Ari Goldman - The Late Starters Orchestra

I asked Dan how he could sustain his musical interests in the face of losing his job. Unemployment is not a permanent state for him, he assured me. He’s found part-time work as a bartender and is planning to take the actuarial qualifying exam. In the meantime, he’s done some downsizing. Rather than violin lessons at the music school, he is taking them at his teacher’s apartment, where the fees are slightly lower. Two of the community orchestras he plays with have agreed to waive the weekly charges while he is out of work. He told me that it gladdened his heart to find that “the musical organizations I’ve been in don’t act like the phone company, demanding payment or threatening to cut off service.”

“What if things turn worse for you financially,” I asked. “Would you sell your baby grand piano? Your violin and bow? What if you had to move to a city that didn’t have all the musical enrichment that New York City offers?” As soon as the questions came out of my mouth, I regretted asking them. Sometimes the journalist in me takes over. What passes for a question in an interview is not always polite dinner conversation. But Dan did not seem put off.

“I’d never sell any of my musical possessions,” he said emphatically. “My music is my life and I would only sell my instruments to upgrade them, for new instruments. Some things just have to remain in that they’re part of one’s essence. That’s certainly how I’ve experienced music in my life.”

Another LSO member who’d fallen on hard times was Joe. If Dan was slight and fidgety, Joe was centered, calm, and solid. He was the unofficial leader of the cello section; perhaps not the best player, but certainly the most confident. He was also one of the more striking-looking members. Balding on top, he had straight white hair falling to his shoulders and a neatly trimmed white beard. With a cello in his arms he seemed invincible.

Like Dan, Joe was given the opportunity in grade school to play a string instrument. He chose the cello but when it came time to get his instrument, they were out of cellos and the teacher handed him a violin. “A few years ago when I turned fifty-one, I said, ‘I’m probably going to die soon’—anything can happen to us at this age — I must get that cello she never gave me.”

Joe turned to eBay and bought what he called “a cheapo cello” which was a big mistake. “It was more of a wooden object in a cello shape.” He couldn’t afford lessons, so he taught himself. “In some ways, I relied on my old violin lessons. In theory, I thought the transition would be easy. You just take the violin from under the chin and turn it upright.”

Joe’s big leap in his cello playing came when he was laid off from the design firm where he was working. “I practice every day without fail, between four hours and one and a half hours. I cannot go for a day without practicing.”

When I came to know him, Joe was living on Long Island but he was frequently in Manhattan, sometimes to play with LSO and sometimes just to practice in Central Park. He took the train into the city and carried with him his cello, his music, his music stand, and a small wooden stool. He explained that since LSO was soon going to be playing as part of an early summer program called Make Music New York, he thought it would be a good idea to practice in Central Park. Joe would set himself up in one of the park’s many arched tunnels under a roadway or footbridge and play. “The sound is incredible” in the tunnels, he said. “I sound like a genius.

“And I get a lot of foot traffic, but since there is no place to sit, nobody stays too long, which is a good thing since my repertoire is not very extensive. I play the same things over and over again.”

It soon became clear to me that this was also a chance for Joe to make some extra money. He puts out a canvas bag for change. How much does he make? “It depends on three things: weather, traffic, and mood.”

“Wait,” I said. “It doesn’t depend on how well you are playing?”

“Not at all. What is important is to make good eye contact, especially with children. Smile at a child and the father will give you a buck. Maintain eye contact with a single woman and she’ll put money in the bag.” He described one woman who fumbled for her change purse as he played. She got so flustered that when she found it, she simply dumped the contents into Joe’s kitty. That was probably his best day in the park. He earned eighteen dollars in two hours.

Playing alfresco is no way to make money. Joe would have made more per hour working at the Gap. Somehow people expect music to be free. On a sunny summer day, passersby will pay for a hot dog or for a balloon for their child but will walk right by the street musician without feeling any obligation.

There’s a German expression that Mr. J taught me that exhorts people not to take music for granted: If you enjoyed the dance, pay the musicians.

WHEN JUDAH WAS SMALL, we had a succession of live-in nannies from a Christian community called the Bruderhof. Founded in 1920 in Germany, the Bruderhof was a socialist community modeled on the principles of the early followers of Jesus who proclaimed themselves of “one heart and mind, and shared all things in common.” Most of all they embraced the teachings concerning nonviolence (they were strict pacifists), faithfulness in marriage (no divorce allowed), and compassion for the poor.

Young women from the Bruderhof normally do not go out in the world to be nannies, but I had developed a special relationship with the community when I was a reporter. I had written several articles about their efforts to open the community to the larger world and, at one point, asked if one of the single women would help us out at home. (By that time, I had left the Times and felt there was no conflict in employing someone I had written about.) Eager to give their young people an experience with a Jewish family, the Bruderhof elders sent us one woman after another for five years. While they largely acted as nannies, helping us with the children and household tasks, they were really members of our family.

The Bruderhof way of life shares a lot with the Amish community. When I first met them, the men wore beards and suspenders and the women all covered their hair with print kerchiefs. They did not shun technology the way that the Amish do, but they were wary of it.

In this community, playing an instrument was a great virtue. Communal meals and church meetings always included singing along with the band. Our first nanny, Rebecca, played the auto harp and sang. Another, Susan, played the cello. A third, named Noni, wasn’t particularly musical, but she took it on herself to nurture Judah’s cello playing. When Judah was in elementary school, he claimed to have stage fright and routinely refused to sing in public or even participate in group performances. But he shed his shyness when he played the cello. Behind his instrument, he was confident, even masterful. There and only there, he loved an audience.

Noni had an idea. One afternoon she and Judah baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and put them in a tin. Then they grabbed Judah’s cello and bow and the two of them went to the Columbia campus and set up a sign that said, “CELLO AND COOKIES: 50¢.” Judah played while Noni sold cookies. We were never sure what the main draw was, the cookies or the cello, but they had a successful little business venture going. Judah got more and more comfortable with being the center of attention. And the crowd loved it. It was something of a variation on that German proverb. Perhaps: “If you enjoyed the cookies, pay the musician.”

AT ONE POINT, JOE the cellist stopped coming to LSO rehearsals. After a few months, he returned and I asked him what had happened. “My financial situation fell apart,” he explained. “I was simply overwhelmed.” And there was another reason, he said reluctantly. “I felt that the other cellists were relying on me too much.”