STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Sue Mendelsohn was insistent.
“You’ve got to come to Souper Supper. Our new community orchestra is going to make its first public appearance.”
A handful of high school students and adults took their place in front of 40 diners that evening, blowing into clarinets and drawing bows across their violins as they played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
They were not the fine tuned orchestra Wood River Valley residents had become accustomed to, given the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, which fields a hundred of America’s best musicians for three weeks every summer.
In fact, they probably played as many wrong notes as right ones, prompting a professional musician who performed with them to ask that his name be kept out of the newspaper.
But the audience eating pot roast and chocolate cake that night seemed enraptured, vigorously applauding the finish of each song. And now, 10 years later, the orchestra has grown into a well-tuned, pitch-perfect group of about 40 musicians under the direction of conductor Brad Hershey.
They’ve moved from the parish hall at St. Charles Church in Hailey to the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theatre on Community Campus. And they’ll perform a free fall concert titled “Music of the Mountains” at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 12, at the Community Campus.
The concert will be dedicated to Sue Mendelsohn, who passed away in September. It will be the orchestra’s first concert without Mendelsohn playing violin near the front of the stage or cheering them on from the audience.
“Sue leaves behind a legacy of great breadth,” said Hershey. “She changed the culture in the Wood River Valley for the better while inspiring musicians of all ages and backgrounds to play music. She was relentlessly persistent and tough as nails all the way to the end—the kind of hero we all can aspire to be.”
The music the orchestra will perform on Sunday are scores near and dear to Mendelsohn’s heart, particularly the “Where Else But Idaho?”
It was written by Carl Eberl, the founder and first conductor of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony. And Mendelsohn championed that in its infancy back when early symphony musicians performed at the village square in Elkhorn Village where wind would send music sheets flying off music stands in the middle of the performance.
The other pieces in Sunday’s concert, including “Rocky Mountain Majesty” by Jerry Brubaker,” “Tahoe” by Gary Robert Buchanan and “Redwoods” by Ric Flauding and Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from “Rodeo”—also celebrate the glorious experience of living in the West.
The Wood River Orchestra was founded in 2007 by Andy Lewis, timpanist for a variety of orchestras including the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, and Mitzi Mecham, who founded Music n’ Me. Lewis described it then as a “for-fun orchestra” designed to enrich the lives of area residents by providing opportunities to perform and enjoy orchestral music.
“In the old days—the way-old days before TV—everyone played music. With the advent of recording and the rest of the media, the gulf between the audience and performer has grown because we expect the music to be played by experts,” Lewis said then.” I think we’ve lost some of our humanity in the process.”
Following that first public performance at Souper Supper, the fledgling Wood River Community Orchestra staged a bonafide concert at the Liberty Theater playing such pieces as “Bolero,” Handel’s “Trumpet Minuet” and excerpts from the opera “Carmen.”
A few years later when Lewis moved to South America, Brad Hershey took up the baton and he has not only challenged the orchestra with more difficult orchestral pieces but turned them into a tight-knit group of musicians in which the more polished ones can cover for newer ones as they come up to speed.
Since fielded musicians like flute player Mila Lyon, who grew up playing the flute but hadn’t played for 30 years because—well, you just don’t play the flute by yourself.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said flutist Mila Lyon. “It’s teamwork. It’s taking different pieces and putting them together—a lot of creative art. Artists talk about different colors. With music you’re looking at all these different notes and harmonizing them.”
The orchestra performs three main concerts each year and plays at other community events across the valley, as well.
While the concerts are free, donations are always appreciated to help buy sheet music and other expenses. People of all ages and abilities are invited to perform. Check out www.wrcorchestra.org for more information.
COMING ATTRACTION:
The Wood River Orchestra’s annual summer fundraiser—full of popular and show tunes--will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday, June 24, 2018, at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden.