STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Gretchen Van Hoesen and her husband James Gorton have long quibbled about whose instrument is the most difficult to play.

But one thing the harp player, the oboe player and their daughter—harpist Heidi Van Hoesen Gorton—can agree on is how magical it is to play with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Sun Valley.

The three have been coming to Sun Valley for 26 years, arriving when Heidi was just 6 years old.

The orchestra, which then played on The Green in Elkhorn under the baton of founder Carl Eberl, had expanded from the six players it started with in 1985 to about 30—the size of a chamber orchestra. Carl began to recruit top pros in the orchestral world to add to musicians from Boise and Twin Falls.

“I’d known Carl Eberl from playing with him in the Lake Placid Sinfonietta,” said Gretchen. “When he wanted to expand the Sun Valley Summer Symphony (then called the Elkhorn Music Festival), he invited us to perform.”  The orchestra moved to a large tent on the lawn where the harps were rolled across the grass from the Sun Valley Inn each night.

Taking the 100-pound harp across the country from Pittsburgh to Sun Valley wasn’t an easy proposition. The family drove gingerly, trying to avoid bumps in the road. The finicky harp couldn’t be left in the hot car during lunch stops so the family would keep the air conditioning on while they made a beeline for fast food takeout. Come night the harp would join them in their motel room, along with their suitcases.

Three years ago the Sun Valley Summer Symphony decided to purchase two harps from the Lyon & Healy factory. Gretchen and Heidi were thrilled, and they affectionately named the instruments Galena and Baldy. Gretchen traveled to Chicago where the harps are made, to select the best two. After a long day of testing around 20 harps she chose the most warm, bright, and resonant instruments.

James Gorton’s oboes may be smaller and 99 pounds lighter but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have challenges to contend with. While clarinet players can purchase ready-made reeds, oboe players must make their reeds out of bamboo grown in the south of France. Sometimes it involves 20 hours a week of cutting and scraping with razor blades, knives and other tools. And, typically, only about three out of 10 reeds are usable.

Gorton can’t make a bunch of oboe reeds to bring from Pittsburgh as entirely different reeds are needed in the altitude of Sun Valley.  “Reed-making is time consuming but I love the challenge and the ability to create varied sonorities,” he said.

Making music fills the DNA of these three.

Gretchen Van Hoesen is the daughter of K. David Van Hoesen, who taught bassoon at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and Oberlin Conservatory of Music and was former Principal Bassoonist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Gretchen’s grandfather, Karl Van Hoesen, taught at the Eastman School and in the Rochester public schools. He was a violinist in the Rochester Philharmonic and a conductor who created the model for youth orchestras around the country. Gretchen’s sister Catherine, currently first violinist with the San Francisco Symphony, is a former member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony. Carol Van Hoesen, Gretchen’s mother, is a cellist who met Gretchen’s father at the Eastman School of Music. Carol’s parents were also musicians, a piano teacher and organist.

Gretchen was 12 when she joined an experimental beginner’s group harp class at Eastman, playing with five other students on a 30-string Troubadour harp.

James Gorton’s mother was an accomplished pianist and his father formed a civic chorus in suburban Philadelphia when he wasn’t writing headlines for his weekly newspaper.  Jim’s parents urged him to take up the oboe after they were mesmerized by an oboe player who soloed with the Philadelphia orchestra. They found their son a teacher from that orchestra. “I always liked Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’, so I was happy to start the oboe,” said Gorton, who retired as Co-Principal Oboist with the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2012 after playing in the orchestra for 41 years.

Heidi traveled alongside her parents and the Pittsburgh Symphony on dozens of world tours beginning at the age of 9 months. “While others toured museums, we toured the world’s playgrounds,” Gretchen said.

Heidi, now Principal Harpist with the Toronto Symphony, feels that Sun Valley has always been a second home to her. While her parents rehearsed with the Symphony, she rode horses, attended day camps, frequented the Chocolate Foundry and explored the Sun Valley resort. She learned to ride a bike in Sun Valley at the age of six, and made family trips from Ketchum to Hailey singing campfire songs along the way.

Heidi started playing the harp at 7, wanting to be just like her mother. “The harp has always been a part of me. I’m sure I heard and felt the vibrations when I was in utero as my Mom held the harp against her body.”

Now considered one of the most outstanding solo, chamber and orchestra musicians of her generation, Heidi started performing with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony at the age of 12. “I love all genres of music – Metallica is actually my favorite band - but classical music is my language. I learned to read music before books. 

It takes mental and physical coordination as well as strength and stamina to play the harp. “We play with both hands and both feet, which many people don’t realize. The harp has seven foot pedals that control the accidentals (sharps and flats) in the music,” says Gretchen. “You might pluck the correct string but if you have the incorrect pedal depressed, you’ll play the wrong note.” 

Playing the harp outdoors in Pittsburgh is not ideal, due to the extreme humidity and its effect on the tuning. Fortunately, the harps seem to love the dry conditions here in Sun Valley. “How much time do we need to tune? As much time as we’ve got,” says Heidi.

Gretchen misses the intimacy of the former tent venue where even audience members like former Sen. John Kerry and Teresa Heinz would stop to talk with the musicians. But she loves the beauty and the acoustics of the new Pavilion. She says that the Jumbotron videography and the sound system on the lawn are amazing. “With any concert hall the question mark is: What’s it going to sound like? Even when you use all the right materials, sometimes it sounds awful,” Gorton said. “But the Pavilion is great,” added Gretchen. “When I performed the Mozart Flute & Harp Concerto last Friday, I did not even need amplification.”

The entire family is in awe of the crowds that often exceed several thousand. “Anywhere else you might get 50 audience members to attend a chamber music performance and you think that’s a good crowd. To have hundreds, even thousands, like we do for our In Focus concerts is unheard of,” Gorton said.

“That we can draw so many people for classical music is fabulous, especially in this day when so many symphonies are struggling,” added Gretchen. “Alasdair Neale, our exceptional music director, really brings in the crowds because of his warm rapport with the audience and his stellar interpretations of the music. Another reason our free outdoor concerts are so well attended is that the quality of music making is so high. We have five concertmasters from around North America within the violin section alone! It’s just a beautiful place to be—a place where magic happens.”