Sarasota Orchestra marks double anniversaries in a time of transition

From the start there was confusion about the name, but whatever the Sarasota Orchestra was called at its debut in 1949, it has grown over the last 75 years from a small local amateur ensemble into one that is considered among the best regional professional orchestras in the country, attracting international conductors and guest soloists.

According to a history of the organization by Margery Derdeyn prepared for its 50th anniversary, initial press releases called it to the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, while others called it the Mid-West Coast Symphony Orchestra. After its first concert, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune used Florida West Coast Symphony, which is how most people in the community came to know it until it was rebranded as the Sarasota Orchestra.

The orchestra celebrated its anniversary and acknowledged the 18 musicians who have been playing here for 25 years or more during its annual gala in February. But that celebration jumped the gun by a few weeks.

It was March 12, 1949 when the orchestra made its debut in a concert at the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium under the direction of Lyman Wiltse, its first music director. David Cohen was the first concertmaster, and Robert Kimbrough, a longtime Sarasota Orchestra board member and supporter, was recruited from his high school band to perform.

A review in the Herald-Tribune described the concert as a “minor miracle” and looked forward to the future, adding, “If the tree grows as the twig was included Saturday night, Sarasota can boast of an important asset in the cultural life of the Florida west coast.”

100 years of a Gershwin classic

The orchestra is marking another anniversary with its sixth Masterworks concert of the year “Rhapsody in Blue @ 100,” which will feature pianist Michelle Conn playing Florence Price’s Piano Concert in One Movement” with guest conductor Peter Oundjian leading the orchestra.

But it will be principal clarinet Bharat Chandra, a relative newcomer after 23 years in Sarasota, playing 17 of the most famous notes in music.

He calls it “one of the real scary things, doing a thing by yourself.  It’s not a technique you ever use in orchestra except in this iconic moment. It’s one of the most recognizable opentings to anything outside of Beethoven’s Fifth. You just have to deliver them. And it’s a thrill too.”

“Rhapsody in Blue” was one of the first pieces of music Chandra ever heard. As a child, he had a small record player and his parents had a recording of “Stanley Drucker playing that solo. I think about just hearing that sound. I’m not sure what I could conceive then that I would be playing it for other people.”

Principal flute Betsy Hudson Traba, who has been with the orchestra for 25 years, said that while writing program notes for the concert, she discovered “Gershwin didn’t write the glissando. He wrote a 17-note scale. The clarinet player in the jazz band, he just played a glissando.”

Chandra said it was Ross Gorman who “did it to make Gershwin laugh and Gerhswin said he loved it. It was printed as a scale, but glissando is written.”

“Rhapsody in Blue” had its premiere on Feb. 12, 1924 as part of a program by bandleader Paul Whiteman called “An Experiment in Modern Music” at New York’s Aeolian Concert Hall. It featured a series of serenades, music by Irving Berlin (including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”), “Pomp & Circumstance,” “Limehouse Blues” and “Kitten on the Keys.” (The concert was recreated in a 1987 recording led by Maurice Peress and featuring Venice jazz legend Dick Hyman.)

The Masterworks concert also includes Rossini’s Overture to “The Thieving Magpie” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Oundjian said Sarasota Orchestra has not performed the Tchaikovsky piece in a long time “and people should hear it occasionally. Symphony No. 5 and 6 are so moving and profound and important symphonies of the romantic period. I would never shy away from putting it on a program if they can.”

Oundjian describes Cann as “an extraordinary pianist who has been playing this Price piece and bringing more attention to the composer” whose music was considered lost until a trove of her material was discovered in 2009.

75 years of change

Sarasota Orchestra is marking its diamond anniversary at a time of great change and transformation, and about as much promise as that first concert held.

It is in the midst of a search for its sixth music director, following the sudden death of Bramwell Tovey, who had been named but had not yet officially begun his job when he died in 2022. The orchestra has featured a series of guest conductors, any one of whom could become the next music director, and several of this season’s conductors are expected to return next year.

President and CEO Joseph McKenna said the search can end at any time once the search committee makes a decision.

The orchestra also is in the planning stages for designing and building its own music center on land it purchased last year on Fruitville Road just west of I-75. It announced several years ago that it would eventually stop performing at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, its longtime home for Masterworks and Pops concerts, or the proposed new Sarasota Performing Arts Center.

