The 75th
Anniversary Season
Aged
to perfection
Vallejo symphony celebrates 75 years of musical magic
By RICH
FREEDMAN/Times-Herald staff writer
September 22, 2006
VSO fetes its 75th
Vallejo orchestra leaders hope to build the audience for classical music
By
Richard Bammer/Features Writer, The Reporter
September 22, 2006
Symphony enlists
antique cannons for
'1812 Overture'
By
RICHARD FREEDMAN/Times-Herald staff
writer
June 30, 2006
Aged
to perfection
Vallejo symphony celebrates 75 years of musical magic
By
RICH FREEDMAN/Times-Herald staff writer
September 22, 2006
There have been make-overs along the way and a few new wrinkles, not to
mention a major facelift.
But, at 75, the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra looks pretty darn good.
"And, with community support, we'll stay around until we're 100 or
more," said a confident Altheia Clumpner, a 20-year board member and
one of the symphony's biggest fans.
The milestone season begins Saturday as maestro David Ramadanoff
conducts Beethoven with guest piano soloist Norman Krieger.
The 8 p.m. concert at the renovated Hogan High School auditorium
includes a "Know the Score" pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. by Ramadanoff,
who many believe is the key to the symphony's stellar Bay Area
reputation.
"The best thing is when we got Ramadanoff," said 83-year-old bass
player John Kolarik, a Vallejo symphony anchor since 1958.
Kolarik was on the conductor selection committee in 1983, that selected
the award-winning Ohio native.
"He was by far the best," said Kolarik, one of only a few of the
symphony musicians who lives in Vallejo.
It's a tribute to the conductor that so many musicians will travel a
good distance to play in Vallejo, said Clumpner.
"It's his demand for perfection that I think they appreciate," she
said. "A lot of them will play here because of him."
The Vallejo Symphony is the state's second oldest. The Pasadena
Symphony is 79 this year.
"I think it's wonderful. We've all worked very hard to get here," said
Anne Ligda, a symphony musician since 1974 and board member for 14
years.
"The musicians here are just as talented as they can be," Ligda added.
"They're dedicated to this orchestra and to David. It's a wonderful
celebration that's taking place."
The devoted Ligda was at Tuesday evening's rehearsal despite recovering
from a broken foot.
"I can play. I can drive," she said. "I just can't carry the cello."
It's an instrument Ligda has enjoyed since her school in Oklahoma had a
special visit.
"I've loved the music all my life," she said. "When I was in grade
school, the Oklahoma City Symphony came to do a youth concert. I came
home and told my mom, 'I want to play the cello.' She said, 'Well,
honey, if you tell me what it is, I'll get you one.' So I've been
playing since the fifth grade. It's been a long time."
Ligda is confident the Vallejo Symphony can make it to 100.
"We're here and we're going to stay," Ligda said. "Dedicated musicians.
Dedicated board and dedicated subscribers. I do think we have to reach
out to all the gray-headed sponsors and we have to reach out to young
people to get them interested in classical music."
Ligda said "he (Ramadanoff) knows the score. He knows the
interpretation. He has perfect pitch. If you play a wrong note, he
knows it. He may not comment, but he knows it. And often he does
comment on it. He's fabulously musical."
Though it's a professional orchestra, Kolarik said the enjoyment
ventures far from the cash.
"It's fun. I play because it's fun," he said. "I've learned more about
music since I've been playing than when I studied it in college. It's a
good orchestra. People are good. And David's brought in some wonderful
players." Exactly, echoed Clumpner.
"When you sit out in the audience and look up at that organization and
listen to them, you have a warm feeling, thinking, 'I had something to
do with all those players,'" she said. "And we have some wonderful
support from our community."
If you go . . .
