Low-Key, But Not By Choice

Lacking a Permanent Home, Prince George's Philharmonic Is an Orchestra Looking for a Bigger Audience

As it nears 8 p.m., the crowd inside the Hallam Theater at Prince George's Community College thickens and grows quiet. Onstage, orchestra members, dressed in black, finish their warmups: the brass, the woodwinds and the strings, playing in tune.

Musical director and conductor Charles Ellis, in white tie and tails, takes the podium, and soon the theater fills with harmony and movement. With a sweep of his hands, the nod of his head and seemingly the sway of his whole body, Ellis keeps time for the music, giving the orchestra its mood and tempo.

Soon the vividly familiar cancan notes of Jacques Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" fill the theater and the imagination of the audience.

The Prince George's Philharmonic orchestra opened its 41st season this month, and, especially for first-time attendees, there was much to marvel at.

Devon and Michael Brown of New Carrollton and their three children, Milan, 9, Kacey, 5, and Aaron, 3, learned of the orchestra from Alice McKenzie, Milan's piano teacher.

"I consider myself informed," said Michael Brown, but "I didn't know Prince George's had a philharmonic."

"I thought it was a visiting orchestra," Devon Brown said.

Getting the word out has been one of the orchestra's most persistent challenges, said Mary Ann White, president of its board of directors. "It's the best-kept secret" in the county, she said.

The orchestra, which began with three musicians as the Bowie Symphony in 1965, has 80 members now, mostly volunteers. Supported with state and county funds, it performs five concerts a year. Ellis, who has been with the orchestra for 13 years, said he has seen the audiences steadily increase, although the philharmonic's primary challenge remains the lack of a permanent venue. In addition to the Hallam Theater, there will be concerts this season at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park and Charles H. Flowers High School in Springdale.

Carolyn Swan, a statistician who grew up in a musical family and plays the violin and the viola, became a violinist with the orchestra last fall and calls it a "transcendent" joy.

"The opportunity to play beautiful music in a group, to hear it and experience it, there's really nothing like it on Earth," she said.

Orchestra charter member Jon Teske, who plays violin and viola, remembers clearly the Prince George's Philharmonic's first rehearsal because, he said, "I had just come back from my honeymoon."