This is about love and an orchestra.
Around the periphery there were the things that happen in orchestras — the concerts; the rehearsals; the odd, off schedules — and there were the things that happen in love: the wooing, the awkwardness, the carpooled social events where it is not clear whether you are hitching a ride or bringing a date.
In the Venn diagram of the first occurrence (orchestra) and the second (love), there is a big, shaded overlap.
In the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, everybody is in love with everybody else.
“There have to be, what, seven of us?” says Amanda Gates Armstrong.
“No, there are more,” Patti Ferrell Carlson says. “Let’s see. The Bishops. The Boyers. The Aguirres. The Whites.” The Whites throw great Halloween parties.
The principal flutist is married to the principal percussionist. The assistant principal second violin is married to the principal trumpet player. The acting assistant principal cellist married one of the bass players a few years ago; now they’re raising two small kids and two giant instruments.
In fact, in an orchestra made up of 48 core players, 18 of them are married to each other. Nine couples. Comparatively, the National Philharmonic has three pairs out of about 65 players. The Fairfax Symphony has two. The National Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra each have five couples, but nearly twice the musicians.
If you count VSO’s non-full-time musicians, the percentage goes higher. The music director, JoAnn Falletta, is married to a substitute clarinet player. It’s very all-in-the- family.
On this night, Armstrong and her husband, Vahn, are chatting in the orchestra’s Norfolk dressing room with Carlson (clarinet) and her husband, Stephen (trumpet), a few minutes before a rehearsal. “Amanda had a beautiful wedding,” Carlson remembers. “Good shrimp, great tango.”
Amanda is the orchestra’s assistant concertmaster. Vahn is the concertmaster. They met when he sat on her audition panel, romance solidified when she asked for his advice in purchasing a new violin — she bought a 1699 Rogeri — and they married 11 years ago. At their wedding, they displayed a quote by the British occultist Aleister Crowley. It read: “If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people, one might as well be buried alive in an ant hill or be married to an ambitious violinist.”
“I never thought I would date another violinist,” Amanda says. “I thought, oh my goodness, that’s not a good idea.” Everyone knows the stereotypes about violinists, especially violinists themselves, who are the first to good-naturedly repeat them: They are highly strung divas. Neurotic, probably, always wanting to be the center of attention. Not a good match for, say, the brass players, who have the reputation for being the frat boys of the orchestra. But maybe okay for the stately timpanist.
“An oboist and a viola player” might make a nice pairing, Benjamin Rous, the VSO’s associate conductor, says thoughtfully. Both instruments have that quirky, nerdy vibe. Or a lithe harpist and a beefy trombone player — that would be an interesting couple. It would be a scenario of opposites attracting, Rous admits, but who knows, sometimes these things work.
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“Our wedding? It’s kind of like the piano Olympics. If something were to happen . . . ”
The remainder of this unfinished thought: If lightning were to strike Rous’s wedding location, it would be the day that piano music died.
In June, Rous will become half of the VSO’s newest couple when he marries substitute cellist Clara Lee. Now the two of them sit in the sitting room of their Portsmouth home with a binder of wedding plans and a fat cat named Jack, and explain how it all happened.
First they met at chamber music camp in 1997; he was 19, she was 16, it was summer in Maine, she thought he was the biggest showoff.
“And a mediocre musician, too,” Rous says.
“I didn’t say that!” Lee protests. “I said that you had all style and no substance.”
(This addendum makes things better or worse, depending.)
Then in 2001 they met again. A mutual friend had put together an ensemble and asked them both to play.
This time, Rous was different, or maybe not different, maybe she was just seeing him differently. “The main thing was that he was showing interest in me,” Lee says, “not the blond bimbo that he was pursuing last time.”
And so what did she do?
“She started dating someone else!” Rous says. A pianist. Someone else in the ensemble. “Music is very incestuous. You’ll see string quartets who have had every possible permutation.”
So they didn’t date then, but they were in each other’s orbit. First he lived in Massachusetts and she lived in Seattle, then she was in Texas and he was in Connecticut, then she was in New York and he was in Michigan, and at some point he was passing through, and he came to visit her in a Juilliard practice room, and she played the Britten Cello Suite, and he sat on the floor and was amazed. “She is my favorite cellist I have ever heard,” he says. “In the world.”
Then, finally, they were both in Phoenix and she was flying home from visiting some friends, and he was there, in the Phoenix airport, in a suit, on one knee, with a ring.
She said yes. They moved to Virginia.
“The Virginia Symphony has a reputation for being a happy orchestra,” Rous says. When they were still in Phoenix and he was considering the job, his friends told him, “Oh, yeah, they like to work there.”
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Orchestras, in general, can be kind of stressful places. Like Peyton Place, but accompanied by Bach. It’s hard to make a living. Full-time positions are highly coveted, then jealously guarded. If you are already married, and if both of you are lucky enough to land spots in the same orchestra, then it would be prudent to hang onto those jobs for as long as you both can. Especially if one of you plays a more obscure instrument. “For oboists, there are only a few jobs in an orchestra,” says Jorge Aguirre, who plays the violin. “I made the choice that if Sherie gets a job first, then I would follow.” Twenty-four years ago, oboist Sherie got the job in Virginia, and Jorge followed her from Spain. He got a position a few years later.
For those who come into the orchestra single, there is a good chance they won’t leave that way. Where else can you meet someone, when your job is leisure activity to which normal people bring dates?
“I certainly remember the first time I saw her,” says David Vonderheide, principal trumpet. “The first rehearsal of the season is kind of like the first day of school, and it was always fun to see all the new people.” One year, he came to rehearsal and he thought, “Oh! There’s a cute girl with a violin!”
He and Elizabeth were married in 2006.
“We used to have a joke,” Vonderheide continues, “that if you called to audition, there would be a fake singles hotline.”
Available: One opening for an assistant principal cellist. Also available: One single bassoon player, loves Beethoven, Scorsese films, walks on the beach.
Whether the Virginia Symphony Orchestra is a happy place because everyone is married to each other, or everyone is married to each other because it is a happy place is up for debate.
“It must be cyclical,” says Falletta, the music director. “We’re an orchestra that attracts young people, and they move to the city and meet other people who are in the same position, and the orchestra becomes their whole social life,” and then they don’t want to leave.
“We get inklings,” she says. “We see who’s leaving rehearsal together, who is going off for Chinese food together.” There might even be a few of these budding couples in the works, and perhaps, one day, another wedding.
For now it’s just Rous and Lee, who aren’t getting married in Virginia but in Vermont in a lovely round barn. They are still working out the details of the ceremony, but they are very excited about the reception, for which they have hired a Klezmer band.