Ari Goldman - The Late Starters Orchestra

There was no one else — Magda was the only applicant they interviewed — but Elena and Andrea were plagued by self-doubt. Neither was making a lot of money and both wondered if this was the best way to spend their energies. Indeed, they asked themselves, “Why are we hiring a conductor when we don’t have an orchestra?”

They put a new ad in Craigslist, this one for musicians interested in joining — they decided to limit the group just to string players — and were surprised when over thirty people responded. Reassured, they called Magda and signed her up.

A dozen players of various abilities showed up for the first meeting. “It was a disaster,” Magda remembered. There was everything from the conservatory dropout to the cellist who didn’t know how to tune his instrument. It was actually worse than that. He didn’t even know that the cello had to be tuned. One woman came with a violin but never raised it to her chin. She sat and strummed it like a guitar. Another woman clipped her nails during breaks in the rehearsal and yet another nervously handed out snacks.

The first few meetings were demoralizing, evoking doubt yet again. Players at first came and went, but after a couple of months, a core group began to develop. Then, as they were getting the operation off the ground, Andrea became pregnant. It was left to Elena to work things out with Magda.

Elena and Magda are two very different personality types. Elena is girlish and downright silly at times. When the music goes awry in the orchestra — as it has a tendency to do — Elena is the first to laugh. It starts as a giggle but then morphs to a shoulder-shaking laugh that spreads to her stand partner and soon to the whole violin section. Magda, on the other hand, is strict, serious, and demanding.

“I sometimes feel bad,” Elena says. “From Magda’s point of view, here we are taking something sacred — music — and desecrating it.”

“Okay. What’s so funny? I once asked Elena. She suddenly got serious. “It’s not that I do not believe that music is sacred. On the contrary, I can rightly say that I am utterly in awe of its powers. I think I laugh because laughter helps remedy what could be a very frustrating experience. Once I realized (basically after my first violin lesson) that I wouldn’t suddenly be making happy music — that this was going to be a long, long road of scratches and squeaks — I decided that the only way I would be able to enjoy the learning process was to laugh a little. I’ve come to relish the flubs and give myself permission to pursue something I have no hope of ever mastering.”

Anyway, she thinks laughter is better than being overly self-critical. That, she added, would only lead to becoming bitter and flustered and, worse, giving up.

Unlike Elena and the Late Starters, Magda was classically trained from a very young age. She was born in the western Polish town of Szczecin, near the German border, and began violin at the age of six. “It fit me right away,” she said of the instrument. “My mother had this huge dream of becoming a musician but she never got to do it. She pushed me very hard to play and practice.”

Szczecin was a great place to practice. Magda grew up in the waning days of Communism and, as she recalled, “There were very few diversions. We had only two TV channels. . I practiced all the time.” Magda excelled at the violin and, while in high school, was sent to Warsaw to further her studies. There, under the guidance of a demanding teacher, she studied Beethoven’s violin concerto. But she soon locked horns with her teacher over the proper musical interpretation of the piece. At this time, Poland was opening up politically and friends suggested that she continue her studies in the United States. Magda heard about a Polish violinist who was teaching at the music program at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, applied to that program, and was accepted. In Kalamazoo she fell in love and married another musician, an American jazz bassist named PJ.

It was PJ, in fact, who first saw the Craigslist ad for a NYLSO “tutor” soon after the couple moved to New York. Magda was in school, and PJ, a freelance musician, was just beginning to find work. PJ thought this would be a great job for Magda and a good way to supplement the family income. He urged her to apply.

Working with LSO has been part of the continuing process of the Americanization of Magda. “I am just getting used to the idea that it’s okay not to be perfect,” she said in something of an understatement. The core group that began to develop at LSO were eager, to be sure, but far from polished. What’s more, they were old, or at least older than Magda, who was barely thirty. Suddenly, she said, she was in the position of “bossing around people who are my parents’ age.”

“I come from a cultural setting where if someone is an adult, they are right,” she added. “The hard thing for me at LSO is that I’m one of the younger ones. And I’m in charge!”

Early on, the group had its travails. Some Sundays just three or four musicians showed up for a rehearsal. Other Sundays the organizers booked a room only to find that someone else had booked it, too. (Rehearsal instantly cancelled.) But Elena and Andrea and Magda and the New York Late-Starters String Orchestra persevered.

Magda, who is often stiff and unforgiving at LSO rehearsals, seemed happy, relaxed, and at ease when we met to talk in my Columbia office. She’s well aware that she comes off as harsh. “It may not always look like it, but I truly enjoy the rehearsals,” she told me. Less appealing for her, she said, were the performances that the orchestra puts on several times a year. She prefers to call them “open rehearsals” to which family and friends are welcome. She is not quite convinced that LSO is an orchestra ready for prime time.

Magda told me that she does have one fundamental disagreement with the way that Elena and Andrea run the orchestra. “I do wish there were auditions, not so much for who should be admitted but just so I know where everyone is musically.”

“Too intimidating,” Elena said when I repeated the suggestion. And then she repeated her LSO mantra: “If you think you can play, you can play.”

At times, Elena even goes beyond her mantra. Sometimes she tells people, “Even if you can’t play, you can play.” On several occasions she has organized what she calls a “Newbie Day,” a Sunday afternoon when people come just to explore what it might be like to play an instrument. On those days, “experienced” LSO players (who are already beginners) show visitors how to hold a violin or cello and demonstrate the rudiments of making music. By the end Elena has everyone playing “Twinkle.”

In Elena’s mind, an instrument is more than a vehicle for making music. It is an agent of transformation. The mere act of taking up an instrument shows people that they can reach beyond their capabilities and even their imaginations. Elena told me about a woman named Sarah, a widow, who hardly went out of her house after her husband died. A friend dragged her one Sunday afternoon to LSO where she revived an interest in the violin. One day, she agreed to join the group for drinks at Chef Yu. “Last I heard,” Elena said, “she had signed up for Match.com.”

THE YEAR THAT I joined the orchestra, my sixtieth year, Andrea was still out with her firstborn and Elena took the lead at LSO. This meant everything from choosing the music — finding the score, listening to it on YouTube, and determining if it was something the group could handle — to renting the hall and collecting the fees that players pay. LSO charges eighty dollars for a six-week cycle, although players can also drop in for a single session for eighteen dollars.

Running LSO takes a lot of time and energy but it has its pleasures as well. “Making music does make my work life more bearable,” Elena told me. “It’s like I have this whole other world that I can retreat to in my head. I love that.” Sometimes, she has to bring her violin with her to work in order to make it to lessons or rehearsals on time. “I talk about this a lot with other adult learners, the fact that having an instrument with you automatically makes people assume you are a ‘musician,’ especially in New York.”