production, they don't have anything to say about whether they're in tune or not. They don't have to learn that. For obvious reasons. Tom: Right. Rebecca: So they all kind of felt that at least I should have been, should have won, or I don't know how it would have been worked. Anyway, I lost to this person. Curtis said to me, "Uhm, you worked really hard on your concerto. How would you like to play it, perform it with the Casper College Baroque ensemble?", which was really, you know, their chamber orchestra. "Furthermore, how would you like to perform it here in Casper and on tour?" So of course I said yes, I'd love to. And so I got a better deal than the winner. I didn't have the prestige of playing with the symphony, but in terms of practical experience, it's a wonderful opportunity to be able to, if you're being a soloist, to have more than one crack at it. [A concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment] Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So, you know, we played on tour and we played in Casper and I still remember playing in some little tiny town up in the northwest part of the state like Frannie or Deaver, or one of those. I just have this very clear memory of sitting on some stage with a tiny handful of people in the audience and-and performing my concerto. So it worked out really well for me. Tom: So the concerto was you and not the whole, and the Casper College orchestra. �Rebecca: Correct. Yeah. Tom: Huh. Great. Rebecca: Yeah, and there was another opportunity I had that I'll just add, many string students [in Casper] also have had. Let me think, Rick Rongstad; cello and bass, Dale Bohren; bass, Andrea Reynolds DiGregorio; cello. And a few violinists, probably, whose names I can't recall now, we all went to this music camp called Congress of Strings. It was a national effort. I think it was probably one string player from each of the 50 states. A huge string orchestra, a really big deal, really very high level of music making. Tom: Where was this? Rebecca: Well, it was held at UCLA for quite a while, and then the year that I went, it was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: And it was a full scholarship. And they may also even have paid our transportation. I don't remember. I just know that I got to go and it didn't cost my parents anything. And it was eight weeks long. And it was um, a tremendous opportunity 'cause you're there with some really amazing performers. I remember one of the cellists that was there, he ended up in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul, Minnesota. That's one of the premiere orchestras in the world. And he ended up in that cello section. So I was of course very low on the totem pole, but I didn't really notice 'cause the music we played was so wonderful. We played, I mean you're restricted as a string orchestra to just a few pieces. And one of them is the [19th century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich] Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings, which is just one of the most lush, showy, beautiful pieces in the world. And then Mahler, Gustav Mahler, a German composer of the late 1900s. His Fifth Symphony, the slow movement is for strings and harp. And they dredged up a good harp player from somewhere. At Congress of Strings. And we played that, and there's nothing like Mahler. He's he was just drunk with the beauty of music, and you could tell by the way he composed. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: So I will never forget playing those two pieces. It was really something and the local, there's a Musicians' Union Chapter [in Casper, the American Federation of Musicians] provided the scholarship. So because, as a direct result of my involvement with the symphony as a high school student, although I was at the end of my sophomore year in college, or was a freshmanfreshman year of college when I went, I still got the benefit of that scholarship. �Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So that was-that was something. Tom: When you mentioned, I just wanted to ask, did you ever know John Stovall? Rebecca: Yes, he ended up with the Boston Symphony. Tom: Yeah, right was. He's younger than you probably, right? Rebecca: About a year or two, yeah. Well, let’s see, you wanted to know what I did after Puerto Rico, right? Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: Well, I moved to Evanston, Illinois, so that I could go to the Chicago Symphony [concerts]. And I found out once I moved there that they had what they called was a training orchestra for the Chicago Symphony. It was actually a very excellent youth orchestra. I auditioned and got into that. I got an office job in Evanston part time so that I could work till about 2:00 in the afternoon, take the elevated train that turns into a subway partway there downtown, get to orchestra hall, rehearse, come home, eat supper, practice. Uhm, do it all over again. I did that for a semester till Christmas I think, and then I was just too tired. So I went full time at the office that I was working, and quit the Civic Orchestra and just took lessons and practiced. And then that year I applied for some graduate programs and got into the masters program at Northwestern, right there in Evanston. Tom: Yeah, Okay. Rebecca: Well, that's what I did. The second year I was in Evanston, that would have been, let me think, ’79- ‘80 was Puerto Rico, ‘80- ‘81 was being in Evanston [the] first year, ‘81- ‘82 was the year I did my masters. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: That was great. Tom: So you got a masters in cello performance at Northwestern? Rebecca: Correct. �Tom: That’s a one year program? Rebecca: Right. They had, they were so expensive they had to do something. So that's what they did. They reduced their requirements to the scope of a year. Tom: And then you spent another year in Chicago? Rebecca: I did. Um, I have to tell a story about my masters degree recital. I had a really fun teacher at Northwestern and he and I both knew that some of the music I was going to perform at my recital was a little beyond me, so I was lamenting to him, you know, everybody’s gonna hear that it was, uh, by Tchaikovsky, the Rococo Variations, this very showy, highly difficult piece. I said, "They're going to hear that my technique is not up to this piece. It's not going to be a perfect, note perfect recital." And he agreed. No, not quite. But yeah, you're here to learn. He tried. And I said, "Okay, as long as it's not boring, you know, it can be anything. I can miss some notes. Not many, but as many as I'm going to. It can't be boring." So then, I don't remember if he told me this before or after my recital, but he told me he had a terrible tussle with himself how he was going to break it to me that my playing was boring. (laughs) Tom: Really? Rebecca: I have always been glad that he was honest with me. Because one does not want to be a boring performer. So now I have to jump ahead. Now let's see the third one. I'm not going to jump ahead. There's just a continuation of this "boring" story. So then I completed my master's degree and the office that I'd been working at, I ended up working there during spring break and summer and things like that. So they were-they found room for me when I graduated and I went part-time. The year after my masters. Thinking I'd wasted time and money, 'cause I all I had was two little tiny teaching jobs at community schools of music in the area. And I was sure neither of them would ever go anywhere. One of them was a Suzuki teaching job. And one of them was a regular, just regular non-Suzuki, and the Dean of the School of Music at Northwestern had said to me, when I had started there, that my chances of getting a college teaching job were greatly increased if I had some Suzuki experience, because at that time the Suzuki movement was really taking off. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So, you know, I took this little dinky job that had like three students for which I had to drive an hour one way. Figuring it would never go anywhere, and also feeling like I didn't know enough, so I took a Suzuki pedagogy class on my own initiative, paying out of my own pocket, down at DePaul University, which I had to take the El, [elevated train] I don't know, 45 minutes �south to Loyola University. It wasn't that far, I guess, but a fair way to take part in a Suzuki pedagogy class. Which, to make a long story short, I ended up with a job at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh teaching University students and Suzuki students combined to make a full time position for me because I took that said ... pedagogy course. And the other community school of music, for which I traveled an hour one way and taught a few more students. It turns out that that was a very respected community school. It was called the Jack Benny Center for the Arts and about more than 50 percent of the music faculty at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Music Department - when I went up there to audition and interview for the job - more than 50 percent of them had first of all, gone to Northwestern. Had nostalgic feelings about that. Second of all, had taught at the Jack Benny Center, and also had nostalgic feelings about that, which certainly didn't hurt me. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: At this interview. So it was great. I spent that whole year feeling like a failure and like I'd wasted my time and was I ever going to be any sort of professional. I dropped the idea of trying to play in an orchestra because, there were kind of two reasons. Playing in an orchestra as a string player, it's kind of bad for your playing as a as a rule, if you do too much of it, 'cause you can't hear yourself the way you can if you're playing chamber music, for example, or playing as a soloist. And I discovered that, playing in the Colorado Philharmonic after University of Oregon, then in the Puerto Rico Symphony. And then again in the Colorado Philharmonic before I moved to Evanston. So more than a year of playing just in an orchestra or mostly in an orchestra. I could tell it was starting to hurt my playing, but the real reason was, to audition for orchestras you have to practice certain orchestral excerpts, just like you would practice a concerto until you have every single note perfect. Well, that's not so bad for excerpts from Beethoven's Ninth, excerpts from Brahms symphonies and things like that. [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] But when it comes to tone poems by Richard Strauss, those things, it's not just that they're hard, they're just not very rewarding musically. [Richard Strauss, 19th and 20th century German composer and conductor (son of Johann Strauss of “Blue Danube” fame.)]The cello parts that you have to learn, at least I found them not rewarding, and I discovered that I just didn't have the motivation to spend the hours and hours and hours and hours preparing those kinds of excerpts and, I don't know, I noticed that it was a really competitive thing. I mean, I always knew it was, but I had a friend in the Puerto Rico Symphony. She was a gringo. She had been in the orchestra for quite a while and she had been trying to get back to the upper 48 for quite a while and she was really good and she was one of these people that could make herself practice these excerpts and she flew, of course, at her own expense, to Texas. I forget, to audition for which major professional orchestra there, and she told me she played a note perfect audition. I mean, she didn't miss a single note, and did not get the job, and that was when she learned that something more was needed. So that, I think that gave me pause, along with the fact that what I really wanted to play was Beethoven quartets and, I don't know. Chamber music was very �attractive to me, and the only way you can really play chamber music is if you're part of a university faculty. Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: Unless you get really lucky and you're really, really, really good and you get a place in a professional string quartet. But they often also have teaching positions somewhere. So I applied for this, well, the person that was in this Suzuki pedagogy course that I got to know, was commuting up to Oshkosh to teach in their brand new [Suzuki] cello program. They were paying for her to rent a car and drive up on Saturday morning, teach all day Saturday, and then drive home. Well, I just wasn't going to do that. I just, was not going to do that. And she was thinking of stopping. And I contacted them and I said, you know, I know this woman who's been coming up to teach your students. If you can offer me a full-time job where I can become a resident of the community and live on what you pay me, I'm interested. Well, lo and behold, there was a fireball up there. Who was in charge of the Suzuki program, who went to the university people, who [the Suzuki program] ... was housed in the university music department at that point, and said let's get together. You guys need a cello professor, and you don't have enough students. And we need a cello teacher and we don't have enough students. But together, can we put together a position? And they did. They came up with the money, they came up with, it was a University of Wisconsin system faculty job I had. They had to advertise it. And I had to audition and interview. And there was one other person who was also selected to audition and interview, and I got the job. Tom: And that's in Oshkosh, not Madison, right? Rebecca: That was. There are so many campuses of the University of Wisconsin. It was just incredible [to me at the time], how many. There are little centers all throughout the state in little areas and four-year branches. Many in many places. I told that to my mother, she said, Yeah, Wisconsin is a very progressive state. Tom: Yeah, that's true. That's been. I hope it gets back to that. Okay. So you were in. So how long did you have? Maybe we should. Let's see. How much notes do you have left there, Becky? I got somewhere I need to be about 3:30. Rebecca: Oh, we might be able to wrap up by 3:15 maybe? Tom: Okay, alright. Rebecca: Should we try? �Tom: Yeah, let's. Okay, so where did you go after that? Rebecca: Well, let's, I want to tell one story about being at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: Well, it was, I began playing regular faculty recitals. I'd been doing this for a few years and people always come backstage afterwards, and congratulate you and so on, and tell you how much they enjoyed it. Well, one person said, "There are two kinds of recitals, one where you're sitting there looking at your watch, wishing it would be over, and another one where you don't want it to end. And your performance was the second kind." Tom: That's nice. Rebecca: So I knew that the practicing I had been doing in the interim had been working. Tom: So not boring? Rebecca: Evidently not. I mean, that person had no reason to schmooze me. No reason at all. Tom: Good. Rebecca: Okay. Tom: I'm sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead. Rebecca: No. So we're done with University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Uhm, I want to say yeah, go ahead. Tom: How long were you there? Rebecca: Seven years. Tom: Oh, I didn't know that, okay. Rebecca: So yeah. Tom: And did you work that? Was it a tenure track position? �Rebecca: No, no. It was a one year renewable contract. It was adjunct. Well, I don't know. I guess I was an adjunct faculty. I don't know what they called it because I was a hybrid. I was, the Suzuki program was not part of the university, administratively. They just used their offices. So I don't [know]. All I know is my contract ran a year and then was renewed. Tom: Been talking a lot there. Do you need to get a drink of water or something? Rebecca: I don't know. I'll try to manage, I can. I want to say something about, something I faced as principal cellist of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. I became principal cellist in the fall of 1992. And what I faced, of course, was having to share the stage with Mark O'Connor, playing a piece that I'd never seen before and it was really hard. Tom: Right. Rebecca: -but I want to go back to something that I did, I'm not sure what year it would have been. I got married and my husband got teacher certification in natural science. And we ended up in Tecumseh, Nebraska. He was teaching science at their combined middle school and high school. ... So it's not that far from Lincoln and Omaha. I decided I would try to get into some of those orchestras that were up there. So I got some audition music and I looked at the deadline and started learning it, and we decided that I if I did any work outside the home, it would be playing the cello. So, I got this audition music and I ran into a piece that I'd never seen before on an audition list. And it was unbelievably hard. And there are two ways of tackling something like that. One is, you learn the notes and then you sort of beat it up to tempo. You set the metronome at the tempo you can play it at and you play it, then you up the metronome one click which is, I don't know ... but it's a few more beats per second [indistinguishable]. Yeah, and you play it again, and then you up the metronome again. You play [it] again. You work it up to speed as best you can that way or you change your technique so that you can play better and more easily. And that changing of technique is a long process, long and intensive. And I looked at the deadline for that audition and I decided I would rather change my technique than play that audition. So I did. I engaged in some very focused, very intensive practicing. One of the things I worked on was my sitting posture where, you know, you sit, you pick up the cello. Your back might be really good, your back muscles might be great, you know, and you start to play and everything starts twisting up and tightening up in bad ways. You have to have some muscle support when you play, so you can't talk about being completely relaxed 