McKenna described the anniversary as a “significant milestone. We’re the oldest continuing orchestra in Florida that started with very humble beginnings in 1949, when it was a much smaller community. But one thing that’s true today that was true then is a really committed group of music lovers in this community. Those music lovers had a vision to start the orchestra and here we are at the 75th anniversary and we have visionary supporters who see that the orchestra needs a visionary home.”

McKenna and others have said the new music director is expected to be the public face of the efforts to build support for the music center (fundraising is now in a quiet phase before a later public launch).

A period of explosive growth

During her long tenure, Traba said she has “never seen another orchestra explode like this one. We went from the beginnings of being a full professional orchestra to now one of the best regional orchestras in the country. It’s been a wild ride.”

She credited Leif Bjaland for the “bulk of the serious artistic growth. When he took over there were 18 full time musicians and we had a lot of people who still had day jobs. He did the work to bring this to a fully professional orchestra and it was a massive job.”

Today there are 48 full time musicians. Violinist Felicia Brunelle is the longest-serving core musician at 35 years, and principal timpani Yoko Kita came in 1990. There are some, like bass players Alex Albanese (who started in 1982) and John Price (1986), who have been affiliated with the organization for even more years. Others in the 30+ group are flutist Carmen Newell Bannon, violinist Laura Jensen-Jennings, principal bass John Miller, pianist Jonathan Spivey and Traba’s husband, principal bassoon Fernando Traba. Daniel Jordan has been concertmaster for more than 25 years.

Bjaland served as music director from 1999 to 2012, following the 34-year tenure of Paul Wolfe, who was the third music director, and who also started what is now the Sarasota Music Festival, which marks its 60th anniversary this summer. Alexander Bloch was the second music director starting in 1951, and Anu Tali followed Bjaland from 2013 to 2019, when the search began that led to hiring Tovey.

“I’d like to think that if Paul, Leif or Anu came to conduct the 2024 Sarasota Orchestra they would be extremely proud of their role in what has been created here,” Traba said. “When Leif left, musicians put together a memory book and on the cover it said ‘A job well done.’ We were aware of the tremendous transformation that had taken place under his leadership.”

Traba and Chandra said the musicians have enjoyed the variety involved in working with different guest conductors in this new search, which Traba compared to “speed dating.”

But nothing can replace the connection between a music director and the musicians, and the way the musicians connect with the audience.

Chandra said when Bjaland was in Sarasota, he incorporated a communication component into the audition process “where we would speak from the stage. It was not really part of the audition, but it was a way to encourage musicians to be thinking about the audience.”

Favorite moments

One of Traba’s favorite memories was Bjaland’s last Masterworks concert in 2012, which featured Mahler’s Third Symphony.

“He walked out on stage, I’m not sure if it was the first concert or the last or all of them, but he walked out and the entire audience stood up and gave him a standing ovation and then the musicians joined it, just to acknowledge their affection and appreciation for what he had done.”

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Mahler factors into one of Chandra’s favorite memories, when Oundjian conducted Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which the clarinetist said is “one of my precious few favorites.”

“It wasn’t just me, but the orchestra responded in a way musically that maybe showed it had already crossed a certain threshold and I was sort of realizing it more vividly at that time,” he said. “There was a living feeling of playing that music that was very different to me. We would deliver it to that audience at that moment and that was to me transformational, feeling that I was part of a group that could do that.”

The prospect of a new music center offers “a tremendous amount of potential that is not being fully realized because we don’t have control over our own facility,” Traba said. “It’s not just that we would have our own concert hall where people could hear everything we’re doing, where the sound is more present and exhilarating. But we would have control over the facility where we could rehearse and perform at will. We’re restricted now because we’re sleeping on other people’s sofas so to speak. We’ve been growing in a pot and our roots are bursting at the edges. We need a bigger pot.”

‘Rhapsody in Blue @ 100’

Sarasota Orchestra Masterworks. Peter Oundjian guest conductor, Michele Cann pianist. 7:30 p.m. March 14, Neel Performing Arts Center, 5840 26th St., West, Bradenton; 7:30 p.m. March 15-16, 2:30 p.m. March 17, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $39-$120. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: A double anniversary salute as Sarasota Orchestra celebrates 75 years