The Independence Sinfonia Orchestra combines professional skill with an amateur’s passion.
By Jack Firneno
Wire Staff Writer
Kim Dolan remembers vividly when the Independence Sinfonia Orchestra performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony last year to one of its biggest crowds.
“You’re up on stage, the ninth begins and starts off with this drone in the winds, and the violins come in with this figure.” Here, the violinist, member and president of the Sinfonia frenetically hums the descending melody. “It’s quiet and you can feel this electricity among the musicians and the audience.”
By the time the performance reached the well-known Ode to Joy conclusion, things were at a fever pitch: “When the choir comes in and you hear 600 people clap for you, it’s pretty amazing.”
Founded in 1995, the Sinfonia is a community orchestra with approximately 60 members ranging from music students to retirees. Based in Wyndmoor, the group holds around four concerts per season. Its next performance is on March 9, and will feature members of the Abington Choral Club.
“We’re very serious amateur musicians,” said Dolan. “We love to play together and learn together.”
Some community orchestras may be less formal. The Sinfonia gathers musicians who want to play at their peak, even if it’s not what they do for a living.
“So many could have been professional, but our experience is that if it becomes a job it’s different,” she explained. “The way to find people that really love music is to find these amateur groups.”
The group returns to the Upper Dublin Performance Center for its next show, where it played Beethoven’s Ninth. The show will feature another well-known piece of music: Mozart’s Requiem.
“A lot of people know it through the movie [Amadeus] and I think there’s a car commercial that uses it,” said Dolan. “It’s dark but also a very interesting piece. It holds your interest even if you’re not a music lover — it has its own intrinsic interest.”
And, it’s the job of conductor Jerome Rosen to bring out that intrinsic interest. The 74-year-old’s pedigree includes 27 years in the Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony and a teaching orchestra in Boston. Today, he lives in Manhattan, making the 200-mile commute to Montgomery County.
“[Conducting the orchestra] was a chance to build something,” he explained. “We have a remarkable good feeling about what we’re doing. The camaraderie and spirit of growing together is something that’s great to be a part of.”
He shares some of Dolan’s sentiments about professional playing: “You’re pretty much a tool: You do what you’re told. Even at the highest level you have to do things that go against your inclination and training.”
With the Sinfonia, Rosen said his role is to present the works in the way he believes the composers conceived them. “I don’t believe in interpretation. There’s something the composer intended it to sound like and it’s my job to put together what that might be,” he said.
It’s a combination of training and intuition, he continued, to divine those intentions from the page: “There are so many little things that can’t be notated that have to happen.”
For the Requiem, Rosen translated the Latin choral parts for his own benefit. “The movement Dies Irae is a picture in music of the day of judgment,” he explained.
Here, his years spent with other orchestras help him communicate quickly and easily with the players. “I said we had to make sounds like that — all the furies of hell are rising out of the earth — and they did it.”
Part of it was technical — using a certain part of the bow on the instrument for a different tone, for instance. But much of it was just each player’s approach, which is more abstract. Rosen had to step back and let each player find that for themselves.
Fortunately, he laughed, “They’d seen enough Rosemary’s Baby and Schwarzenegger-type movies to know what I meant.”
The orchestra will perform at the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center at Upper Dublin High School, at 800 Loch Alsh Ave. in Fort Washington, on Sunday, March 9, at 3 p.m. For information, visit www.independence-sinfonia.org.