'cause then you wouldn't even be able to push the strings down or hold the bow, but managing your muscles so you don't distort what they're best for. That's what I tackled in that practice session with no knowledge of the future, you understand? No, no crystal ball that told me I was going to be onstage with Mark O'Connor about, I don't know, eight years later or something. Facing a piece that was nearly too hard for me. So that was very satisfying practicing and it really put my playing- headed me in a different direction. So that I was a much better player. And playing was much more easy, and my sound �was better, and a whole bunch of other things were better. Playing fast was easier. So that when I landed in Casper as the principal cellist of the symphony, I was ready for it. The principal cello ... solos that you have to play, things like the William Tell Overture by Rossini. [19th century Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's Overture to his opera, William Tell] That's best known, of course, as The Lone Ranger theme. But the opening is slow and it's a cello quartet, and the principal cello has the most wonderful and hardest part of the four cellos. I enjoyed that so much. I enjoyed playing that solo and I did it really well and I know I did. So I wasn't in over my head at all. It was comfortable, it was a comfortable job and we did a Brahms Piano Concerto. I ... [think] the second one? John Browning, who is a world class pianist, was our soloist. We played that in Oshkosh too. I was principal of the Oshkosh Symphony. And there's a very, very beautiful principal cello solo in the slow movement of that piece, I'd played it before. There is an easy part of it and then there's a harder part of it and it's just gorgeous and I played it. And then you sort of hand over to the piano after you play the second part of the solo. So I looked at John Browning when I was done, and he nodded at me and smiled, when he started playing, so I knew I had done a really good job. That, moments like that, were just wonderful and I never felt like I was over my head. Okay, so. Are we going till 3:15 'cause I think, probably, we can finish up in that time. Tom: What? Okay. Ah, alright, I have someRebecca: Will that work for you? Tom: Some, I'll have some questions, but maybe we could have a second session for those. I don't know that they'll take much time. So how did you end up? Are you going to tell me how it is you came to leave Nebraska and come back to Casper? Rebecca: Oh yeah, well, so my husband, Ellis, was teaching science and there were some unbelievable behavior problems in his classroom. You wouldn't think of it in a little town, but it was the case. And he had a very unsupportive principal who just didn't back him up in discipline. So he quit. He-he burned out faster than I've ever seen anybody burn out on teaching. He quit in March of that year, just broke his contract, and we moved. I'd been in touch with my father. My mother had died in ‘84, and this was ‘92, spring of 1992, and he told me they didn't have a principal cellist in the symphony, and that they were paying more or less a professional rate they'd had to cut down on what they were paying, but it was sort of our only safety net because Ellis was not going to teach school again. That was a very bad experience. He lost thirty pounds. He had insomnia for the only time he's ever in his life had insomnia. It was just terrible so we couldn't wait to get away. So we moved to Casper and I auditioned for the principal cello position and got it. And Ellis started remodeling houses and all that. Being a former farmer, he had a lot of carpenter skills and things like that. Maybe your questions are more important than what I have in my notes, except about O'Connor. �Tom: Do that. Yeah, no. Okay, tell me about Mark O'Connor. Rebecca: May of 1997, I had never heard of Mark O'Connor. I just knew he was our guest artist, and the music librarian whose job it was to get our music into our folders and let us know when we could come to the symphony office to pick them up, said, “Guess what? You're playing a duo with this guy, just you and him. And he supplied a tape recording.” Okay well, shrug. I was conscientious so I always picked up my folder as soon as it was ready and got busy on the music. So I got my music and I looked at this part and I played through it and it didn't look so bad. And I played the tape, and the tempo was so fast on the tape that I didn't recognize it, didn't realize it was the piece until I did, suddenly realize how fast I was going to have to play this piece. And the problem of course, which I couldn't help but notice [was] the length of the fiddle fingerboard, or the violin, is about half the length of the cello fingerboard. And I pretty much had to match Mark O'Connor note-for-note in this piece, "Limerock" was the name of the piece. So it's like he had to run the 50 yard dash and I had to run the 100 yard dash, and I had to come to the finish line at the same time that he got to the finish line. Tom: Right. Rebecca: -and he was by far the better player, in addition. ... and I had, the style was alien. So we get to the dress rehearsal. Tom: Had he, had he never performed this before with a cello, did he? Rebecca: Oh, many times. He had performed it with Yo-Yo Ma. They often programmed it. Tom: Okay. Rebecca: So we played it at the dress rehearsal and I was sweating. Of course, I was just sweating it because it was so hard. I was pushing to the very outer limits of what I could do. So I played it note-for-note at the dress rehearsal. He stopped and he looked at me, looked kind of puzzled and said, "you know, Yo-Yo had trouble with this piece." And my reaction was, well, as if I didn't. Just 'cause you can't see it. So Holly Turner was the manager, the executive director of the orchestra at that time, and it was her job to make sure that the guest artist got where he or she needed to go at the right time, so she was driving him around and taking him out for meals and things like that. And he told her a bunch of stories about past performances of this piece, or past attempted performances, including somebody, some principal cellist somewhere, who had been unable to play the piece and had - they had to take it off the program. And I think it must have been a case of not practicing it hard enough. �Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: As this person was way above me in the profession, and you don't get to the point that she was at without being really good and auditioning successfully, and a bunch of other things. So sort of a case of the tortoise and the hare. Tom: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Rebecca: So that was, that was not comfortable. It was too scary, too stressful, [to be comfortable] but it was worth doing. Tom: Yeah, yeah. ... That's great. [indistinguishable] Rebecca: Now I have a couple of associated stories, but I don't know if I try to tell them now, should I? They're short. Tom: Yeah, sure. Okay. Rebecca: After I was done, that is, had played "Limerock," there was more of the concert, including Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Concerto for Fiddle and Orchestra. And in that, the last movement of the concerto, there was a cadenza. And for the non musicians, I'll just say that the cadenza is the part where in a concerto where everything stops and the soloist has a chance to show off, and in the 19th century, cadenzas were improvised. Classical soloists improvised cadenzas. But then that got out of fashion and cadenzas started being written out, and the soloists just played the cadenza that was written into the music. Well, Mark O'Connor, of course he improvised his cadenza. And of course I could enjoy it completely because I was done with the hot-water part of it and it was one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life to sit, what, ten feet away from him, and watch him, and listen to him improvise this amazing cadenza. So one more O'Connor story, if you have time. And then a couple of post-concert, post-Mark O'Connor's concert stories could have stayed with me. First of all, Mark O'Connor was in Laramie, oh four, five, six, years after he was in Casper, and of course I went down to hear him, took my children. And he takes care of his fans. He sits out in the lobby after the concert and signs CDS, signs programs, and so on. For as long a line as there is. So I got in line. I didn't want a signature, but I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, programming "Limerock" in a community orchestra. What was he thinking that he did that to me? That was sort of the purport, and he looked kind of blank. He said, "Well, community musicians play well." I said, "yeah, but do we play that well?" That was his firm belief that in spite of having, not having every cellist that he played with be able to play it. I mean, Yo-Yo Ma could play it. He just had a little trouble with one section. When I saw the YouTube uhm, video of them, I saw what he did to to solve that problem. And it made sense. So I was invited to the reception after the concert. �Tom: Okay. Rebecca: Yeah, and somebody at that reception said something. Maybe it was a board member that said it, I don't know. I didn't know the members of the board, and they didn't hold receptions for the whole orchestra at that point. I was invited at the last minute 'cause I was a kind of soloist at that concert. Anyway, uhm, this person said "You know, I noticed that you didn't smile until it was all over." And I didn't say it, but I thought, "it's not my job to smile." (laughs) "It's my job to play the cello. Don't expect me to smile" 'Cause it was scary and stressful. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: I was thrilled that I had done it, but I can't say that it was fun like playing [the] William Tell solo or something like that. Tom: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Rebecca: So the other thing, I'll be quick 'cause I know you have to go. Somebody at that reception congratulated me and said I had really, distinguished the whole symphony and the whole city and so on. And I said, "Well, great, how about, how about a raise? How about hazardous duty pay for work dangerous to my ego and reputation?" Yeah, I thought it was a harmless quip. Well, you never experienced such a chilly tide of disapproval as swept that room. Tom: So this was, this was after you played the "Limerock" or this was six years later in Laramie? Rebecca: No, it was after, was at the reception Tom: Uh-huh. Rebecca: -for that concert. It-it was a joke, I thought a harmless little quip. Tom: Mmhmm. Rebecca: But apparently to some people money is so important that you do not joke about it. Tom: Yeah. Rebecca: I don't know. It was a major social gaffe, that I just did not see coming and didn't understand after it had happened. �Tom: Well, that's really interesting. I'd like to, maybe if we could have another conversation, ask you some more about your departure from the symphony, and about your feeling of the symphony as an organ, as a institution over all that time. I mean, you were connected with it off and on for a long time. And that's really, that's rare. Rebecca: Sure. Tom: So if we could maybe talk more about some of those things. Rebecca: That’d be fine. Tom: Other time I don't 'cause I don't want to squish them up now and I know you have a lot more stories you could tell me too. So this stuff is really interesting. Thank you so much, and I'm learning so much that I didn't know, which is always fun. So thanks. Maybe off the tape we can talk about another time when we can both do this again. Rebecca: Yeah, I don't know how to end the meeting and keep us talking. I suppose you could call me. Tom: Yeah, why don't we? Or maybe just? Rebecca: To end the recording. I'm not sure how to stop the recording and continue the meeting. You want me to try? Alright, let me see. Recording… � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Becky Hein Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-09-21 and 2022-09-26 Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Becky Hein. These interviews were conducted on September 21 and September 26 or 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_RebeccaHein Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource M4A; MP3; PDF https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/81096c186f95e0da10d7fe647b15387c.mp3 a642d6069781275a11caf3f514b85675 https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/bc50403fa124ec66dd28337d203989bb.pdf 5e68d872905ea0d6d8b75b72949d9ec6 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Richard Turner, June 17, 2022 Date transcribed: July 13, 2022 Rebecca: Okay. Richard: Yeah. Rebecca: Thank you for making yourself available. Richard: Sure. Rebecca: Let’s start with your name and your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument. Richard: Oh, okay. My name is Richard Turner. I am a principal bassoonist with Wyoming Symphony. I started playing bassoon in high school. I had gone to an arts high school, and played both in band and orchestra, but I had entered the high school on bass clarinet, and was transposing bassoon parts onto bass clarinet. [To transpose is to exactly copy exactly a passage of music, starting the passage on a different pitch. Musicians do this mentally, or in writing] We were actually doing the Schubert Unfinished, [“Unfinished” Symphony, (Symphony no. 8 in B minor) by Franz Schubert, 19th century Austrian composer] and ... what I would do would be to transpose the parts beforehand on, write them out on manuscript paper. I couldn’t do it on the fly. And (clears throat) that was ending up to be a lot of sharps for a B flat instrument, [“sharp” is defined later in the interview] and I got into it and I started thinking, “you know, it’s probably gonna be easier to learn another instrument than to do this- [When a B flat instrument plays a C major scale, it will sound the same as the B Flat scale on a piano] Rebecca: (chuckles) �Richard: -every time we play something new,” and so, I managed to get hold of an instrument that was floating around the district, and, had my first lesson on December first of that year, and really took to it very very very quickly. And had no problems with getting a decent sound out of it and things like that. And so, that was in my junior year of high school, and the rest is history. Rebecca: Okay. I just want to back up. For those who don’t know, the Schubert Unfinished is the Schubert Unfinished Symphony. I don’t remember an opus number or anything like that, but, (trails off) Richard: Yeah, it’s just number eight, and it’s, I think it’s in B minor? Perhaps. Something with sharps in it. Rebecca: Ahaha! I think it’s, I think it’s B minor because I remember the opening,Richard: Uh-huh. Rebecca: -that the cello section played. Richard: Oh yeah, right. Yeah. (chuckles) Rebecca: Okay. Great, thanks. Richard: Uh-huh. Rebecca: So, let’s go on to when you joined the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. Richard: Okay. I joined the Wyoming Symphony, actually, before I even moved to Casper, I had been living in Virginia, and was getting married, at that time, to my future and ex wife, Pamela Glasser, who was principal [French] horn in the symphony, and she was kind of selling, we were deciding, whether to live in Virginia, where I was at the time, or in Wyoming. And so I came out to-to see what Wyoming was all about, and we decided--she was teaching in junior high, I sat in on some of her classes, and said she’s way too good a teacher to risk losing, you know, not-her not being able to do that out in Virginia, and so I decided to come out here, we got married that �summer, and in September of that year, I started the move out and was looking for a job. And, I flew out for, that was back when we had rehearsals over, like, a two week span, and, flew out for the sequence of rehearsals, and then flew back and moved my stuff here to relocate to Wyoming. And I did some job searches while I was out here as well, but that was how I started with the Wyoming Symphony, and that would’ve been the 1996-97 season. Rebecca: Okay. So, let’s just briefly touch on what your day job is since I know you’reRichard: Uh-huh Rebecca: quite, yeah- (undistinguishable) Richard: Yeah, and actually that was an interesting one as well, because I am a computer programmer for the state of Wyoming, for the next five weeks at least, I’ll be retiring in five weeks, and I got that job, actually because of the symphony connection, that, Pamela was quite the social butterfly and we ended up having a dinner over at somebody’s house, and I met with [Bob] Johnson who had actually played bassoon for the Wyoming Symphony [Casper Civic Symphony] many many years ago, and worked for the Wyoming Department of Employment in the job placement area. And I said that I was out here looking for work, and he said, “Well the state of Wyoming has an opening for a contract programmer, and lo and behold, I interviewed for and got that job, and then about a month later, they had a permanent position open and I just took that interview and that was 25 years ago, and, been there ever since. For the next five weeks. (chuckles) Rebecca: Uh-huh, yeah. Okay great. