Walk into any great concert hall and you will find an orchestra - dozens of musicians, scores of instruments, centuries of accumulated craft - and yet the music that emerges feels like a single, breathing voice. How does that happen? What is each instrument actually doing, and what kind of person is drawn to play it?
This book offers a warmly personal answer. Through a series of short, luminous portraits - part poem, part color - the author leads us through every section of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the ensemble he called home for over thirty years. Each instrument gets its moment: not a technical manual, but a character sketch, the kind of insight that can only come from a lifetime spent on the inside.
We meet the flutist, who sends half her air into the room in an act of continuous generosity. We encounter the contra bassoonist, whose low, rumbling entrance signals that something enormous is about to happen. We sit beside the harpist during a great arpeggio - a shower of multicolored rain - and feel the string bass not just with our ears but in our bones. The conductor appears as both authority and humble servant. The trumpeter, we learn, is born wanting to be heard. The bass clarinet leads us quietly into shadow.
Alongside each portrait are vivid collage illustrations that bring the instruments and their worlds to life - playful, colorful, and full of the same spirit of wonder that runs through every page.
This is a book for music lovers, concertgoers, and anyone who has ever sat in a darkened hall and felt the music move through them. It is also a love letter - to the composers who wrote the music, to the musicians who devoted their lives to it, and above all to the colleagues of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, whose artistry and camaraderie inspired every word.
Come listen. The orchestra is about to begin.
About the Author :
Growing up in Patchogue, Long Island, music found me early. At six, I stood transfixed before a neighbor's closet, staring at a gleaming saxophone and clarinet - instruments that seemed impossibly complex and utterly magical. I began studying clarinet at ten, and at twelve, backstage after a New York Philharmonic concert, Leonard Bernstein looked at me and said simply, "You play clarinet." I've never stopped wondering whether a child chooses his instrument, or the other way around.Through a fortunate chain of referrals, I found my way to the legendary teacher Leon Russianoff in New York City. Every Saturday for four years, I made the two-hour train ride from Long Island to study with him. He gave me the foundation of everything I know, and to this day, I play always reaching toward the standard he set.After graduating from the Mannes College of Music, I enlisted in the United States Marine Band, performing at the White House for Presidents Johnson and Nixon. The most unforgettable visitor was Duke Ellington, who quietly sat down at the piano one afternoon and began to play - a gentle reminder that no room, however grand, is more important than the music itself.By 1973 I had joined the Opera House Orchestra at the newly opened Kennedy Center, where I remained for thirty-six years. I performed in seventy opera productions, gave over four hundred performances of The Nutcracker, and played solos in Wagner and Verdi alongside Plácido Domingo.Throughout those years I was also painting and exhibiting work in Washington, D.C. After retiring, I moved with my wife Isabella to Manchester, Massachusetts, and continue playing clarinet in home concerts with fellow musicians.This book is a tribute to my beloved colleagues in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, to whom it is dedicated.
