Oh, The Joy!

Dear Oregon Symphony Patrons:

Mrs. Miller was only about five feet tall. She was easily 60 years old in 1968, but there she was, playing Within You Without You from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. She was the coolest elementary music teacher on the planet, and I wanted her job! I was eight.

She also played Mozart and Beethoven; Haydn, Bartok, Gershwin, Ellington, Basie and a host of others I'll never recall. She let us hear them. I remember wondering what a full orchestra would sound like on stage with me in the audience. Even more amazing was when Miss Robinson came as a replacement for the retired Mrs. Miller, and I learned to play the viola. I was in an orchestra—Oh, the Joy! Then my brother sat on my school viola; I repaired the broken neck with a finishing nail, returned it and never mentioned it to Miss Robinson or my parents. I quit playing the viola.

I am now blessed to teach choral music (I'll not break any violas here, I think) in the Baker School District in Baker City, Ore. We enjoy some fine regional symphonies from time to time, about once a year or so. However, now that we've secured the Oregon Symphony Community Music Partnership Grant, we've seen members of the Oregon Symphony up-close and personal. We hear them play—Ellington, Gershwin, Bartok, Mozart, Beethoven and The Beatles. Our high school Treble Choir has performed in the Schnitzer as part of the Symphony's Prelude Series two years in a row. These young women are convinced the Prelude Series exists solely for them. We thrill to sing on the mezzanine and then hear the orchestra perform. It's the highlight trip of the year for the choir. But to have the Oregon Symphony players in our classroom, giving lessons, sharing their music, giving a part of themselves to us willingly and joyfully; all of us here are convinced the Oregon Symphony Community Music Partnership exists solely for the Baker School District.

In May the entire orchestra will be here to perform, and we will perform with them! My singers, my students! get to sing with the Oregon Symphony—Oh, the Joy!—and I'll be well away from the violas.

Sincerely,

Tom Isaacson
Choir Director
Baker School District