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: Thanks for that information. Did you have something to add? Richard: Nope. That’s it. �Rebecca: Okay, what are your earliest memories from your first few years with the symphony? Richard: Earliest memories were a much more leisurely rehearsal schedule that was, we had a two week cycle which was, I want to say it was Monday-Wednesday-Friday, or maybe it was Wednesday-Friday, and then Monday-Wednesday-Friday the following week with a concert on Sat- dress rehearsal and concert on Saturday, and that put me in a position where I could, had a much less nerve-wracking experience to get a sense of what the conductor tempos were gonna be, and who I was playing with at what time, and then, so on and so forth. It was probably a bit of a synthetic experience. I had freelanced in Houston, back in the early eighties, and, we had kind of a standard (clears throat) standard job package was, called it three and two, which was three rehearsals two performances, and they were generally packed in together and you’d probably do that in the span of a few days, then you’d have two rehearsals one day or something. But that was many years before I came out here. I was doing that regularly, and so it kind of gave me a chance to reintegrate with regular orchestral playing. I had played in orchestras in Virginia and I had lived in New York for a while before that, and I had-was-was still playing, but the rigors of pulling together concerts pretty regularly was a challenge, and so that rehearsal schedule really helped. We did some interesting literature back in those days. We played up in Beartrap [Bear Trap Meadow County Park on Casper Mountain] for instance, and that was usually an all-America thing with a lot of Copland [Aaron Copland, 20th century American composer and conductor] and stuff like that. I had been fortunate enough to be asked to play on one of the local musician recitals that they did one concert per season, was featuring local artists, and so we’d do a concerto or something, [A concerto is a composition for one or more solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment] and I ended up playing Mozart’s Concerto for that, �and that was a tremendously wonderful experience, so. There were some good times back then. I remember a wonderful principal cellist. Rebecca: (chuckles) Thanks. Richard: (chuckles) Rebecca: So, let’s just back up. Can you clarify a little bit your reference to Beartrap? Richard: Beartrap is a summer festival held here in Casper, usually in beginning of August, if I got it right. It’s a- kind of a big deal, evidently, in the bluegrass circles, and so most of the music that they have this bluegrass sort of, the symphony would play, pretty much every year for several years, for that festival. They’d set up a big tent and then we would play symphonic literature for about an hour, and the audience would, you know, listen to their bluegrass. Turn around, listen to the orchestra. Turn back around and listen to the bluegrass, so. (laughs heartily) That’s Beartrap. [Bluegrass music is a genre of American music that developed in the Appalachian region of the United States] Rebecca: Right. The top of Casper Mountain in Beartrap Meadow. Richard: I’m sorry? Rebecca: On top of Casper Mountain isRichard: Yes. Rebecca:-Beartrap MeadowRichard: Yeah, Beartrap Meadow is, Rebecca: Yeah. Richard: County park I guess it is. Rebecca: Right, it’s a public place. Okay, great. So do you have any details about your performance of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with us in the 90s? �Richard: I believe that was the 1999 season. Want to say it was in the-uh, no-it might’ve been in the ‘98-’99 season. It was in the spring. Actually, myself and the then principal clarinet, (clears throat) James Romain, R-O-M-A-I-N, was, he played the Glazunov saxophone concerto, and then I did the Mozart, and I had never played, or have never played, before or since, a concerto with an orchestra, so that was a nice experience. [Alexander Glazunov, 19th and 20th century Russian composer] Rebecca: Okay, so then let’s move to the time when there was no longer a resident conductor with the orchestra, but switched to having, I believe it was Jonathan Shames, coming in? Richard: Jonathan Shames was the first non-resident conductor, maybe in the first place, first conductor in the orchestra’s history. I would not swear to that, but I would be very surprised if that’s not a true statement. Rebecca: Oh, it is true. Richard: And he was, at that time, coming in from Michigan. I think he was here for three seasons? And had taken a job in Oklahoma, at the very end of it, and his responsibilities in Oklahoma precluded him to staying on as the music director here. Some of the things that we had done with him, I remember we did a Beethoven Ninth Symphony with him, and played that. We did a runout where we’d go and play at a-travel, play, come back. Played that in Lander when they opened the new high school in Lander, and, so we played the Beethoven Ninth here, and then hauled everybody up to Lander, and played Beethoven Ninth there. Rebecca: (inaudible speech) Richard: I believe Holly Turner was still the director at that time the, Rebecca: Executive director. �Richard: Executive Director, at that time, and she had arranged quite a bit. We had moved-that was a very interesting time in that we, it was a period where I think that a lot of the classic rock bands were starting to-to redo some of their tunes with orchestra backing, and so we had the Moody Blues; [they] had been doing that quite a bit around the country. And, in fact it was kind of odd. I played a concert in Roanoke [Virginia], with the Roanoke Symphony, for the Moody Blues and then, shortly after coming here, played in Casper with the Moody Blues. (chuckles) And then we had also Three Dog Night and Kansas. I remember it was the three main groups we had played with. And so we were kind of drifting-not drifting-we had a very strong pops influence, and that was with Jonathan, that was around the time that we stopped going up to Beartrap, and I’m not sure if the funding had run out for that, or exactly what the details were, but he was not really keen on the pops angle. And so we did, I mean, we did quite a bit of very interesting classical works, but the pops end of it kind of stopped at that point. When he left we had a, ah! When he left we had a- the orchestra was struggling financially, and so, when hesorry, when he came here we had done a season with the, music director search, where we brought in five or six candidates from around the country. Each one of them conducted a concert. They spent time in the community, meeting the patrons and things like that. By the time he left, the finances, the orchestra, were strained, and so we did not do the music director search, but used one of the conductors who was, who the then executive director was Sherry Parmater, had worked with in Montana, met Matthew Savery, was available to come down and he he guestconducted one concert. It worked out okay, and so they brought him in-they hired him at that point, kind of without having done the music director search because they kind of simply couldn’t afford it. Rebecca: Right. �Richard: And so, he was here for, 10 seasons I believe. Nine or 10. That would’ve been roughly 2005 to roughly, [20]15, probably a little bit more than 10; 16-17-18-19-12-um, and he brought us back in. He was very in-tune with how to satisfy the crowd, as it were, and so we had a lot of interesting programming. Interesting not as a pejorative thing or anything, but- interesting in that it was really interesting. And things he found that were successful with his orchestra in Bozeman [Montana], then we would reproduce that with reasonable success here. And, I think under his tenure that the orchestra did get back on a much firmer financial footing, they had started some of their fundraisers, such as “Wine on the River,” which is where they have a large outdoor gathering by the river, and auction off wines and other things. And so that helped quite a bit. That was a very successful fundraiser. Then he did not renew his contract, after the last season he was here. Chose not to renew his contract, and we did another conductor search at that point, and selected Christopher Dragon, who is the current music director. Rebecca: Okay, so you have played under Peacock, Shames, Savery and Dragon? Richard: Yes. Rebecca: Let’s go to Dragon. How was he to play under? Richard: I’m sorry? Rebecca: Let’s start with Dragon. Let’s go backwards. Richard: Okay Rebecca: how was he to play under? Richard: He was very, very very good. He is, I will, I think I remember what all of the conductors here, what all of their instruments were. Kind of their primary instrument, before they became a conductor, and I believe one of his, at least, was clarinet. So he has a very good sense of woodwind playing. He is a very easy going, I would say. Easy going but exacting. And so we �would rehearse things over and over and over, but it, with good results I believe. And so, but even at that we stayed, it’s a very focused time and, in the-in the rehearsals and, his criticism is constructive and always given with a sense of “not to terrorize the musician.” (chuckles) Rebecca: (laughs) Richard: I mean, we had a conductor who was, will, you know, throw these little tantrums and things like that, and, which helps nothing, and actually makes you play worse. I believe, in my experience, I’ll just speak from that. There’ll be times where I will miss something and then miss it again, and then miss it again, and I’m just starting to, y’know, know up and get so bound in nerves, and defeat myself. And he’s very very good at coming up, over the [rehearsal] break and saying, “Here’s what I think you’re missing.” “Try this. Try this to work on it.” and “Relax, you’re gonna get it. It’s gonna be fine.” and it comes out okay. I mean, invariably he gives very good suggestions. I-I’ve been very happy under him. Rebecca: Well, I guess I’ll take your word for it, that this story that you just told is accurate because, you’re such a good bassoon player, it’s hard for me to fathom (chuckles) this. Richard: Oh well, I-I can-I can screw up. (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs) Well, anybody can, but, I don’t know. Well anyways. Fine. Great. Yeah, I’ve heard really good things about Christopher Dragon. Richard: Yes. Rebecca: Okay, so, if we’re working backwardsRichard: Matthew? Rebecca:- It would be back to Matthew Savery, yeah. �Richard: Matthew was a very interesting character, because, personally, I grew from his leadership. I’ll call it that. He was more, you know, as Christopher was very laid back, Matthew was, let’s say intense. (chuckles) Rebecca: Mhmm. Richard: And I know a lot of people who would just get so bound up in nerves playing for him, that it was almost like PTSD, y’know. I mean, coming out from underneath it. Some rehearsals could be really unpleasant if things weren’t going right. He again, he was also one, however, who knew what he wanted to bring out. Knew how to ask for it. I believe he eventually got it, and, like I said, I learned quite a bit, not only about playing, but about some of the [indistinguishable] things with music that we deal with, and he, I-I felt like I got along with him very very well. Rebecca: That’s good. I’m just gonna jump back to Dragon for a minute. Richard. Yep. Mhmm. Rebecca: A cellist friend of mine who still plays in the orchestra said that one of the things she really likes about Dragon is that he doesn’t waste rehearsal time telling stories. Richard: No. That was when the first conductor, when I came here. (laughs) Rebecca: Right. Richard: Did quite a bit. (chuckles) Rebecca: Yeah. Richard: And that was painful. Yeah, I will go ahead and say it. Curtis was very laid back. Curtis was, I played well under him, but, I also, actually was, kind of, section bassoonist in Rapid City (South Dakota), and when they were looking for a new conductor, he was one that applied, and had a concert series, and it kind of triggered the story time that we would get. And, that was, for �wind players, it was not only the time spent sitting through a story that was not. You’re having a hard time [unintelligible] it wasn’t what you were there to do, but, they would last so long that you’d almost need another warm-up session. And the instrument would go out of tune and so, the conductors, and in fact the three out of town conductors we’ve had, were all very, effective with rehearsal time. Such that you don’t sit there for, long periods of time and reeds dry out, and your chops [mouth; which woodwind and brass players use to play] get cold, and your instrument goes out of tune. I appreciate that a lot. (chuckles) Rebecca: Yeah, and I’ll just mention, on the positive side, I infer from everything I’ve heard about Dragon, that he respects the orchestra, and, uhRichard: I believe he does. Rebecca: Yeah. Doesn’t engage in the sort of behavior that would cause the musicians to wish they weren’t playing under them, or something like that. Richard: Yes. And that's not necessarily the case with his predecessor. So I understand. Rebecca: Yeah. I. It took me a lot of years to realize, or discover, that conducting, it’s, the people part of it is as important as the musical part of it. Richard: Which is one of the reasons why I had wished, and I still have this secret wish, that businesses would learn from conductors how to manage. Learn from good conductors, how to manage. That, Christopher could share with a small business that, y’know, as he does, sharing musical things with a business, because when you think about it, the conductor is getting a group of egos to synchronize within very tight tolerances of time. I mean, our fingers are all moving within a few milliseconds of each other, and he’s doing it with a stick. (wheezes) (laughs) Rebecca: Yeah. �Richard: Not a stick to beat us with. I mean, just a tiny stick [the conductor’s baton], and yet, that technology, and those skills, and that communication that is enough to get a large group of very diverse personalities to function as a single cohesive unit. Rebecca: Yeah, it’s tricky. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: I’m sure you recall from your days, long ago, Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca:-a sign on the wall in the rehearsal room that said “the conductor is always-rule number one, the conductor is always right. Rule number two, if the conductor is wrong, refer to rule number one.” Richard: (chuckles) Rebecca: So, yeah. We’re kinda stuck with whoever it is and, Richard: Yeah. Rebecca: We kind of get lucky when they are-when they are well-behaved. Richard: Mhmm. Yeah. You, appreciate it if you’ve been through, not having that. (chuckles) Rebecca: Yeah. It’s hard on the morale to play under someone that does not respect the group. Richard: Yes. Yes. Rebecca: Great. Well let’s go on now. You said something that intrigued me as a string player, and perhaps, for the historical record it will be interesting. When I was a music major at University of Wyoming for cello performance, I got, let’s see, I guess you could say lectured a lot by some of the woodwind players. Richard: Mm. �Rebecca: -because they informed me, which I did not know, it was cool to learn this, that the instrument they played was not inherently in-tune. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: like either clarinet or bassoon or whatever, and you push down a key, and it’s-it is not even, like the piano keyboard, you know, which isn’t, strictly speaking, in-tune because it’s equal tempered. You can play in any key, but it’s a compromise, as you know. Richard: Right. Rebecca: So, I got a real education when I was told, “Well, no, I have to adjust for just about every note I play.” Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: “Just like you on your cello if you don’t hit the note right.” Richard: Yep. Rebecca: Could you go into that a little more? Richard: Oh, actually, I have a great story on that one. It was when I was in college, I kinda had this little, leisurely degree program, and I think that the University of Houston was supported by oil when oil was doing very well. And so I started out as a music major. I started touring with the touring arm of Houston Grand Opera, in my sophomore year, and, so I kinda missed out on a lot of spring music classes, and did that for a few years, and that company folded, so I was gonna go ahead and resume my degree, and I started thinking, “Why am I getting a degree in music?” when you don’t really need a degree to play in an orchestra. And, I’d be better served by getting a different degree, continuing to play, and if something didn’t work out I’d have the other degree to work on. And so I started becoming an engineering student. And, in the course of that, I was playing in my instrument, on the bassoon, the, middle line D [middle line of the musical staff in �bass clef; a clef is a sign, a kind of hieroglyphic, that musicians have to learn. It defines a particular line of the five-line musical staff, and it defines the note for that line—such as G—and from there, that is the reference point for locating all the other notes on the staff. Without a clef to define what note a particular line is, those five lines have no meaning at all.], and the D an octave above it, of a virtually identical fingering, but, one of those was flat [low], and one was sharp [high]. (chuckles) And I-that just blew me away that, y’know, I mean the hole is drilled in a certain place in the instrument. How can one pitch be flat and the other be sharp? And so I started rummaging around the library, and, found an article called, “The Mathematical Placement of-of Woodwind Tone-Holes.” Rebecca: Ooo, cool! Richard: I-I guess it’s fantastic, and I open it up, and it’s-it’s full of greek. (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs) Richard: And so, at the beginning of it, it says, you know, like, and this is my retelling, embellished slightly for theatric effect, but, in the first paragraph it says, “As we know from elementary acoustics…” and I’m sitting there saying, well, you know, I don’t know anything about acoustics, so I think I’m gonna find me a book on acoustics. And so I found a book on acoustics, and opened it up, and in the first paragraph it says, “As we know from elementary physics…” Rebecca: (laughs) Richard: And I said, I don’t know anything about physics. I think I’m gonna go see what I can find and go get me a physics book. Well I got me a physics book, opened it up, first paragraph says, “As we know from elementary calculus…” (laughs) okay, this is getting old, but I’m gonna get a calculus book. �Rebecca: (laughs) Richard: And so I got a calculus book, and I started going through it, and, opened it up, and in the first paragraph, it says, “If you write a small