What: Vallejo Symphony
When: 8 p.m., Saturday
Who: Guest soloist, pianist Norman Krieger
Where: Hogan High School Auditorium, 850 Rosewood Ave., Vallejo
Tickets: Adults $35, Seniors 62 and older $30, students $10
Contact: 643-4441 or www.vallejosymphony.org
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VSO
fetes its 75th
Vallejo orchestra leaders hope to build the audience for classical music
By
Richard Bammer/Features Writer, The Reporter
September 22, 2006
Karen Clare of Vallejo thinks her city's critically acclaimed symphony,
the state's seventh oldest orchestra, is "an integral part" of its
municipal identity.
Without a doubt, the 65-member orchestra has considerably boosted
Vallejo's cultural life in recent years, said Clare, a past president
of the symphony board and a current board member.
As the symphony embarks on its 75th season Saturday, even with
occasional spotty attendance at its four annual concerts, it remains a
cultural and economic force in Vallejo, she said.
"All the Realtors realize that symphonies and orchestras are important
parts of a community," Clare said in a telephone interview Monday.
Still, she conceded, support for the arts in general, much less the
symphony, has been noticeably "mixed" in the past few years. That is
not necessarily a reason to sound alarms, she asserted.
While the audience for classical music - in Vallejo and elsewhere in
the county and the nation - is largely white, over 50, college-educated
and middle- to upper middle-class, the Vallejo Symphony fills a need
for those who want it, she said.
"We're going to continue to try to provide" classical music, Clare
said. "We're a professional orchestra. We are trying to build our
audience."
But that audience, in the last year at least, has not included a
Vacaville concert. The Vacaville Concert Society, for many years a
sponsor of a springtime Vallejo Symphony performance, stopped its
sponsorship because, said Clare, Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre
managers raised the hall's rental rates beyond a typical break-even
point for average concert-attendance rates. (For the past five years,
average attendance at the spring concert was estimated to be 200 to 250
in the 500-seat theater.)
"They raised their costs, so the concert society dropped us from that
schedule," she lamented.
The value of live concert performance and music instruction can be seen
in national studies that show students enrolled in music and band
classes tend to make better grades than their nonmusical peers, Clare
said.
She said music appreciation fosters continued growth of the next
generation of classical music and jazz fans; however, without exposure
in elementary, middle and high schools, "their chances of getting
involved are less," asserted Clare.
Her concerns have long been voiced by many who see the audience for
classical music dwindling in this era of popular music downloads from
the Internet and the dearth of arts programming on cable TV networks.
But there are just as many who note that the total
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number of classical music downloads from the Internet hovers around 12
percent, more than three times the amount of fans who purchase
classical music in stores.
For Clare, the Vallejo Symphony, like other orchestras everywhere, is
fighting the image that classical music is elitist or for the highly
educated. Nothing could be further from the truth, she said.
"One of the things I always hear is, 'I don't know what to wear to the
symphony'," she said. "They ought to go to the San Francisco Symphony,"
where the audience, from spiky-haired young hipsters to seniors using
walkers, is dressed in everything from denim to tuxedos.
Classical music - generally defined as the standard repertoire of 18th-
and 19th-century Western European compositions - has never been easy to
market, Clare agreed, adding, "You have to sell it as an art form that
everyone would enjoy. Music is all related (to classical forms, like
the sonata-allegro) even rock 'n' roll."
As for the selling, conductor David Ramadanoff, who has wielded his
baton for the past 25 years, includes preconcert "Know the Score"
lectures, designed so the classical music neophyte can learn and
appreciate, in down-to-earth language, what he or she is about to hear
that evening. Saturday's talk will be about the selections for the
all-Beethoven program, including Symphony No. 5.
During the decade ahead, Clare sees the Vallejo Symphony faced with a
struggle to survive, as it has in recent years, only to emerge on
relatively sound financial footing. The audience for classical music
will continue to grow as Solano County's cities grow - and as the
tastes of aging baby boomers and Gen-X'ers begin to change naturally,
she asserted.
The Vallejo Symphony: A Brief History
The genesis of the Vallejo Symphony, seventh oldest of its kind in
California, began in the early days of the Great Depression, when a
small group of community arts leaders wanted an orchestra to showcase
the talent of local musicians.
