Youth orchestra doubles in size

SANDPOINT — The cello — that orchestral instrument with a sound closest to the human voice — starts the musical dialogue.

As the bow moves, just so, across the strings, the fingers of the player’s left hand match the rhythm. They dance a miniature quadrille along the fingerboard — small, precise steps that roll out a crisp obbligato.

The first and second violins have no choice but to follow this resolute voice. A dozen bows and more rise and fall as one, sweeping up and over the cello part in lines that intersect and overlap until, at last, they tie the whole musical package up as neatly as a piece of new string pulled tight across a paper-wrapped box.

The music is highly textured without sounding technical. It suspends and resolves in a perfectly logical, seemingly predestined manner that never reveals the sublime mathematics behind the composer’s art.

It is, in other words, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and, on this weekday morning, it is being played for the first time by the Sandpoint Youth Orchestra, a group of students who range in age from fourth grade to seniors in high school.

The orchestra, formed at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, started with about 17 students. This year’s participation has almost doubled, bringing in so many new students that director Beth Weber created a second ensemble — Beginning Orchestra — to meet the demand.

“When we started, my goal was to have as many kids as possible play in an orchestra, have fun and have it sound nice,” Weber said. “Now we have 31 kids involved.”

Roughly two-thirds of the students are enrolled in the Continuing Orchestra class, with the balance coming along in the beginner’s group. The director sees it as her “farm team” for eventual placement in the more advanced class.

“It’s getting harder and harder to get into Continuing Orchestra, because they’re getting so good,” she said. “The younger players are the ones who seem most excited about moving up. They see what the big kids are playing and they want to do it, too.”

Repertoire for the advanced orchestra has grown progressively more demanding as the level of musicianship improves. When she first started the morning rehearsal sessions, Weber worked mostly from a stack of classroom-proven string orchestra arrangements that had been recommended by a director friend who ran a similar program elsewhere. Many of those selections are still favorites, but now that she is familiar with her young players and what they can do, the instructor has begun to pull from the classical body of work.

“Last year’s music was specially written for school orchestras,” said Weber, listing titles such as “Conquistador” and “Deep Sea Fandango” as arrangements that struck a chord with her students. “We’re playing Bach’s ‘Brandenburg Concerto’ this year.”

The 7 a.m. start time alone should be enough to show that these young string players are dedicated to the music. But Weber said she is consistently impressed by her students’ passion for the orchestral experience. During last Tuesday’s early morning power outage, the group was in the middle of a composition when the windowless music room was dumped into darkness.

“Keep going,” was all the director said. She dropped her arms and listened as music swirled around in the blackness.

“We played in the dark and it was great,” Weber said. “The kids played from memory. They had to — they sure couldn’t look over and copy anybody!”

When construction on the Long Bridge stalled traffic on the way into school last school year, the director recalled fretting over things like classroom discipline in her absence. She needn’t have worried.

“I was 20 minutes late — that’s half of our class time,” she said. “When I came up to the door, I heard music coming from inside. They were all sitting there playing their orchestra music with big smiles on their faces as I walked in. I was so proud of them.”

Weber has been a violin teacher in the area for more than 20 years. In that role, she joins forces with several other instructors who, among them, carry on a longstanding tradition of what might best be called a “fiddle culture” in Sandpoint. The orchestra has carried her from roots in the Suzuki Method’s powerful tool of playing by ear to the emphasis on reading music that is required in an ensemble setting.

“In a group, you want to create one big spirit of music, so you’re also more focused on reading and musical dynamics,” the director said. “In fiddle music, you try to get the audience to get up and dance. With orchestral music, you try to get the listeners’ minds and emotions engaged.

“And you do that with dynamics.”

Performance opportunities have included feature spots in the past two Holly Eve gala fundraisers, as well as appearances with different choral groups from Sandpoint High School. In the future, Weber wants her string players to link up with the high school’s instrumental program, taking the music to yet another plane.

“Down the road, I’d like to see us have a full symphony orchestra, so that some of the band students could become involved with what we’re doing,” she said.

The sound of the orchestra filled out a bit more this year with the addition of harpist Dustin Corbet, whose twin brother, Scott, plays in the first violin section. Until recently, the harp has been limited to playing the bass viol lines in the youth orchestra scores, since the group lacks that instrument at this point. Weber plans to expand the harp’s role with new arrangements she writes at home using music composition software.

“I think the harp is the most under-utilized instrument in the orchestra,” she said. “That’s why I’m interested in writing more scores to change that.”

After 30 years of inaction, the string program in local schools got a huge boost when The Confidence Foundation — working under the grant umbrella of The Festival at Sandpoint — made funds available for several cellos and a large stack of music for the Sandpoint Youth Orchestra. Two cellists now play with the ensemble and Weber and other local teachers currently are working with additional cello students in hopes of expanding the section.

“Violins?  There are always plenty of those in town,” Weber said. “And now we have cellos and music, thanks to The Confidence Foundation grant. What we really need now is our own music stands — we’ve been borrowing them from other schools whenever we have a performance.”

The Sandpoint Youth Orchestra is still accepting new students in both its beginning and continuing orchestra groups, the director said. To set up an audition, contact Weber at (208) 263-1151.