computer program, you can simulate calculus limits.” I said, I don’t know anything about computers and so I found myself a computer book, and fell in love with computers. And that’s how I became a programmer. soRebecca: Well that’s fascinating. Richard: -because two notes were out of tune with each other that, I could not figure out why, and I still to this day have no answer to that ‘cause I couldn’t get past the first paragraph of any of the books that I was reading. But on the bassoon we have a range of, it’s a pretty wide range, because we’re, like the cello, down in that lower end, and so you’ve got more audible harmonics that are practical for us. [Harmonics are defined later in this interview] And, so, we also have a couple of additional challenges though. In that, the–I’m assuming that the reason this is this way on stringed instruments, that, cellos and basses are tuned differently is because you know, the human hand kinda can’t jump that far. In the case of the bassoon, most of the holes are not drilled straight through the instrument. They’re drilled at weird angles. And it’s the placement of those holes, and the length of holes, makes it very unlikely that you’re going to, that just by the manufacturing process, are going to get the hole in the right place for the right [indistinguishable] to make that note come out in-tune. And then also by the acoustics of the instrument, the overtone series did not comport with equal temperament very well, as we all kind of find out. And, so, even if they could drill them perfectly, it still wouldn’t sound right. And so we’re always having to adjust, and that’s one of the reasons why I kind of laugh at my colleagues, who make a big deal out of getting the A, for the tuning note, because it’s like, where we have roughly half of the piano range we can play on the bassoon, and so I would play my A, �get it kinda where I know where it was, and say okay, one down, 43 to go. [The standard piano keyboard has 88 keys] Rebecca: Ahahah! Richard: ‘cause every pitch is going to be-you just can’t blow it-you’ve got to blow it and then adjust it, and then once you’ve adjusted it, you’ve got to adjust to everybody else around you. Because it doesn’t sound any good-you can be perfectly in-tune, but if everybody else is a few cents sharp, then, you’re gonna be flat, Rebecca: Right. RIchard: So. Did that answer that? Rebecca: No, that’s fine. It generated some more notes and questions, but, let me just jump back to the term(s) flat and sharp. Richard: Sure. Rebecca: I’d like you to define flat, and define sharp, both in terms of sound and notation. Richard: Oh! Well, I suppose, notation, when we would say flat, in terms of the twelve note scale that builds up Western music, a flat would be a twelfth of an octave, which is a note that sounds really similar to the-all the other notes who are an octave apart. (chuckles) This is, you’ve asked a very difficult question here. but that flat is lower, lower than one twelfth of an octave, lower than the note that you are flat from. So we say that we’re playing a C, and we go down a half step, which happens to be in Western music, that happens to be a B, then, that would be a twelfth of an octave lower than the C that you started on. And, similarly, sharps would be a twelfth of an octave higher than [cuts out] Rebecca: You’re cutting out. Can you say something? I don’t know what’s happened to the audio, but you’re suddenly very faint. �Richard: Oh, let me see. I probably bumped it because I was having a hard time with that. (laughs) (inaudible talking) (audio buzzes) [pause to resolve technical difficulties] Rebecca: Okay, so, something occurred to me as you were talking about the bassoon was that, people who don’t know anything about it might be inferring that there are holes in the instrument that you put your fingers over, but that isRichard: Yes. Rebecca: -isn’t true, right? RIchard: That is true. It’s-woodwinds are, and of which the recorder is one that most people are familiar with, they change pitch by having holes drilled periodically through the length of the instrument. And those holes are, by having those holes placed, you, and lifting up fingers, you effectively make the length of the instrument shorter, which produces a higher sound. Rebecca: That’s a really great explanation because that’s really what happens on a string instrument when we put down our fingerRichard: Yes. Rebecca:-the string is shorter. So the pitch is higher. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: Fascinating. now I wanna tell you a brief story, I hope it’s not a waste of time, because this is something I really don’t understand about the bassoon. Especially with the involvement of a reed. Richard: Okay. Rebecca: The reed being just for the, well, you describe the reed. �Richard: Bassoon and oboe are both double-reed instruments, and double-reed is contrasted with clarinet and saxophone, which are single-reed instruments. And, with the single-reed instrument, the sound is produced by a piece of cane, the reed, vibrating against a fixed surface that’s part of the instrument in the case, in the clarinet and the saxophone, that’s the mouthpiece. And that vibration, as you blow air across it, causes fluctuations in air pressure, which are then resonated by the body of the instrument. Just the fact that the kind of, the length of the tube dictates the frequency at which that flipping, flapping back-and-forth of the reed, those variations of pressure, resonate, and then they transmit through the air to the listener’s eardrum, which, likewise, vibrates, and through the miracle of hearing, we perceive it as sound in our brains. And so that’s, in a nutshell, how clarinets work. Bassoons work in a very similar way, only instead of a reed vibrating against a fixed mouthpiece, the reed actually vibrates, there are two reeds, that vibrate against each other, and that produces the distinctive sound that they make, and also, the distinctively low bank accounts that double-reed players have from having to buy all the stuff to make their reeds. (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs back) The fact that you have noooo free time because[inaudible talking over each other] Richard: That was my college ritual, was that I had a 12-hour day beyond classes, and it was four hours practicing, four hours listening, and four hours reed-making. And that was my, that was my life. Rebecca: Okay, the sound got swallowed up on the last thing. Did you say four hours reedmaking? Richard: Reed-yes. Correct. Making, so, the process- after a certain point, the reeds that one goes down and buys at a music store, are really not adequate. They are a sort of one-size-fits-all. You �need something that really kind of tapers to your physical characteristics, your concept of sound, and your concept of music in general. And, so, one of the things, and it usually happens in college, that students will do, is make their own reeds, and you will start from a certain, a given point. There are several starting points that you can, you use, that are just purchasing from somebody else who does the work, and then finishing it. And, so, we’ll-like right now, myself in the last four or five years, I’ve started taking from cane that is, just in little tubes of bamboo that you would see in like a bamboo pole. And I take that and shave out the inside of it, shave the bark off of it to rough it out, and then shape it into the characteristic bassoon reed shape. And, then scrape it down a little further to get the refinements and thickness of the-of the blade, and make bassoon sounds. And so we have, I also refer to it as a microphone reed because the tolerances are pretty amazing, and, length of the bassoon blade is about an inch and an eighth, and the depth of the thickest part is about 40 thousandths of an inch, 30-40 thousandths of an inch, and at the thinnest it’s about three thousandths of an inch. So we’re generally, scraping it down with like sandpaper. So, but, it makes for a very tedious time. (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs) Yeah. Okay I wanna jump to the side a minute andRichard: Okay. Rebecca:- ‘cause I-I thought I understood this at the time that I learned it, what I’m about to describe. I understood it in terms of strings, and vocal cords, and, say, a column of air like you would get in an organ, or something like that. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: I don’t think I understood it in terms of the other instruments of the orchestra, so, it was an acoustics course that I took as an undergraduate student. sort of an idiot course for music majors, �Richard: ‘Kay. Rebecca: -and the teacher would give a demonstration of what happens, so there’s a natural process when you get something vibrating, whether it’s a string, or a vocal cord, or a column of airRichard: Mhmm. Rebecca: -Which, the, the vibrating entity wants to divide itself at certain points, Richard: Right. Rebecca: -can be at a very easy point, a halfway point which is the octave, Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: [cuts out] the one third point I believe, or, at the one quarter point, which is two octaves higher, and the one third point, which is, I think a fifth up, anyway Richard: Right. Rebecca: Getting a little technical, but, he demonstrated this at the at the front of the room and he did not say anything about instruments or anything, but it hit me as a revelation, Oh! This is something I’ve been dealing with ever since I picked up the cello. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: We call it harmonics. Richard: Right. Rebecca: You touch the string in a certain place and it doesn’t screech, it sounds, it sounds an octave higher, or it sounds an octave lower, or whatever. Richard: Hm. Mhmm. Rebecca: But, how that translates into, say, a bassoon or an oboe, a double-reed instrument, you kind of said it already, but I’d like you to repeat it- �Richard: Sure. Rebecca: -in terms of the reed and whether you get a column of air vibrating through the instrument, or something like that. Richard: And so the the column of air in the instrument, is, and I’m gonna start using terms that I ought not use, but, I believe that that’s a, standing wave, sort of a standing wave. That-that length of air that makes the column, will naturally resonate sounds much like a string would. I think that it’s kind of a, maybe a better way to look at it is, rather than if you had, on the cello you could move your fingers up the fingerboard and shorten the string that- [cuts out] if you were [cuts out] a pan cello, which is sort of the cello equivalent of a pan pipe, where you had different- Instead of moving your fingers on the fingerboard, to shorten the strings, we had fixed-length strings that you then bowed to make them vibrate the air so it vibrates the ear of the listener. Each one of those would be successively shorter. And so that’s kind of the same idea that woodwind instruments have. In fact, that may be a good transition, because if you think of the pan pipe, if you can picture what the pan pipe looks like, or a pipe organ, that it’s the set of tubes of different lengths that resonate at different frequencies. And with woodwind instruments, they get that effective length by putting their fingers down. So instead of moving around eight different pipes, you just lift up eight different fingers. To get that-that same effect of playing pitches and [cuts out] Rebecca: Okay. I’m having trouble visualizing this. Richard: Okay. Rebecca: You’ve got the bassoon, or the clarinet or the oboe, or whatever, and the fewer the keys are pressed down the longer the column of air? �Richard: No. No. The holes interrupt the column of the overall length of the instrument. So if you, if I play the lowest note on the bassoon, I would have the entire length of that tube sealed up. Rebecca: Oh yeah. Richard: So then, it’s coming out the bottom, in our case, the top, because it bends. (laughs) But it’s-it’s coming out the end of the tube. When I lift up a finger, it effectively shortens that tube a little bit, and gives me, in essence, a shorter tube, which would produce a slightly higher pitch. Much like the pan pipe, where you have different lengths of tubes, we acknowledge that by just picking up fingers on a single tube. Rebecca: Okay, that’s clear. Richard: Mm. Rebecca: Okay. You made a statement a little while ago. Richard: ‘Kay. Rebecca: Now the one about the little background about harmonics and overtones. You said, I think you said, according to my notes, the bassoon has audible harmonics that are practical? Did I get that note down right? Richard: I think what I was referring to is that, with a violin, for instance, and we’ll compare a violin and a cello. When a violin starts getting up into its you know, four or five octaves above the bass harmonic, you have two problems that show up. One is that you’re getting it kind of outside the limits of human hearing, and you’re also getting distance between successive notes and darn close to [cuts out] finger. And so in that effect that not only, if you had extended that indefinitely, not only could you not hear it, you really couldn’t play it very effectively. Whereas on the cello, you know, you have, you could, theoretically, get all the way up there. Right to the �same place where the violin is playing, but then the notes would be further enough apart that you could have a fighting chance at playing. (laughs) SO there’s the [cuts out] four or five of the audible notes of the instrument, is extremely difficult to play, on, bass instruments. It’s a bit easier to play ‘cause we’re still to where there’s not, to where you don’t have to shorten the string or the column of air, that much. And so in that respect, it’s practical and it’s also audible. That four octaves above the bottom of the cello, or the bassoon, is, just, scratching the surface of the violin. Rebecca: Yeah, I-I remember the first time a violinist friends of mine told me that when they were playing very high notes on a higher string, they’d have to move their fingers aside to make room for a neighboring finger to getRichard: Yeah. Rebecca: -so that just blew my mind because think of the maneuvering you’d have to do, especially if it was a fast passage. Just to play, just to nail the notes. I (trails off) Richard: Yeah, I, it is, it does just blow the mind, y’know? Rebecca: It made me glad I was a cellist. Richard: Exactly. (laughs heartily) Rebecca: Okay, great. This is, quite interesting. So I want to jump back to a term that you’re using that we know the meaning of, but for the non-musician you’d better clarify. You used the term “Western Music.” Richard: Oh! Okay. As opposed to Country Western Music? Rebecca: Right. Richard: Western Music is actually compared to, I guess the natural, economy, and since we tend to refer to things as A or B, or left or right, up or down, that Western Music then has a �counterpart in Eastern Music, where the octave, that we have divided into 12 notes that are equally spaced, in some other culture they might not necessarily be, 12 notes. And, or, it may not use the same, they may not use the same, the notes in the same way that we do. Of course they kind of have the same notes, but, they use them in ways that sounds very alien to us. And so, Western Music has its counterpart in Western culture, which is, typically that was derived from, knowledge derived from what the Greeks had and what was here. Knowledge derived from what the Greeks [cuts out] and what we see with the Middle Easterns. (laughs) Rebecca: Yeah. So, so, pretty much Europe, and then you get into I guess that’d be called the Orient that they called it. Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca: Except for exceptions like Russia. I know, Tchaikovsky and Borodin and some of the other Russian composers, they really sound like European composers. [Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer; Alexander Borodin, 19th century Russian composer] Richard: Well, and, and you can trace some of the reason for that back to, in fact, those two composers that you mentioned are very interesting counter-examples. Because, Borodin was one of the, was one of the composers, along with Modest Mussorgsky, Glazunov, and somebody else I can’t think of, from around Europe, the “Russian Five,” if you were seeking to stray away from the Western musical tradition that was native Russians, it conflicted with Tchaikovsky because he was definitely of the European mindset. [Modest Mussorgsky, 19th century Russian composer] That Tchaikovsky really did not use that much Russian, didn’t really cite Russian musical sources. He didn’t that much, and his symphonies are pretty much what you’d expect from Brahms at the time. So that thing with Russia being kind of a weird outlier, is actually a �great observation because it’s a weird outlier. (chuckles) [Johannes Brahms, 19th century German composer] Rebecca: Well, having produced, Shostakovich as well, I’ve always found his music to be, a very interesting mixture of really evocative, foreign-foreign to me, as a Western music aficionado, definitely sounds like, you know, cold, shivery winters and- [Dmitri Shostakovich, 20th century Soviet-era Russian composer] Richard: Mhmm. Rebecca:-and, you know, all sorts of other stuff that we don’t-we don’t really understand, even in the coldest parts of this continent,Richard: Right. Rebecca:-except maybe, Richard: Yeah. Rebecca: Alaska. Okay. Well, we’ve kind-sort of digressed here. Um. Richard: Always fun. Rebecca: Yeah. Let’s see. So, your affiliation with the symphony. Richard: Ah! Rebecca: Let’s see, let’s go back to ... so, I have kind of a personal interest in choral pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth and the Brahms Requiem, and the Verdi Requiem. [A Requiem is the Latin text of the Catholic Mass for the Dead; in the case of Brahms and Verdi, set to music. Giuseppe Verdi, 19th century Italian composer] Richard: Me too. (laughs) Rebecca: The symphony is like “you must haveRichard: I’m sorry, I may have lost you there. �Rebecca: Have you played all of those pieces during your time in the symphony? Richard: Ah! Very good question! We did the Verdi Requiem here once, in the last 25 years. We’ve done the Beethoven Ninth, I want to say, three times so far, and my fourth time in October again. ... Now, at Christmastime, we will typically do joint performances with a civic chorale and, now lately, the second chorale ensemble in town that I, the Choral Arts Ensemble, which is just a small, more selective choir. And, we will have worked with them, usually [cuts out] them has been more the tradition to play things with them at Christmas, although the one classical Christmas thing you would expect, I believe we may have done all of once, which is the Messiah. The Christmas portion of Messiah. [By George Friedrich Handel, late 17th and early 18th century German-British composer. The Messiah has choral and orchestral movements interspersed with interludes where a vocal soloist sings a short “recitative,” resembling an improvisation, and accompanied by cello and harpsichord.] Rebecca: Okay, and I feel like Beethoven’s Ninth, jumping back to that, is one of the most difficult orchestral works in existence. Especially for the, well, parts of it for the low strings. Richard: Uh-huh. I could agree with that case. Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, it’s-it’s on all the audition lists or used to [be]Richard: Uh-huh. Rebecca: -taking auditions, long ago. But, if you can tell me your opinion of how the rehearsals have gone when the orchestra has tackled Beethoven’s Ninth? Richard: They have always been, they’ve always been, I-I personally feel like they have always been cordial. Especially the first bassoon. (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs back) �Richard: No. Especially the no, the, Civic Chorale is, probably, play, I’m gonna say they sing beyond the normal range, it’s-it’s, that is a group, who, for being one that-that is open to everybody, pretty much, not sure if there’s a way they’d never be accepted by the Civic Chorale. That they want you to be able to come in and see what they do, and they have always been in an excellent mood when we’ve worked with them. And, I-I think that’s a testament to some of them like Dwight McIntyre, and I’m not sure who’s doing it now, but he had a very strong vocal tradition and talent here. That, is very exciting, I mean, and it’s continuing now even though it’s stopped performing. It’s something that’s based on a peer and he’s a very wonderful singer. It’sit’s a nice place to do Beethoven’s [Ninth] Symphony. Rebecca: Great. let’s see. Probably I should back up, I’m there’s terminology that nonmusicians won’t understand, Richard: What? Rebecca: Giuseppe Verdi, who was a private composer I believe. He composed this, Mass for the Dead, setting for the Catholic Mass for the Dead. Setting to music, for some patron’s funeral, I remember that. Richard: Toni. Mantoni. It was the person that it was written for, and this did this part where they played for Verdi, and Verdi died. Rebecca: Oh! Richard: And then, now when Verdi died it was a big deal. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Toscanini, mostly known for his work in America, that he actually conducted that performance when Verdi died. [Arturo Toscanini, 19th and 20th century Italian conductor, who became famous in the U.S. via his weekly broadcast concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra] Rebecca: Goodness. �Richard: So. Yeah that, it requires a very, very, very long story and, and the choir [it] was a very, dramatic piece. Rebecca: I agree. It seems to have a lot of appeal for musicians. I hope it does for you. Richard: Yeah. Yeah. Rebecca: Okay, well let’s see. Is there, are there other things you want to tell me about your time with the Wyoming Symphony? Richard: Just a general summary, and, that, I mean, most of my playing life, has been, right now exactly, half of my bassoon playing life has been in Casper. Rebecca: Oh. Richard: And, half of that would’ve been-all of that would’ve been, half of my bassoon playing life has been in the Wyoming Symphony. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have dreamed of, 25 years ago, I think that’s due to excellent colleagues, and very good leadership, and wonderful audiences and always kind of feel urged to play beyond my best when I sit in front of the audiences here, because I feel like they deserve that. Rebecca: Well that’s very good to hear. Okay, well, we do appreciate your giving us your time today. It’s been very, interesting. All this detail about bassoon playing, and, things like that. Richard: Thank you. Rebecca: It’s going to be a real addition to this project. Richard: Well, if you have any other questions, do feel free to call and ask. I’d agree to do this again and again and again and again. Rebecca: (laughs) Okay. I guess that’s it. Take care. Richard: Okay. You too. Rebecca: Bye. �Richard: Bye-bye. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard Turner Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-06-17 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Richard Turner. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on June 17, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Richard Turner Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_RichardTurner Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3; PDF https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/5479ca0cb3f3554eab7b3da918916a46.mp3 2bacad816c9d1fe893436f8ffe77415e https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/ee1d8ec0eb56992764cb0de0d108f671.pdf be96971d4cfcccee31ea00c056b68785 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Susan Stanton, June 23, 2022 Date transcribed: July 26, 2022 Rebecca: Okay, thank you for giving us your time today. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: Let’s start with you giving us your name and your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument. Susan: Okay, my name is Susan Stanton. Sorry, what were the other questions? Rebecca: what your instrument is, and how you came to play that instrument. Susan: Oh! Okay, I play violin. I play violin thanks to school music programs. I, my parents never, it never occurred to them, to give us music lessons, and, they showed a violin in school, and said we could, get out of a certain class that I hated if we took vioRebecca: (laughs) Susan: -We took music lessons. And I said, that sounds like-sign me up! Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: So, but then it turned out later that I found out my grandfather had played the violin. He died when I was very young, but I didn’t know that. And I’ve got, I’ve inherited some of his music, and he fingered the way that I do, and I don’t know. It’s just weird. But anyway. Hooray for school music programs. [A fingering is a marking in the music indicating which finger should play which note] Rebecca: Okay yeah. Your other work and education outside of music, just for the background and context. �Susan: Oh, okay. Let’s see, my other work. Well, I did start out in school as a music major. but in college I mean-but I, changed my major when I was a sophomore, I guess, and I have degrees in other things. And, but I kept playing, ‘cause actually my third year, even when I still had a music scholarship, even when I wasn’t a major. I kept playing in the, school orchestra, and, I eventually, I was a newspaper reporter for 20 years, and then I got a library degree, and I was a librarian for 24 years. so I have a masters in library. But I always kept playing. I played in a lot of community orchestras in California, before I moved here to Wyoming, and then once I moved here I joined the Wyoming Symphony. Rebecca: Yeah, and what year was that, do you recall? Susan: It was 1994. Rebecca: Okay. And, do you have memories from those first years with the symphony? Susan: No, not that many memories. I did, when I first moved here, I didn’t- before I joined the newspaper, I worked part time for the symphony for a couple of months. So I moved here in February ‘94, and I think I worked for the symphony when Dale Bohren was the, manager. For a few months after that, I can’t really remember how many months I worked, it really wasn’t that long, and then I joined the newspaper. That was my strongest memory. He really kind of laid out what the symphony and Casper were all about. So that was, one time. Rebecca: Okay. Susan: And, uhRebecca: Go ahead. Susan: Oh! the symphony itself, yeah, I really liked it. I, I thought it was a good group, and, they played a lot, and, took it seriously, I thought. at the time, although once we got other conductors I realized we didn’t. And at that time it was a lot more of a community group than it is now. �There were some imports, but they were, kind of local imports, I guess you would say, in-state people. So, you know, I met people then that I still know today. that was great. Rebecca: Yeah, okay so, you were in the symphony from 1994, until, Curtis Peacock left? That would’ve been in the early 2000s, I believe. Susan: Yeah, no, actually I was in the symphony, I-I was there all through the Jonathan Shames era. Rebecca: Okay. Susan: The early, 2000s. And I was there the first couple years of the Matthew Savery era. And then I, left, for the sake of my mental health. (chuckles) And uhRebecca: Ooohhh. Susan: (chuckles more) And then I rejoined immediately after he left. And I’ve been in ever since. So I was out, for about five years, I believe. Rebecca: So you rejoined when Christopher Dragon became music director? Susan: Yes. Well in the year- the year they did the search I rejoined actually. Rebecca: Ah. Okay. I’m writing this down so I don’tSusan: Yeah. Rebecca:-Ask you things twice. UmSusan: Sure. Rebecca: Okay, let me back up to, the ‘90s, before the Jonathan Shames, oh right, the search year, I wanted to ask you about that, and then ISusan: Okay. �Rebecca: Do you remember, any particular concert, or year, that stood out for you before the ‘90s, before Jonathan Shames came on board, or before the year of the search? Does anything stand out? Susan: Let’s see. My two strongest memories, wa- The strongest memory is when, André Bohren played Rhapsody In Blue with us. [Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, 20th century American composer and pianist. The Rhapsody, for solo piano and orchestra, combines elements of classical music with jazz effects] That was a very meaningful concert, ‘cause I knew the family a bit, and it was just amazing that André went from playing Für Elise [a famous student piece by Beethoven] to playing Rhapsody In Blue. So it was crazy, and it was a very good concert. Just very meaningful. And we did runouts occasionally, and we went to, God, was it Riverton? I guess it was? Lander or Riverton [Wyoming]. We played in a pit orchestraRebecca: Right. Susan: -but, yeah. Rebecca: Sleeping Beauty Ballet, I think. Susan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and that was a very fun concert, and it was fun to do a runout. I mean, I know it’s, expensive and out of reach, but, ideally I wish that was what the symphony did. So, that was good to do something that, I wish we could do all the time. Rebecca: Yeah, it costs money but it’s-it’s very good to bring, the-that, uhSusan: Yeah. Rebecca: -quality of a product to the rest of the state, howeverSusan: Exactly. �Rebecca: -much. Yeah, Let’s just back up briefly. You mentioned André Bohren, and you mentioned Rhapsody In Blue. Could you say just a little bit more about Rhapsody In Blue, including maybe the composer andSusan: Oh, okay. Rebecca: And that sort of thing? Susan: Sure. Okay. Well, Rhapsody In Blue is a piano concerto by George Gershwin, it’s United Airlines’ advertising theme, if you don’t know what it is. ‘Course by the time anyone looks at this, no one will know what United Airlines is, but- (laughs) Rebecca: (laughs back) Susan: It’s a, you know, one of the most famous American pieces, and, not the most difficult thing in the repertoire, but, a pretty, if you’re a beginning piano student, that is, that is, an amazing thing to be able to play. It’s, you know, not an easy piece, but it’s very very beautiful, and it’s one of the, exemplary American works. So, it’s a joy to play with anybody, but, especially to play with a beginning student who ... rockets out of nowhere, and can play it. It’s a great experience. Rebecca: And, do you remember if the audience liked it especially? Susan: Oh, yes. Yes, they did. Okay, well of course the other thing I’m leaving out is the Moody Blues. That was-that was another big experience from the ‘90s. we did two concerts with them, one in ... September ‘94, and then another one in ‘99. Both of those were amazing. And the audience went, you know, that was kind of when, pop groups were just starting to play with community orchestras. Well that was very exciting for the audience and we played at the [Casper] Events Center, and we were all electrified, our instruments were you know, they put mics on them and it gives a kind of resonance that you don’t normally feel in orchestra, so it was, �you know, the closest thing to being a rock musician. That was amazing, and the, you know, Nights in White Satin, everybody turned on their lighters [in the days] before cell phonesRebecca: (chuckles back) Susan: Ah! You know I just thought, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be great if, you know, people would do that for, like, the slow movement in Beethoven’s Seventh.” Bring out their lighters, you know. Rebecca: Ah. Susan: That was, just a beautiful experience, connecting with the audience like that. Rebecca: You mentioning the Moody Blues concert puts me in mind of, the fact that we had microphones on our instruments, and headphones that we had to wear. Did the violins have to wear a pair of headphones too? Susan: No. There were too many of us. We didn’t wear headphones. Rebecca: Oh, so you didn’t have to cope with listening to yourself through the headphones? Susan: No! Rebecca: Okay. Well then you don’t have to comment on that. Susan: Oh! Rebecca: Okay. Well that’s cool. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay, so there were two Moody Blues concerts, one in ‘94 and one in ‘99. Were they essentially the same, or-? was one better than the other, or better attended, or more memorable? Susan: I think the first one was more memorable. It was more their greatest hits. and, just at that time, that was such a new concept. It was kind of far out for people to go to a rock concert and hear a rock band. Go to an orchestra concert and hear a rock band. But in ‘99, that had been done �before, and also in ‘99, Moody Blues had a new album out called English Sunset, and we had to play some of the stuff from their new album. Rebecca: Oh! Susan: Which was good, but it wasn’t what people were expecting, so, the audience reaction was a lot more muted than the first concert, I felt like. Rebecca: Aha. Now that makes sense. Okay. So then, do you have memories-are you done with that? I don’t want to interrupt you if you have more to say. Susan: Those are the ones that pop-pop up immediately. There’s probably others ifRebecca: Okay, well if you remember them later you can bring them up. Susan: Okay. Rebecca: Okay, and then there was the search year. Susan: Yes. Rebecca: Where different conductors played concerts, basically auditioning. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: What do you remember about that year? Susan: That was an exciting year. That was so fun, because the orchestra had been, I mean, even if you have a conductor that’s amazing, after 20 years, it’s, you know, it’s, great to play with somebody new, and I think that was a time when people realized, “oh wow, we could be something different.” You know, we could be better. We can-there’s more here than we thought there was. ‘cause all the conductors were good, actually. Any one of them would’ve been great. Rebecca: Mhmm. Susan: And most of them, I-you know, I kind of looked later, and most of them went on to other orchestras and did other things, so. I was very happy about it, and it was a very exciting time. �Rebecca: It must’ve been really fun, every concert different because with a different conductor andSusan: Yes. Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: Yeah, and it was funny, you know, adjusting to how, to different conductors and some of them conduct really small, and (laughs) Rebecca: Ahhh. Susan: We’d try to find where the down [downbeat] is, and, so that was, you know, we had to adjust as well. Besides, you know, there’s kind of a feeling of, if you’re playing for a guest, you want to be the best you can be ‘cause you want to, you know, have some pride in your organization, so, I thinkRebecca: Yeah. Susan: I think there might’ve been a little slacking off, under Curtis, just because we were used to him, and, he didn’t scare us anymore. