Concert
The air conditioning can’t keep up with the humidity and the crowded lobby. The faces are familiar yet not the ones we see usually at music concerts. This evening’s performance of classical and Broadway tunes is by the city’s local amateur chamber orchestra. The oldest member is also their founder, a revered ninety year old fiesty musician. She has taught many generations of city musicians the violin and viola and cello. Now she no longer leads the orchestra but plays in the violas. The youngest member today is an eleven year old percussionist, very serious and committed to his instrument, the cymbals. The remaining members of this chamber orchestra are of all ages, the common thread between them their amateur status and a commitment to promoting western classical music.
This is no swanky hall, in fact it is rather musty and damp. The audience is not glamorous, they are here to cheer their friends and family and to simply enjoy the music, not to be seen and air kiss each other. The second clarinet’s mother sells the brochures, her beautiful smile lighting up the foyer. The ushers aren’t dressed in smart bandgalas nor are they stern and forbidding. Instead, they are dressed in cheerful yellow and white, a little bit sloppy. The vibe is far more relaxed, friendly even. Members of the orchestra wave to family members in the audience, people are quietly allowed to enter even as the soloist is playing. This is a concert for the music enthusiast, certainly, but one without the snobbish airs and hushed rarified atmosphere of their professional counterparts at the other end of the city. Instead, the atmosphere is cheerful and optimistic, down to earth and with pragmatic expectations.
Sure, there are a few false notes and the harp is actually a keyboard. But the guest conductor is a wonderfully enthusiastic European, an Indophile in a crumpled kurta. The orchestra members wear mismatched ties but there is a bonhomie here that transcends the costumes. It is lovely to see the number of teenagers playing today, from the clarinet (a friend’s son), to the double bass and a large chunk of the strings. All of them have been taught at some point by the little old lady with the self- deprecating smile and snowy white hair. She sits in the centre, quietly playing the viola and enjoying her music.
The nicest aspect of this orchestra is the sense of inclusion it projects. No one is too young – the cymbalist is a great example. He’s very much a part of the proceedings, really coming into his own during the Carmen suite. No one is too exalted – the solo violinist, a talented and beautiful Japanese teacher who has lived here for some years now, is welcomed on stage with a warm hug. She plays magically, dipping and swaying with emotion, her cheekbones catching the light.
It’s the little things that make this evening special. The audience prompts the conductor when he forgets what he meant to say. The first trumpet supports his second, when the latter, a guest musician, blares out some off key notes. The clarinet player is swept away by the show tunes, his body swaying in time to the beat of the drums. The choir does not compete with or try and drown out the orchestra. Instead of frowning upon camera phones, (and ushers running up and down the aisles, shining torches at offenders), an earnest request is made at the end to upload any photographs taken by audience members or to tag the orchestra on social media.
Perhaps it is not the most accomplished performance. Perhaps the amateur tag is overly apparent sometimes. Certainly, the hall acoustics are lacking and so is the celebrity quotient of the audience. But it leaves me with a full heart and a warm feeling of camaraderie such as I’ve never felt in that beautiful opera house at the other end of the bay. This is no disparagement of our professional musicians or the wonderful music we are treated to in their home of gleaming marble and antique chandeliers.
Each to his own and each in his time and place. If only I could take away a quality from today’s amateurs and bestow it upon our city’s grand professionals, it would be a little of their warmth and the egalitarian atmosphere that made this evening of music so welcoming and warm hearted.