A Look Behind the Sheet Music
Classical music isn’t for everyone. To some, it seems impenetrable and a bit boring. Others really like it a lot, and this column is dedicated to them.
A subsection of the classical genre, chamber music, annually is performed right here in Laguna Beach. Chamber music is played in small quarters with spectators no more than 40 feet from the performers. Being that close means you hear lower lows and higher highs. You can feel the bass in your chest. You can feel the high notes; the skin on your arms physically tingles from the higher highs.
My Laguna friend Joan Halvajian started the Laguna Beach Music Festival 15 years ago, and I was one or her original supporters. I came to like chamber music while living in New York when one of my friends organized a chamber club. We held performances at our apartments. We paid students from music schools measly sums to perform and they were glad for the work. During these performances I learned most chamber pieces last only a few moments and require only a very few performers.
Also in New York, I met my cousin, Orin O’Brien, who was the very first female to play for the New York Philharmonic. At the time, being the first woman “accepted” into the biggest of big league orchestras was momentous. She invited me to a Philharmonic performance and the after-party. There I learned something that shamed me. I was a loan trainee at a giant bank; I was at the bottom of the bank’s ecosystem. Orin and her Philharmonic players were at the top of the music ecosystem, the best. Let me restate that: the best in the world. What I learned at Orin’s after-party was my job as a bank trainee paid one-third more than their jobs as seasoned veterans of the best of the best.
Yes, it was shameful.
Unless you are a star. Perhaps the most famous violinist in the world is Joshua Bell. A few years ago, he was the star attraction of the Laguna Music Festival. I saw him for the first time at a Festival pre-party at the house of Lynda Thomas. Joshua played a Stradivarius violin, which even I—as ignorant as I was—knew was of great value. Stradivarius created his string instruments hundreds of years ago and there are only a few, number unknown, of his violins today existing, and they have unsurpassed tonal quality.
I thought to myself, “Joshua must have one hell of a rich patron who lets him borrow that violin.” Being me, I asked Joshua who actually owned it. He smiled benignly, almost laughed, and then replied, “Me. I heard one was coming up for auction in London, flew there and bought it.” My mouth hung open. Huh? Him, a poor struggling musician? “How much?” I croaked. Another smile. “Over $8 million.”
Orin, I thought, if only you had been a famous soloist.
This year’s Laguna Music Festival was held in February and the last performance was on a Sunday afternoon. It featured an opera soloist named Elizabeth Zharoff. She is an elegantly expressive, 30-year old dark-haired beauty who blew away the audience. She attended the after-party at Lauren and Richard Packard’s home. She sat at an outside patio with some of her L.A. friends. Most were tatted. When I sat at her table, her boyfriend was playing a YouTube piece she would sing minutes later for the after-party group. She sort of knew the tune but did not want to sight-read her performance, so she memorized it as I watched.
After it was done, I asked her if, like in the movies, if people in power had done their best to humiliate her as she moved up the career ladder. She looked at me as if I was a Martian.
She said, “It was worse than the movies.” Pause. “Much worse. I worked my ass off. I still do.”
She, like Orin, is paid beans, and makes her real living by composing music for video games. Hey, it is about selling video games to 10-year olds; fortunes are made from those video games. (OC is home to some of the biggest video game companies in the world.)
This column is done now.
If you’ve read all the way through, you can go watch sports or movies or God forbid, obsess more about Trump. Long after he is toast, chamber music still will be around and so will The Laguna Beach Music Festival. See ya at the cove.