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay. So then Jonathan Shames was, selected at the end of that year, and you, played under him? Susan: Yes I did. Rebecca: Okay. What can you tell us about that time? Susan: That was, yeah, he, you know, whatever people say about the orchestra today, he really built that foundation, I feel. A lot of people did not like him. He could be a little short-tempered, but, I liked him a lot, and I think he- I didn’t take what he said personally. I don’t think it was meant personally. I think, you know, I think a lot of the older conductors, that’s the way they were trained, and they didn’t know any better, kind of. You know, he didn’t- but he was sooo �good. He was a really good conductor. Really very clear, and really did some basics with the orchestra to kind of, with intonation, and with dynamics. and also picked a good repertoire, I thought. also, he did his pre-concert talks. He would do them in the library, and I worked at the library at the time, and I coordinated with him. so maybe I had a better understanding than a lot of people, of what he was aiming at, because I had to go to all the talks. I was, managing it, umRebecca: I have a question, but not unless you’re done, or paused. Susan: I’m done I guess. Rebecca: Okay. You used a couple of musician’s terms that I would like you to clarify please. one of them is intonationSusan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -and the other one was dynamics. Susan: Dynamics. Okay, intonation means playing in tune, and, dynamics means soft and loud. And a lot of the time, a lot of people in the orchestra are school teachers, and if they get used to playing in their school orchestras where everything is the same, the same dynamic. It’s this continuous loud sound, and they- So anyway, it’s just reminding, oh yeah, we’re adults, we can do this stuff, you know, we don’t have to play this. Rebecca: Ah. Susan: We can play better, just kind of pay attention. Rebecca: Uh-huh. Susan: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s the reason, that’s my crackpot theory. Rebecca: (laughs heartily) Okay, so, it sounds like Shames was quite straightforward and he talked to the orchestra, to tell them what they needed to do and wasn’t, um- didn’t try to be- I don’t know how to say this, tactful? I’m not accusing the man of being tactless, but I don’t think �there’s anything wrong with a conductor asking what he wants from a group, and telling them what he needs. I mean, we’re there because the conductor’s the boss, and to improve, so. Susan: Right. Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: Right. I just addressed him- Sorry, go ahead. Rebecca: No, it’s alright, you go ahead. Susan: I just contrast him with somebody like Christopher Dragon, who’s extremely tactful. Rebecca: Ah. Susan: I mean, he asks for what he wants, but he says it in a very very polite way, and I think that’s, just kind of the trend today, and older people are, in my experience, have not been as careful- -as he is today, so. Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: And I think some musicians, you know, the conductor will say, “the section is not intune,” and they’ll feel like, “oh, he’s saying I’m a bad player,” you know, no. (chuckles again) That’s not what he’s saying. Rebecca: Uh-huh. Susan: But, some people take it that way. Rebecca: Yeah, well, it’s probably a ticklish job conducting an orchestra, because you’ve got all sorts of people under you, andSusan: Right. Well that’s the whole, exactly, well that’s the whole miracle of an orchestra. It’s, you know, like Claude Abreu, A-B-B-R-E-U, Gustavo Dudamel’s mentor, you know, says that’s the miracle of an orchestra. It’s 100, you know, 100 people trying to do one thing, and that’s, very hard, and when it happens it’s amazing. �Rebecca: Well, and you have to think about who those hundred people are. Susan: Yes. Rebecca: They’ve all worked really hard to learn their instrument, and they’ve all got their own musical style and they’re all having to blend, andSusan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -and obey the boss. Susan: Yep. Rebecca: Whether they agree or not, or respect him or her or whatever. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: Yep. Susan: Exactly. Rebecca: Great, okay. Well, so, let’s see. From the Shames years, do you have a memorable concert, or any stand out experience? Susan: The Ninth Symphony that we played. Rebecca: Beethoven. Susan: ‘cause that was-Beethoven’s Ninth Sym-thank you, yes. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Choral SymphonyRebecca: Mhmm. Susan: -that has Ode To Joy at the end. I know you know this, but, I’ll say it for the- uh, Rebecca: That’s fine. Susan: Yeah. And it’s, it’s just a transcendent symphony. I had not played it before, I think, it had been felt that we, that the orchestra might have been incapable of it. It was kind of a hard song, but it came out beautifully. my mechanic was standing behind me singing, so I just had this �great feeling of the community coming together, to produce this beautiful thing. This beautiful, amazing thing. And, it was-it was an incredible experience. UmRebecca: Well it is. Oh sorry, I’ll wait. Susan: No. I’m done. Rebecca: Well, it is a very very difficult piece, and being a cellist, I always wonder how the low strings get when they’re featured, especially in the last movement. Do you remember, in general, how the performance went, and especially, when, I mean you’ll have to have a very strong cello and bass section to bring on the last movement. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: How did it go, do you remember? Susan: Well, Jonathan said at the end, “I want to wait a couple years and do this again.” He felt like, I mean, it, that it was, it went well for our first run, but that, you know, now that we had played it, we knew how to play it- there was another level we could get to. The symphony played it under Matthew Savery, and I was not in that concert, but I watched it, and there, it- just felt so heart- it just felt so soulless. I don’t know, it was all about fast tempos and there wasn’t, it just didn’t have musicality, I felt. It was all about showing off how fast people could play, I felt. And I felt like this one in comparison, maybe not as technically skilled, but, it just, I thought it was more beautiful. I don’t know. Rebecca: Well, it’s very interesting that you should say that because, I recall when I was in graduate school in Northwestern University, we had a conductor who was a world-class clarinetist. Susan: Mhmm. �Rebecca: I mean, he was one of the best musicians on the planet. And he was a stickler for, a steady beat, Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -And I mean, a stickler. I’m telling you, he was, that was, he just insisted on it all the time. I played under him a lot and then the next year I was still in the area so I went to hear the University Orchestra, and I might as well have just turned on a metronome and sat there in my living room and just listened to the metronome. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: You know, and, it was just so, soulless, really. I-it was just, very mechanical, and it’s amazing now, what it takes to be a musician. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: As opposed to somebody that just beats time. Susan: Yes. Rebecca: So. This is very interesting. okay, so, you did the Ninth, Beethoven’s NinthSusan: The Ninth, yeah, oh, let me think of some other things. we did some-we did some more runout concerts. We played in, Sheridan a few times. pop- just pops concerts. you know, Copland's Rodeo, Aaron Copland, (duh-duh-duh-duh duh-duh duh-duh-duh-duh da-da-duh-duhda-da-dah-dah-dah-da) [Aaron Copland, 20th century American composer and conductor] Rebecca: Yeah. Copland’s Hoedown [from his ballet, Rodeo]. Susan: Yeah, that one. Hoedown and all that stuff, and that was another thing of bringing something to an audience that was really hungry to have a big orchestra come out and play. and it was a beautiful setting, it was, the, oh God, what’s his name? Malcolm Wallop’s Ranch. Rebecca: A-oh! �Susan: Very very beautiful setting. It was very fun to play there. Even though, you know, as a musician, outdoor concerts can be, you know, your strings go out of tune because of the weather, and all that crazy stuff, but even despite that, it was a wonderful experience. Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: Oh! Well, and another, thing that was interesting about Jonathan was, oh yeah, there were some really good - there were some funny moments. Jonathan played with us, in one concert, piano. He was an excellent, excellent pianist. And he was at the end of a solo, and he forgot he forgot the very end of it, so he just played the same note and kept going da-da-da-da-da-da-daand then he nodded, and then the orchestra came in. (laughs heartily) So I’m not sure if the audience caught on to what had happened, but, we were terrified, but, Rebecca: (laughs heartily) I could imagine. Susan: But, I think it worked out. And it was kind of one of those moments where you go, “oh yeah, even the big guys can screw up sometimes,” So that was, you know, and we kind of stuck together and hung out. That was good. He had, Jonathan had Becky Mothersbaugh and Jennifer Cowell do the Bach Double Violin Concerto, and he played harpsichord with them, and then the orchestra accompanied of course, and he directed and played harpsichord. That was great. I really liked that he kind of shared his instrument with us. I thought that was really really neat. He had, one of the Christmas concerts, he had his father, who is a Jewish Cantor, come and sing some Hanukkah Festivity music, and played that with us. and that was beautiful and interesting, and his father was a character and a great singer. and I remember there were some people who objected to having a, not in the orchestra, some of the audience members, objected to having Hanukkah music at a Christmas concert, and Rebecca: (dejected “oh”) �Susan: But the board stuck up for him, and they did it anyway, so that was great. Rebecca: Let’s see. you mentioned the harpsichord. Could you describe that instrument a bit? Susan: Yes. Oh, okay. A harpsichord is, the precursor of the piano. The strings are plucked. The mechanism in a piano, the piano key hammers the string to make sound. A harpsichord, it plucks the strings. So it makes a kind of different sound. So it’s a sound you heard with early music [music before the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685-1750]. And ... this was just before, there were kind of mechanical keyboards with harpsichords. He played a real harpsichord that Casper College had. So there were a lot of issues with keeping it in-tune and all that, but, it worked out, and, sounded great. And again that was still the era- I mean there were import musicians, but not as great a percentage as today, so, and, there was a real feeling of, you know, Wyoming people creating something beautiful. Rebecca: Yeah, I remember in the ‘90s when I was in the orchestra, we always had our standard import people that really, they were almost always all from Wyoming, and theySusan: Yes. Rebecca: -almost always all came up for every concert. They were really, in a sense, part of the orchestra. They just didn’t happen to live in Casper. Susan: Exactly, Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause it was almost always the same group every time. So, yeah, it felt like they were part of us. Rebecca: So that began to change, when, approximately? Susan: Well, it started to change under Savery. It really changed a lot under Christopher. Rebecca: Okay, so the big transition, away from community group would’ve been under Dragon, and not under, umSusan: No! I think it started under Savery, but it-it-it accelerated under Christopher. �Rebecca: Okay. Susan: You know, to be fair, Jonathan did fire one community member who really, was not very good. And that was seen as very controversial, but, boy, was that the right decision. So, that was that, I can’t even think of his name. That clarinet player. Anyway, the guy couldn’t figure out how to transpose, and it’s like, you have to do that. I mean, that's ridiculous, so. So that may’ve been the beginning, but, I would say it was, I would say it started under Jonathan, it accelerated under Savery, and then really accelerated with Christopher Dragon. [Clarinet is a B flat instrument, which means that when a B flat instrument plays a C major scale, it will sound the same as the B Flat scale on a piano. This will create completely wrong notes, and it’s necessary for the clarinetist to know how to mentally transpose as he or she plays. To transpose is to exactly copy exactly a passage of music, starting the passage on a different pitch.] Rebecca: Okay, regarding Dragon, I wantSusan: Yeah. Rebecca: -to talk on this. I have gathered that, because he is a conductor, or the conductor down in Colorado, in Denver, ... his presence in Casper is attracting a lot of ambitious graduate students who want him to notice them. Susan: Sure, oh yeah. Absolutely. Rebecca: At an audition, yeah. Susan: Oh yeah. Rebecca: And at first they come up here to beat the locals, who are not graduate students practicing five hours a day, or six hours a day. Susan: Yeah. �Rebecca: So, I guess it’s a trade-off. You want a good, non-resident conductor, and this is the sort of thing that can happen. Susan: Yeah. Yeah. Well and then the issue is, you know, he’s got a, I mean, great for today, but he’s got a two year contract when he goes away. Are these people gonna want to play with whoever we get? That’s a long drive. I don’t think they are. And, uhRebecca: Hmm. Susan: So then the locals haven’t been nurtured, so then, you know, there’s gonna be a hole. ButRebecca: You know, somebody whom I will not name, told me that he thought local talent should continue to be encouraged and nurtured, and took it to the board and they just, basically, shot it down. ‘Cause they were more interested in just having the best orchestra they could. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: So. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: I mean, there’s not gonna be a lot of local people to draw on if somethingSusan: Exactly. Rebecca: -Isn’t done with encouragement. Yeah. Susan: Yeah. Well, we did a concert, yeah. That was, we did a concert with the college people this year, where we deliberately had, it was called, “Master and Teacher,”Rebecca: Mm. Susan: -something, and we had a lot of college students play with us. And I think that might’ve been an eye-opening experience for our conductor, because it ended up, several of the college students ended up playing with us for the rest of the year. And, you know, he might’ve gone, “oh, yeah, there’s some good people here too,” you know. Duh. But, but, they were, you know, �the college students didn’t even try to audition for the orchestra ‘cause they ... weren’t encouraged to, and, you know, maybe made to feel like they weren’t good enough, or whatever, and then when they played with us, you know, the conductor realized, oh yeah, they are good enough, so. I don't know. I don’t know if that will-that revelation will stick, but, I hope it does. Rebecca: Well, you know, this rehearsal schedule that was taken up when, the, switch was made to non-resident conductors, where it’s a very compressed schedule, Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: What was it? Is it? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then a Saturday night concert? Susan: Right. and then a local string rehearsals on Tuesdays! Rebecca: Yeah, well, you know, the better students in the community, if they made it into All State Honors Orchestra, or All Northwest Honors Orchestra, that’s really, pretty much what they had to do. You know, you have to pull together a performance in very few rehearsals, in a very intensive experience. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: But, that has not seemed to occur to, necessarily some of the people, that have been in charge, from what I’ve gathered. That there is talent in the community, and people have had to, you know, in just a few days, be ready to perform. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: Yeah. Okay, well let’s see. So you played under Savery for a little while, but it was just not what you wanted, I take it. I won’t ask you for particulars unless you want to give them, um. Susan: Oh, sure, he’s yeah, he’s well the- and first of all, the way he was selected. It kind of came to that, it’s so, so Jonathan, like I say, I think the first three years he was great, the last couple of years, especially the last year, he was kind of phoning it in. And not because of any �animosity he felt to the orchestra or anything, he just had his own life going on. He basically transitioned, to living in, Oklahoma. And he became the head of the opera programs for the University of Oklahoma, so that’s a pretty big job, and he’d never done that before, and he was finding his real slot which was academia. That was really the best fit for him and his career. But, since he was letting his contract run out, he suggested Matthew Savery. I don’t know where they knew each other or if they knew each other. I don’t think they knew each other very well, but, I think that was his way of trying to insure the orchestra, and kind of get out of it, and get on to the next phase of his life. The problem was that the board did not do another search. They just hired Matthew, kind of on the spot, and didn’t do the checking they should’ve done. And, and that led to some real problems down the road. UmRebecca: Right. Susan: -and the orchestra was not happy about him being selected that way, but, the board didn’t care what we thought about it, so, and it was, you know, they saved all sorts of money by doing it that way, and so that was that. And, you know, I’ll say the good things about Matthew. He was a decent conductor. Nothing to write home about, but okay. He was really good at, [indisdinguishable] donors and getting money. He was really good at that. Jonathan was not good at that. And he [Savery], and when the orchestra ran-went into financial reverses in 2008, he stuck with it. And he took a pay cut, so, you know, he basically said, “the orchestra is not going down on my watch,” so,Rebecca: Hmmm. Susan: I give him credit for that. That was, he was, he might’ve been a good guy, would be thesome other function, some other administrative function, butRebecca: (dejected “oh.”) �Susan: - but, as a musician, kind of mediocre, and, really a bully. Rebecca: You’re the second person I’ve heard say that. That he was a bully. Susan: Yeah. Yes. Rebecca: On the podium and offSusan: Yes. Rebecca: -because the other person who said it to me was, at one time, had to work with him pretty closely, not as a musician. Susan: Right. Yeah, exactly. Rebecca: That’s bad. Susan: Yeah. Oh yeah. He bullied the board. Which was, crazy. But, yeah. So, again, it’s the kinda thing, you know, people probably took it personally, but he’s just one of those guys that bullies everybody. And, you know, so, after a few years I just felt like, you know, I had nightmares for two weeks after one of our last concerts, and like I