On February 21, 1931, a 60-piece orchestra, conducted by Julius
Weyland, made its debut at the newly dedicated Veterans Memorial
Building. Besides Weyland, George Trombley led the musicians during the
early years.
Concerts became fewer during World War II. In 1946, the symphony was
revitalized under the auspices of the Vallejo Recreation District and
the Adult Education Department. Orley See served as conductor. In 1951,
Virl M. Swan took the conductor's baton to lead the orchestra until
1961, when George Wargo began his 21-year career as music director and
conductor.
As the orchestra's reputation increased in the 1960s, symphony leaders
launched a subscription concert series and the board of directors began
to raise money.
During the following decade and into the 1980s, artistic goals for the
orchestra were set. The orchestra's sound and quality improved when
David Ramadanoff, a former associate conductor of the San Francisco
Symphony and winner of the 1980 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award,
accepted the position of music director/conductor.
Today, the symphony performs a four-concert subscription season and an
annual summer pops concert every Fourth of July.
As a commitment to the musical experience of children, the orchestra,
each spring, performs a popular series of intimate, entertaining and
educational miniconcerts in elementary schools countywide.
- Richard Bammer
VALLEJO SYMPHONY
8 p.m. Saturday
Hogan Auditorium
Vallejo High School 850 Rosewood Ave.
Vallejo $10 to $35 643-4441
www.vallejosymphony.org top
Symphony
enlists antique cannons for '1812 Overture'
By
RICHARD FREEDMAN/Times-Herald staff
writer
June 30, 2006
Any symphony can
light candles on a cake for its
75th
birthday. The Vallejo Symphony is taking its diamond anniversary
one extra step.
Actually, five extra steps.
Thanks to a suggestion by publicist Tim Zumwalt - and some paperwork -
maestro David Ramadanoff and his musicians will have Tchkaikowsky's
"1812 Overture" culminate with 17 shots from five honest-to-goodness
cannons near the end of the July 4 pops concert.
"We're starting the season off with a blast," said Zumwalt, who
witnessed a similar "1812 Overture" rendition with cannons by the Napa
Valley Symphony several years ago over the Napa River.
"It was pretty wild," he remembered.
So impressed, Zumwalt kept it under his hat until the right
moment. The 75th anniversary of Vallejo's celebrated symphony was
that moment.
"This is our best opportunity," Zumwalt said.
Because it is post 9/11, Homeland Security had to give clearance for
the cannons, he said.
Fortunately, the FBI declared the cannons antiques "and are in no
danger to national security," Zumwalt said. The Vallejo Fire
Department and the Coast Guard also cleared the request.
The five cannons, manufactured by Krupp Works in Germany about 100
years ago for the Siamese Army, are owned by private individuals who
have volunteered their services for the event, "cannoneer" Richard
Spear said.
The cannons were declared "obsolete" long before being imported to the
United States in 1966, added Spear.
Those attending the pops concert shouldn't be alarmed by the loud
blasts, Zumwalt said. The "bangs" are blank loads with no
projectiles.
Because those running each cannon can't read music, Vallejo Symphony
guest conductor Pamela Martin will be on hand to assist the
"cannoneers."
"She'll point to them when to pull the firing pin," Zumwalt said.
It's not the first time Ramadanoff has been associated with a
ballistics-based "1812 Overture," said Zumwalt. When the
conductor was an assistant with the San Francisco Symphony, the
overture was featured at a Concord Pavilion concert.
"They didn't have cannons," Zumwalt said. "What they did was the
stage manager had a shotgun and fired into a garbage can."
The concern in bringing in the cannons was financial, Zumwalt said,
since the Vallejo Symphony is on a tight budget. The cannons'
cost was offset by Exit Realty/Tognoli & Scott.
"We found a sponsor, so everyone's real happy about it," Zumwalt said.
It's unlikely next year's July 4 Pops Concert will include the cannons.
"I don't think we'll do it a second time. This is our big chance
at it," Zumwalt said.
* * * *
If you go:
What: Vallejo Symphony Orchestra's
Pops Concert
When: July 4, 1 p.m.
Where: Behind Vallejo City
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