Reminiscences of My Musical Life

Posted on February 11, 2019

By George Alderson (PJS member 1958-63)

It was the Portland Youth Philharmonic that inspired my interesting musical life.  Now at the age of 74 I look back on many years of making music – at times as a professional, at other times as an amateur.  I met my wife, Frances, through music (she is a pianist in private life).  I’m not a graduate of any music school, and I never achieved the proficiency to play violin in a top symphony orchestra, but I’ve been welcomed as a valued member of many ensembles.  That was possible because of what I learned in PYP. 

My years in PYP

I first encountered PYP (then known as Portland Junior Symphony) around 1951 when my mother took me to a children’s concert conducted by Jacques Gershkovitch.  I was then in elementary school, taking violin lessons and playing in our struggling school orchestra.  I never imagined I would ever play in PJS. 

A few years later, after entering high school, I auditioned for Jacob Avshalomov but fell short of the standards for the main orchestra.  Mr. A placed me in the preparatory orchestra, where I played for two years until I was promoted in 1958.  In the big orchestra I was in the back of the second violin section, and on my first concert we played the Franck D-minor symphony.  It was a revelation.  What wonderful music!  What a sound!  It felt marvelous to be playing my part amid all the other young musicians. 

A year later I took Mr. Avshalomov’s suggestion and switched to viola and stepped up my practicing.  I was promoted to principal viola for the seasons 1959 to 1961 during my first two years at Reed College.  In 1961 I resigned from the principal’s seat to concentrate on my schoolwork.  (My major field was biology.)  In those days Mr. A let us resign from full membership in the orchestra but take a seat at the back of the section without the obligation to be there for all rehearsals.  So in September 1961 Gail Rosebraugh succeeded me as principal viola. 

Playing in the orchestra was the greatest joy of my student years.  My best friends were in the orchestra, Michael Sigell and Carol Forsyth, who carpooled with me to rehearsals.  We PJS musicians also were invited to play with choral ensembles, the Portland Civic Theatre, and the Portland Civic Opera, so we really got around, and we played all kinds of music. 

We also had chamber music at PJS.  After string sectionals on Saturday mornings the more advanced musicians regrouped into string quartets to read through standard quartet literature such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.  Sometimes after Saturday evening string rehearsals, a few of us headed to the Lincoln High School auditorium to hear visiting string quartets such as the Juilliard, the Budapest, and the Smetana Quartet on the Friends of Chamber Music series.  (Twenty-five years later I met the members of the Smetana Quartet when I was visiting in Prague, as they knew my local host, and they were happy to remember their American tour.)

Moving to Utah

What I learned in PJS opened doors wherever I went.  In 1963 I finished college and moved to Logan, Utah, for graduate school in ecology at Utah State University, where I found a small but active musical community.  I was the viola player in the USU Faculty String Quartet and was principal viola for operas and for the university orchestra.  I changed my major to music in my second year at USU and stepped up my viola studies with a teacher in Salt Lake City.
Jacob Avshalomov’s help also followed me after I left Portland.  When I auditioned for the Utah Symphony in 1965, the conductor, Maurice Abravanel, surprised me by saying, “Oh, you must be the young man Jacob Avshalomov called me about.”  I turned down the Utah Symphony’s offer of a viola position in favor of joining the U.S. Air Force, where I fulfilled my military obligation by playing in the Strolling Strings for four years, based in Washington, D.C. 

Playing at the Kennedy Center

Around 1970, after I left the Air Force and was beginning my career as an environmental policy specialist, Mr. A urged me to call an old classmate of his from the Eastman School of Music, Elliott Siegel, who was the contractor who hired musicians for the Washington Opera.  That led to my wonderful years in the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, where I played viola in 1971-78.  Among our conductors were Leonard Bernstein, James Conlon, Arthur Fiedler, Julius Rudel and Franz Allers.  We were in the pit for the Washington Opera and for ballet companies from the United States and Europe.  It was thrilling to play the operas of Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Britten and Janáček and the great ballet scores of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

In 1978 I resigned from the Opera House Orchestra to concentrate on my new job in the Bureau of Land Management.  I was one of the founders of the BLM wilderness program, and I needed to work long hours at the office during the early years of the program.  But I made music often with friends, playing string quartets at their homes.  We explored the quartets and quintets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Dvořák, Janáček and Bartok.  In vacation travels to the Czech Republic, Frances and I played with amateur musicians in Prague.  After 20 years of playing viola, in the 1980s I returned to the violin and played much of the quartet literature all over again as second violin and finally as first violin.

Playing in strolling ensembles

After 1983 I found more time for professional engagements, this time playing violin in strolling ensembles that performed for receptions, banquets and weddings, working from a memorized repertoire of hundreds of tunes from the popular and classical traditions.  It’s a very lyric repertoire, without the technical demands of the symphonic literature.  We were playing masterpieces in miniature, the work of songwriters such as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, plus European tunes from operetta and cabaret. 

I think of the strolling violin ensemble as part of a tradition that began in the villages of central Europe where the music for feast days and weddings was supplied by strolling fiddlers.  Those village musicians inspired composers such as Haydn, Brahms, Bartok, Johann Strauss, and Leoš Janáček.  Brahms wrote the well-known Hungarian Dances, and Janáček featured a fiddle ensemble in Act I of his opera “Jenůfa.”  Frances and I made three visits to Velká nad Veličkou, a small town in the Czech Republic where this tradition is still alive.  Janáček collected folk music there in the 1890s, and our host, a fiddler himself, was the grandson of one of Janáček’s informants.  For a sample of their music see this YouTube video: 

In 1996 I took early retirement from my career at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and for the next 20 years concentrated on making music as a freelancer in the popular music field.  In addition to strolling ensembles, I was asked to join a big band, the Gene Donati Orchestra, based in Washington; our engagements took us as far afield as Cleveland, Detroit and Dallas.  One of my colleagues on these gigs was a younger PYP alumnus, David Swanson, who retired from a career as a violinist in the U.S. Air Force Strings.  (On one extraordinary wedding engagement David and I were asked to play the Bach Double Concerto for Two Violins, using an arrangement for string quartet.)  And I’ve done many solo strolling engagements, continually expanding my repertoire of popular and classical tunes.

Thanks for the Portland Youth Philharmonic

I retired from making music at the end of 2016.  My deteriorating vision makes it difficult to read music, and my violin technique is not what it used to be.  It has been a good run.  Frances and I will continue to enjoy music as members of the audience.  In our city we love the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, chamber ensembles and choral groups, and we often go to concerts, operas and master classes at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. 

Looking back across the years, I think it was an incredible stroke of luck for us that Jacob Avshalomov came to Portland and stayed as leader of PYP.  Conductors like him are few and far between, and they are not conducting youth orchestras.  He introduced us to a wide range of music, from the baroque and classical masters to the living composers of our own time.  He was also a great builder of the cultural life of Portland, starting in the 1950s when the city had far less to offer than it does now.  He was constantly building alliances among the arts, collaborating with schools and colleges, and stimulating interest in music all over town. 

After making music for half a century, I still have moments when I think to myself, “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”  And I silently thank PYP and Jacob Avshalomov for making it possible.