say, I’mRebecca: (Muffled and inaudible speech) Susan: I’m the kind of person that doesn’t take things personally. You know, I can be a, you know, you’ve kind of heard me making fun of people that take things personally, but, he was such a bully that it got to me. And I had nightmares for two weeks, and then after that I said, this is not worth it. I’mRebecca: Right. Susan: -I’m a part time musician. This isn’t my full time job. I don’t have to be in the symphony to, get credentials or anything, so I move to doing, I, played in other orchestras, I played for Casper College musicals, and I- (trails off) �Rebecca: It’s so interesting that conducting really must be a combination of good baton technique, you know, the ability to give a clear beat, and, indicate what you want musically,Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -and people skills. I mean, you get a conductor who’s a bully and, it just doesn’t work. Susan: Right. Rebecca: Or who doesn’t respect the orchestra. Maybe that comes down to pretty much the same thing. Susan: Right. Rebecca: Well, interesting, okay. So, then between Savery and Dragon did the board do a search, or did they just go straight to Dragon? Susan: No, they did a search. They did a search, and as soon as Savery left, I rejoined. Rebecca: Oh right, I have this down. And howSusan: Yes. Rebecca: -was that year of the search? Susan: That was another really exciting year. It’s-and, the level of talent. There are a lot of great conductors out there looking for a job. I mean, the people that are looking for a Wyoming job, are looking for like a supplemental job to their main job. but there’s some amazing talent out there. And again, I felt like ... any of the five conductors that we interviewed would’ve been great. There were no women in that group, that time. There was one woman in the group selected. So that was a drag, but it was, a very interesting group of people, and, Jerry how or ho? H-O-W? The guy that is the assistant conductor for the, Grand Teton Music Festival,Rebecca: Mm. �Susan: -worked with us also. And that was a wonderful experience. He’s a really good conductor. We kind of wanted him, but, you know, he wasn’t applying for the job unless he was interested in it. And yeah and there were-and that year, the two conductors that stood out to me were Christopher, of course, and then the other guy, Thomas Heuser? H-E-U-S-E-R. I’m not sure how you pronounce it. I think it’s, “Hoy-ser.” And he conducts the Idaho Falls Symphony, and there’s, and two other community symphonies. And he was a very strong candidate. And, a lot of us felt that if Christopher didn’t take it, Thomas would’ve taken it. And, either one of them would’ve been a wonderful choice, and the other three would’ve been good as well. Rebecca: Okay, Let’s talk about the music that you played during those years. Do you remember some of the pieces? MaybeSusan: TheRebecca: (inaudible) -or whatever? Susan: during the search, or? Rebecca: Or whenever. Just, anytime after Savery began, and, just up to whenever you want to. Susan: Gosh. (coughs) There’s so many good things. I should’ve brought a roster to remember them. I guess, recently, I would think of, Julia Louise Esther? The symphony that was, composed for the Wyoming Symphony? Rebecca: Mhmm. Susan: That was a really neat experience, playing something that no one else had played before and kind of figuring all of that out, and, doing a contemporary piece, um. That wasn’t off-putting at all, it was, you know, fresh and contemporary-sounding, but, very beautiful and interesting. That was a great experience. Playing pops concerts with Christopher was always fun. That’s his real strength. �Rebecca: Oh really? Susan: Is, pops, and kind of connecting pops with (clears throat) you know, not just kind of blowing it off. He’s gotten a lot of gigs around the country, like conducting films. Those concerts where they play the film and the orchestra plays the score. He’s very strong in that area. We haven’t done that, but Christopher Dragon is also known for, there was a video that went viral of him, where he’s dressed as a dinosaur, conducting Jurassic Park. Rebecca: (reels in laughter) Susan: So, (laughs hysterically) So yeah, if you, go to YouTube and Google “Dinosaur Conducts Jurassic Park,” you’ll see him. that was a, concert he did for the Colorado Symphony. Rebecca: That’s really funny! Susan: It is really funny! UhRebecca: (continues laughing hysterically) Susan: (chuckles heartily) So, you tell people, you know, Christopher Dragon, well nobody knows who he is, but then you say it’s the gu-it’s theRebecca: It’s the dinosaur. Susan: -the dinosaur that conducted Jurassic Park, “Oh that guy!,” you know. Every Everybody knows who that is. Rebecca: Well, so, so let’s go back to his pops concerts. Do you remember? I mean, there are so many pieces that qualify for, pops concert repertoire. Can you give me some idea of the sorts of pieces that Dragon programmed? Susan: Oh, you know, John Williams “Star Wars”, “Jurassic Park,” He didn’t dress up for that part. Rebecca: (Mockingly sad “awww”) �Susan: I know. (both chuckle) Susan: I know, what a drag. And last year, we did a lot of, kind of Ella Fitzgerald jazz things with a singer. It was really good. [I’m] blanking on her name, I’m sorry, I’m blanking on particular pieces. Rebecca: That’s alright. This gives me some idea. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: Yeah I don't think, when I was in the symphony, I’m thinking now way back in the ‘70s, of course “Star Wars” andSusan: Yeah. It was new then, yeah. (chuckles) Rebecca: Yeah, um. Susan: Yeah. Now it’s like classical music. Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah, well, with the London Symphony, it really does, go very well. Susan: Right. Right. Rebecca: yeah. And Vaughan Williams wrote the score, right? Ralph Vaughan Williams? Or nowas it? Susan: No, John Williams. [John Williams, American composer and conductor] Rebecca: Okay. Great, okay, so, let’s see. I think I am ready to ask you, unless you have-I don’t want to stifle you if you want to say other things, before I ask another question. Susan: Let’s see. No, I guess not. If I think of it laterRebecca: You can just pipe up with it. About the Dragon years, Susan: Mhmm? �Rebecca: Can you kind of sum it up, from the standpoint of your experience? Particularly high points and really fun concerts? Susan: Okay, I would say, every concert with Christopher is fun. He is soooo dynamic, so exciting, so young. Everything is new for him. So it’s kind of like being in a youth orchestra almost, where everything you play is new, and you’re excited about it, and it’s really great. From the audience, he looks very flamboyant. He looks like, a little like, Bernstein used to look? [American conductor Leonard Bernstein] Rebecca: Hmm. Susan: But within that, he’s very tightly controlled. He’s cuing everything. [To cue is to clearly indicate to a musician or section when to enter the music after a period of rest] He’s a “cuing machine,” you know? And keeping a very steady beat. He does a little trick where he’ll hum a pop song under his breath, and that’s how he gets the tempo for whatever classical piece we’re playing, and, it sounds goofy, but it works. He’s on-tempo all the time. and not a metronome, but he’s, it’s a very consistent tempo, so that’s really neat. Let’s see, as far as, some of the fun concerts, uh. Well, we did Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and survived, so that was that was good. You know, that’s always a challenge ‘cause everybody knows that one. So you really can’t, screw up and get away with it. So. Uh. Rebecca: Right. Susan: People [musicians] love it and dread it at the same time. So. But, that was very successful. I’m sure there were others, I’m just kind of blanking. Rebecca: Well sure, Beethoven’s Fifth isSusan: Hmm. Rebecca: -a masterpiece, and, a memorable- �Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -experience every time a person plays itSusan: Yes. Oh! I’ll tell you another thing he’s done, is, well, trying to-he’s-he’s kind of going with the theme of the times where he’s trying to include, you know, women composers and composers of color. We did, a piece by a Black woman composer that was very charming, very pretty piece. “Dances in the Canebrakes.” Super fun piece, that, and it was orchestrated by William Still, a Black composer, and we’re gonna play a piece by him, William Still, next year. So I like that he’s kind of paying attention to that, and and, finding some good repertoire that’s not in the standard repertoire, but kind of introducing that, and kind of getting our audiences’ feet wet, a little bit in that. [Canebrakes is by Florence Beatrice Price, 20th century American classical composer] Rebecca: Well, you know, my sole and only objection to music composed after about 1920,Susan: (laughs heartily) Rebecca: -is that it didn’t have, it didn’t make me keep wanting to listen to it. It’s like a book. Does it make me keep wanting to read it? Does itSusan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -make me want to keep listening to it? Or, you know, like a painting. Does itSusan: Mhmm. Rebecca: -make me stay there standing at it because I'm just hypnotized? Mesmerized? So, that’s always been my standard. Susan: Mhmm. Rebecca: Ugly or whatever, it’s just not going to inspire me, sorry. Susan: Mm. �Rebecca: I think audiences in general feel that way. And I don’t regard it as-I don’t know, catering to lower taste, or something like that. Everybody has their own point of view on this. What’s your point of view? Susan: Well, my point of view is that, we can’t just keep playing the 19th century forever and ever. I mean, we’re two centuries on at this point. and composers are doing other things. I think we need to, let the audience listen, and, you know, make their own decisions. I mean, people love “The Rite of Spring” now [ballet by Igor Stravinsky, 20th century Russian composer and conductor with French and American citizenship] They hated it at the time. Rebecca: (laughing) Right. It was a shocker. I remember, reading that in music history. Susan: Yeah! Well I wish people would care that much now. You know, I mean, okay, a riot [the audience rioted at the Paris premiere of Rite of Spring] isn’t the greatest thing to happen at a concert, but at least they’re listening, and, caring about it. You know, just- (laughs again) Rebecca: Yeah. Expressing theirSusan: I’d almost rather have that than just polite indifference. and I think people can be surprised at, if they give it a chance, how much they’ll like and appreciate the newer stuff. Or, you know, now that this, you know, “Dances in the Canebrakes” was composed in the 1950s, it sounds like it was composed in the 1920s. It has a very, kind of Jazz-age flapper kind of sound, but, I found it very very charming, and very retro, kind of, and, the fact that it was composed by a Black woman. You know, I think you would’ve wanted to listen to it regardless. So I think that, I think we have to not be a museum, you know. I think we’ve gotta, go on and find things. I mean, like, John Adams is crazy good. I’ve loved everything I’ve heard of his. he’s the guy that did “Nixon in China,” the opera. [John Adams, 20th century American composer and conductor] Rebecca: Oh. �Susan: So, I think there’s people out there, and I think we have to, I think the way we’re doing it now, is, pretty standard in other orchestras, which is, you have the war horses, and then you kind of sandwich them with a modern piece in the middle so the audience can’t leave, you know. Rebecca: Yeah, they want to hang around for theSusan: Yeah. Yeah, so they have to hang out-they have to listen to something else to get their treat at the end. But, but I think things are changing in other places. I mean, Los Angeles [the Los Angeles Philharmonic] is really getting sophisticated about modern music, so hopefully, eventually, that’ll translate. I mean the, you know, the classics are great. They’re still great. People will still wanna listen to them, but, there’s other stuff too. So, that’s great for everybody. There’s more music, we’ll want to come out and listen, and I hope that doesn’t go away. I mean, the COVID time was pretty scary for that, but, maybe it made people appreciate live music more. It certainly made me appreciate live music more. I mean, Zoom is wonderful, and I’m grateful that it exists, but, you can’t-nothing duplicates being in a hall with musicians. Rebecca: Mhmm. That’s true. Yeah, that was a very difficult interlude for all perf-well everybody, but performing musicians, or performersSusan: Yes. Rebecca: -in general. Yeah. It's good that it's over. Susan: Knocked on-knock on wood. Rebecca: Right. Susan: Hope it is. (laughs) Rebecca: We’ll hope it’s over. Susan: Yes. �Rebecca: (clears throat) Okay, well we’ve covered quite a lot of ground. Do you have anything to add before we wind up? Susan: No. I guess I’ll I think you were hinting at this, and maybe I already said it, but, and you kind of said it in your article, [history of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, published by WyoHistory.org] but yeah, the trend in our orchestra, just since I have been there has definitely been ... from a mostly local group, to a group where about a third of the orchestra is local, and the rest is, import musicians, most of whom are out of state. There’s still some in-state musicians that come in via import. And, like I said before, I think that’s a worrying trend in the long term. I think, you know, yeah, we have this super hot conductor right now. Yeah. People are willing to drive eight hours to come play, but once he leaves, what’s gonna happen with that? We’re gonna need to recruit more locals, and more state, Wyoming, musicians, to come and play and fill that gap. Unless a miracle happens and they still wanna come. But I-I think there’s a little bit of a trend in “integrate today, so why rock the boat?,” and it’s likeRebecca: Hmm. Susan: You know, someday, it’s like Lynn Cheney said about Trump, you know, someday Trump will be gone and you’ll have to, you know, live- you’ll have to make sense of that new world, and, you know, someday Christopher will be gone, and, we’ll have to make sense of that new world. So. Rebecca: Well this brings a question to my mind, but, you finish and then I’ll ask my question. Susan: Okay, no, that’s all I had to say. Rebecca: Well, I, my personal experience, I feel is revealing with the, Grand Teton Orchestra? Susan: Yes. �Rebecca: I’ll start with my childhood where my musician mother, she was an ameteur but very enthusiastic, if there was something going on in Colorado, she made sure that we went to it. I don’t mean necessarily concerts, but, Dorothy Delay, the very famous violin teacher at the Juilliard school, did a master class, at, USC I think, in Fort Collins, and my mother- [The Julliard School of Music, a private conservatory of music in New York City] Susan: Mhmm! Rebecca: -and my mother made sure that we got down there for that master class. And, when you think about all the incredible music that was going on up in Jackson, at the Grand Teton Festival, and has for years, my mother never once said to me, “Do you know who’s soloing with the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra? Let’s get up there and hear them.” I don’t think she knew about that group.Susan: Hm! Rebecca: -because I’m not sure that they did a good enough job of really publicizing what they had to offer. Susan: Right. Rebecca: Direct from the state. Susan: Right. They might not have at that time. Rebecca: Yeah. It’s probably different now, but I just remember thinking, you know, this orchestra up there, it’s in Wyoming, but is it of Wyoming? Susan: Right. No, not at all. Rebecca: It isn’t. Yeah, and, I worry that maybe the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra here in Casper is headed in that direction. Susan: Mhmm. �Rebecca: Maybe it won’t end up that way. I hope it doesn’t. Susan: I hope not. I, I don't think, yeah, I hope not. I hope not, ‘cause that’s, I mean, that’s kind of how the Cheyenne Symphony is, right? I mean it’s mostly a Colorado orchestra, and that’s, yeah, there just needs to be a place for local musicians. And, you know, the college music groups can help with that, but, you know, or you look [at] ... this community band that’s sprung up. Come out of that need, I think. We’re, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but, besides the band that plays during the summer, there’s also another band that is a volunteer group, and they play a couple times a year, and it’s just community people that wanna play, and, are adults and don’t have a place to play, or, they’re students that want to play more. You know, and that’s good too, but it’s a shame that that group doesn’t have access to playing with other musicians, and kind of upping their game through playing with, you know, more skilled musicians. I don't know. Kind of rambling, but I hope you get what I’m trying to say. I, you know, I think there’s a need and I just, hope they figure it out and I hope they don’t eliminate- ‘cause, so the board may feel, they just want to get the best no matter what, but, I don’t think the audience feels that way. I would be very curious if someone would survey the audience. I think it’s still important to the audience that there’s people they know in the symphony. ‘Cause, I still get comments around town from even casual friends going, “oh, you’re playing in the symphony, I saw you,” you know, so it’s like I’m the minor celebrity to these people? I don’t know, IRebecca: (laughs heartily) Susan: That may be an extreme way of putting it, but, people like that. I don’t, even if it sounds better, I think not having people there that they know, would make them not have as good of an experience. I don’t know. You know what, we’ll see what happens. �Rebecca: Okay. Well, Thank you for being available for this. You brought out a lot of really important information. Susan: Okay. I hope so, but I hope you, I hope you interviewed some of the old timers. I just really don’t know about that older stuff before the ‘90s. Rebecca: Yeah. I try to snag as many of those people as I can. Susan: Yeah, well, and you know, time-the clock is ticking. You gotta. Rebecca: Yeah. Susan: You gotta get ‘em. Rebecca: Yep. Yep. I got a few of them, but, they’re kind of hard to find, yeah. Susan: Yeah. Rebecca: Okay, well, take care and, once again, I really appreciate your giving your time for this. Susan: Sure! Sure. Okay, well I hope this was helpful. Rebecca: Mhmm! Bye! Susan: Alright, buh-bye! