Playing in a community orchestra concert is something everybody has to experience in their lives. That’s true if you’ve always had a hankering to learn a string instrument. And it’s true if you’ve got your violin from childhood lessons still tucked under your bed. I’ve discovered that it’s on the bucket-list for more people than I would have imagined.
It’s a bit sad to hear these same people who have it on their list also say they would love to give it a go but then quickly follow on by saying they were never any good at the violin or they were told they were no good by their childhood teacher. Long ago they started to say “I haven’t got a musical bone in my body.” Arggh! What a statement to have tucked away in the back of your brain. The other stimmying statement is “You have to learn the violin when you’re young.” Well, we found out that’s just not true.
Our community orchestra has several members who started playing as adults. When you start at the age of 51 years like Michael did, then a strange passion for the instrument surges up. Bev started at the age of 63 years and she had never played before, and now she has a go at the string instrument family of cello, viola and the violin. There are other people in our orchestra like me, who played the violin as a kid and as an adult wanted to change over to the viola.
Playing in a community orchestra concert twice a year is our goal, but it’s not the only reason we turn up each week at practice. The motivation to practice at home by yourself doesn’t always come easily, especially if all you are doing is going to a lesson by yourself. Sometimes it’s like sawing away at your instrument alone. But when there is a string group to join each week, it keeps me going.
Our concert two weeks ago was the best we’ve ever had. All of a sudden we seemed to find it easier to really listen to each other. During practice, the second violins were doing a fun (but daunting) exercise of playing their part without looking at the music. Collectively, it made such a change to how we interact with each other. Vince our director must have asked us a thousand time over the years to “Look up, look at the first violins when they come in, listen to the cellos at bar 9” and so on. Do we do it? Well kind of. Somehow this time we seemed to get it.
My favourite piece from the concert was Hoe-Down from the Rodeo ballet music by Aaron Copland. It rollicked along and it’s fun to play. The violas have a beat to play and not much of the melody, so our role in the piece was to give it grunt with some big viola sounds. it would be great to play along with people dancing the ballet.