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Susan Stanton Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-06-23 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Susan Stanton. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on June 23, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Susan Stanton Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_SusanStanton Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3; PDF https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/9d6c58e88aca941d36babe15271b0914.m4a e4d0890b2ace63deb7bb9d900e34e89f https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/469a7647550e1a12c61704660b65ddbc.pdf cba189fd22ecfa259114f16dbbd23fc3 PDF Text Text Wyoming Symphony Oral History Project Rebecca Hein interviewing Virginia Himes, September 16, 2022 Date transcribed: October 10, 2022 Rebecca: Hi. Let's start since I have started the recording now. Let's start with your name, your instrument, and how you came to play that instrument. Virginia: My name is Virginia Himes. I played the violin; I was six years old, an aunt of mine started me on the violin. Rebecca: Did she give you lessons? Virginia: Yes, she did. Rebecca: Did she have a violin? Virginia: She was a music teacher. Rebecca: I see. And did she have an instrument to give you or to lend to you? Or how did that work? Virginia: I really don't know ... I'm sure she got the instrument from the school. Rebecca: Okay. So for how many years did you take lessons? Virginia: From the time I was six years old. Through the time I was a sophomore in college. Rebecca: Okay. And what did you major in, in college? Virginia: I went to a two year school and you really couldn't. Back in the day, you didn't have a major. You just took credits and got an associates. I did go on and study. I was going to go into music therapy, but then I dropped out. Rebecca: Have you kept playing the violin this whole time? Virginia: Have I quit playing the violin? Rebecca: Go ahead. Virginia: I'm sorry ... What [did] you ask me? Rebecca: I meant to ask you if you had continued playing the violin this whole time. Virginia: Even now? No, I played until 2019. �Rebecca: Okay. And ... [you’ve] played in the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra that whole time from when you started with the symphony until 2019. Virginia: No. I started in December of 1974 with the symphony, and I retired in December of 2019. I played 45 years. Rebecca: Okay. So in 1974 that that would have been under Curtis Peacock, is that correct? Virginia: Yes. Rebecca: Do you have memories from those early years [you can tell] me? That would have been the Casper Civic Symphony, I believe. Virginia: I think that's what it was called. I have memories of it. I have very good memories of it. Rebecca: What are some of your memories from back then? Virginia: But I think ... now mostly [of] the camaraderie that we had. I had moved to Casper, in fact, just a few days before I started the symphony. And I have just very fond memories. I learned a lot. Played a lot. And thoroughly enjoyed it the whole time. Rebecca: From the years that you were playing under Curtis Peacock, more than 20 years I believe. Do you have particular memories of pieces that you played under him that you especially enjoyed? Virginia: I guess I'm one of the strange ones. I enjoyed everything we played. I just loved playing and I really didn't care what it was. I just enjoyed playing and tried to do my best always. Rebecca: That's great. Were you in the first violin section the whole time? From the very beginning. Virginia: I think when I first came, I had not played for a few years and so I asked to play [in the] second [violin section], and I think I played in that section for maybe one or two concerts, and then I moved to the first [violin] section. Rebecca: Then Curtis Peacock left the orchestra in the early 2000s, and Jonathan Shames became the conductor. Virginia: Yes. Rebecca: So you played under Jonathan Shames for the three years that he was here, is that correct? Virginia: Yes, I did. Rebecca: Do you have specific things to tell us about that time. Virginia: I liked every conductor I played under. I simply learned a lot of things. Enjoyed playing. I think every one of them, I am not going to say they had a specialty. They, just looking �back ... [they each] had their own way of doing things. And I enjoyed playing under all the conductors. Rebecca: So that that would include Matthew Savery, you enjoyed playing under him. Virginia: I did. Very much so. Learned a lot from him. Yes. Rebecca: The orchestra did some difficult pieces under Matthew Savery, I've noticed. Did you find that especially fun? Things like Mahler's Fifth Symphony and the Tchaikowsky Serenade for Strings. [Gustav Mahler, 19th and 20th century Austro-Bohemian composer and conductor; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 19th century Russian composer] Virginia: ... I enjoyed it very much. Like I say, anything, the conductor put in front of us I enjoyed learning about it and practicing and doing the best I could. I had 45 years of absolutely wonderful experiences. Rebecca: In 2019? Was Christopher Dragon the conductor or was it still Matthew Savery? I can't recall. Virginia: When I quit I [had] played one or two concerts under Mr. Dragon. Yes. In my opinion, he's a brilliant man. Rebecca: Yeah. He seems to be a really excellent conductor from everything I've heard. Virginia: Yes. Yes. Rebecca: Okay. I have one more question, which is: Well, you've sort of answered it already, but I'll ask it anyway. Does any one musical performance jump out at you as being the absolute high point of your time playing. With the orchestra in Casper. Virginia: I absolutely loved playing the Messiah [by George Friedrich Handel, late 17th and early 18th century German-British composer]. Absolutely loved playing Beethoven's Ninth [Symphony]. I loved them all. I really can't say. Any favorite I had? I think my time in the symphony. We were fortunate. We played with pops groups. Any kind of group that came. It was just a joy. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Rebecca: Okay. That's great. Do you have anything else you would like to tell us about your time with the symphony? Forty-five years is a very long time. Virginia: Yes, it is. I could tell you I'm only 35, but you wouldn't believe me. Um, I think. I think everyone should have a musical experience. I think people that say they don't like classical music, they don't realize they hear it all the time. And it was just one of the most wonderful experiences I've had in my life to be able to be honored to play that. I was lucky. I enjoyed playing when you played. Rebecca: Yeah, that was a that was a good period for the symphony in the 90s. I would have been in the Civic Symphony in 1974 also. But I can't say that I specifically remember you from then. It was a long time [ago]. �Virginia: We were much younger then. Rebecca: I was a senior in high school in 1974. Well, in December I would have been a freshman at college, so. Virginia: In ‘74. That's when Deb Bovie started playing. And I know she was a senior at Kelly Walsh [high school]. Rebecca: Right. Virginia: I don't know if you and Deb played together [at] the same time. I just know that was the first time we ever met that many years ago. So. Rebecca: Ginny, I want to go back to something you said a little while ago. You said some people think they don't like classical music, but they hear it all the time. Could you be a little more specific about that? Virginia: About hearing classical music? Rebecca: Yeah. Virginia: All right. Well, people will say they don't like it, but you know as well as I do that oftentimes with commercials, the music is classical music. And I'm sure they hear that and they don't sit and go, ugh ugh ugh. I just think they hear it. They hear it in more ways than they think they do. Rebecca: Do you think part of the problem is people are hesitant to come to a concert because they don't know how they should behave or how they should dress, things like that. Virginia: I think they don't come because you think classical music and you think long hair, boring things? Um, I think it needs to be more introduced into the schools. As you well know, in several places there is not instrumental music in the grade schools anymore. That upset me terribly. I just think everyone should be exposed to it. I don't care if it's just two weeks in a classroom. I think everyone should be exposed to it and I think they would have a big awakening if they did. Everything in this life is not a rock band or a country band. And you're supposed to say, right? Right. Rebecca: Well, as far as I can tell, orchestras have always struggled with the image of that being for somebody else. Or being for an exclusive crowd and not being for the common person or whatever. That's unfortunate, but I'm familiar with that. Virginia: It is. Yes. Yes. Right? Right. Rebecca: I remember; I don't know if you have run into anything like this, but when I was in the [Casper] Youth Symphony way back when I was in high school in the 70s, we had to help with fundraising, which was fine. What we did was on Saturday mornings we would go around to people's houses and ask them for the pop bottles. The empty Pepsi and Coca Cola bottles that �they might have in their garages. You probably remember you had to put out a deposit for those bottles and then you could take them back and get your deposit money back. Virginia: So. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Rebecca: So we would ask them if they would be willing to donate their empty bottles and then we would take them back and get the money from them. And many times, [after] we identified ourselves, they would say, Oh, we support the Casper Troopers. You know, we'll give you our pop bottles. But we really we, we prefer to support the Troopers. So I don't want to say anything against the Troopers. But I do remember having a sense that the majority of people in Casper, if they had to choose who they were going to support, it would be the Troopers and not the Youth Symphony or the Civic Symphony. Virginia: I know. That's very sad. So sad. I have heard that you perform personally our great symphony performs. If anyone wants to do that, I think that's fine. And I would support their wanting to. That's just my choice. But I know that that mentality and it still is. Rebecca: Yeah. And I do not know how the Troopers are doing now, but I know when I was in high school they were entering competitions for drum and bugle corps and winning and winning and winning and winning. Probably generating a lot of civic pride. And I had friends that were in the Troopers and they didn't have any time at all because outside of school what they did was rehearse with the Troopers, which that's okay. I don't think you could have gotten classical music students to rehearse that much, partly because it just wouldn't have been a popular idea among the parents and the teachers and so on. That's a guess. Virginia: I think someone told me that the Troopers kind of, they weren't what they used to be. But I have not seen their program this year. But I have spoken to someone who has been around the Troopers. I don't know how long they've been around. I know she's been around them a good 50 years and I know she said the program they're doing this year is the best she has ever seen. I've not seen it, so I don't know, but I still prefer symphony music. Rebecca: Yeah, me too. But that's not too surprising since we are symphony classical musicians. Virginia: Are you still playing at all, Becky? Rebecca: Oh, just for my own fun. Yeah. Virginia: Oh. Okay. Well, keep it up as long as you can. Rebecca: That's the deal at our age, isn't it? Virginia: I have two shoulders that kind of balk at me playing, so I clearly haven't played. I'm very fortunate [inaudible]. You think of all the things that who we played for and not that many people in this world get to do that. So I'm very thankful. Rebecca: Yeah. The guest artists we had. Seems like from way back they were all excellent. The soloists came in from outside. It just seems like most of them were ... it was amazing to be on the same stage with them and listen to them play. �Virginia: Oh, yeah, yeah. Lots of times you sat there with your mouth just wide open. Looking, listening? Rebecca: Yeah. Do you recall any particular guest artist that was a standout for you? Virginia: Alexander Markov is certainly a heck of a player. And there was one. Do you remember? I think he was in Alaska. And he would come down and play. Do you remember that? Rebecca: I can't think who that would have been. Virginia: I can't. I can't either. I know Alexander Markov [Russian-American violinist] is a good friend of Matthew's [Savery]. Some player named Brian. Unfortunately, he passed away, but he was an absolute tremendous player. There were a lot of the soloists [that] came and played so. Enjoyed for the most part, most of them some of them had a little trouble but I wasn't up there playing and I couldn't have done it. So. You just go on. I have to give them credit. Rebecca: Did you find that any of them ... I kind of remember this, that any of them had what you might call an attitude. They were a world famous soloist, and we were a little bitty community orchestra and ... they were lowering themselves to be on the same stage with us. They never said it. You just got the feeling. Do you recall anything like that? Virginia: You had this feeling, and it wasn't necessarily anything they said. Maybe we were reading just a look they gave us, you know, like. You should be able to play this absolutely perfectly. Well, guess what? I don't recall any any of them saying anything. You know, it was just and I'm sure you saw it, too. They would just maybe turn around and look with that. Looks like, come on and get it together. So. We did the best we could. We had a lot ... we had a lot of good times. We really did. We had a lot of good times. And I think if you think back then too, so many of us that have been around for a long time, the word I hear is we all cared. You know, it was a community orchestra, like you say, and it just it's grown. People still care. I'm sure it's just I loved it right up until the very end when I retired, I just knew that I'd reached the point that I had to retire. I just loved it all through the different stages that it went through. Rebecca: That's wonderful. I have one guest soloist I want to ask you about, if you can remember, because I was so impressed that the symphony was able to get him. This is in recent years. He was a French horn player. His name is Eric Ruske. Do you recall his soloing with the symphony not too many years ago? Virginia: Many years ago. Not too many? Rebecca: Maybe as much as 7 years ago. Okay. Virginia: A French horn player, we had. Rebecca: Yep. Virginia: I can't remember who's been there the last few years. And then the person. I guess I don't know who you're speaking of. �Rebecca: This would have been a guest artist, not a regular member of the symphony. Virginia: Oh. They came in and played. Rebecca: Yeah. Played a solo or concerto or something. Virginia: Right? Yeah. Okay. I can’t remember that. Rebecca: Okay. Do you have anything else you would like to tell me? For the historical record here. Virginia: First of all, thank you for thinking of me, Becky, and asking me. It's been a good many years since we've communicated. I just am 100 percent behind orchestras, symphonies, and I certainly hope that they all can continue. I know some have had difficulty, but I just hope all of them can continue and people can keep enjoying going to the concerts. Rebecca: Yeah. Me too. Well, you’re very welcome for being included. You're one of the longest standing members of the orchestra. So you've seen a lot of changes and a lot of things going on. Virginia: You can help. Rebecca: Well, we're basically done. So thank you very much again for making yourself available. Virginia: Oh, Becky, it’s like I say, thank you so much for thinking of me and stay in touch. Rebecca: Okay, thanks. Take care. Virginia: Okay. Talk to you. Oh, you did the same. Bye bye. Rebecca: Bye bye. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-2023 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource WyoHistory.org; Rebecca Hein Language A language of the resource ENG Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Description An account of the resource Audio files and transcripts created and edited by Rebecca Hein and students at Casper College during an oral history project with players of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. The oral histories were conducted by Hein between 2022 and 2023 and are a part of Wyohistory.org publishing project. Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Virginia Himes Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2022-09-16 Description An account of the resource Audio file and transcript for oral history interview with Wyoming Symphony Orchestra player Virginia Himes. This interview was conducted by Rebecca Hein for Wyohistory.org on September 16, 2022. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound; Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Becky Hein; Virginia Himes Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. WyoHistory.org Wyoming Symphony Orchestra Oral History Project, NCA 01.i.2022.02 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NCA 01.i.2022.02_VirginiaHimes Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource M4A; PDF