Music Director and Principal Symphonic Conductor Rossen Milanov and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra take a bow after their concert Thursday in the Amphitheater.
This summer, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra welcomed some new musicians into its fold, including alumni of the Music School Festival Orchestra and the CSO Fellows program.
Those alumni are clarinetist Olivia Hamilton, violist Javier Otalora, and cellists Daniel Kaler and Max Oppeltz. The percussion, horn and oboe sections saw their ranks grow as well, with Principal Timpanists Simón Gómez Gallego, Jeremy Levine and Matthew Strauss; Horn III Daniel Kerdelewicz; Principal Oboist Jaren Atherholt and Oboist II Noah Kay.
Music School Festival Orchestra clarinetist Nathan Vilhena Kock, left, talks with Noah Kay, in his first season as second oboe in the CSO, after Thursday’s performance.
And with auditions held this summer for principal tuba, principal clarinet and six positions in first and second violin, 2025 will see some new faces, too.
Anyone auditioning does so before a committee, said Kimberly Schuette, managing director of the CSO, and it’s a lot of work.
“You’re the ones who go through the resumes, who listen to the recordings — and it’s a voting process,” she said. “None of it is decided by the music director himself.”
Since 2022, auditions have been held through a blind process, meaning candidates play behind a screen — so it can be guaranteed no bias is involved. Live auditions during the summer season are an intensive time commitment, on top of an already-packed CSO schedule.
“We just have so many open positions that it took us until this summer to be able to schedule auditions for those six open violin positions,” Schuette said — four tends to be the max. So many new musicians isn’t fully unusual, especially since the COVID-19 and its aftermath was incredibly disruptive — there was a lot to catch up on, Schuette said, and now Chautauqua is seeing those efforts come to fruition.
Also this summer were two guest concertmasters, chosen from six auditioning musicians. Eliot Heaton served as guest concertmaster in Weeks One through Four, while Sharon Roffman is closing out the CSO’s season this weekend.
The concertmaster decides what bowings are used by the string sections and plays the violin solo if there is one available. It’s like a “fancy way of saying principal,” Heaton said — just for the entire orchestra — and then each section’s principal is responsible for translating the conductor’s intent and energy to the musicians of their sections.
Heaton grew up with four older siblings who all played string instruments, so it felt “only natural” that he began taking Suzuki-style lessons at about 3 years old. After high school, he felt ready to be done with it, but when studying history at Oberlin College he realized he missed the music, and earned his double major in history and violin performance.
A tenured concertmaster of Detroit Opera and Des Moines Metro Opera, Heaton has also served as concertmaster with the Lansing Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Terre Haute Symphony, and the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic. Auditions aren’t particularly fun, but Heaton said it was performing in a trial concert that made him want to be a part of the CSO.
“I really liked how the music director worked with the orchestra, being very picky with some things but then trusting that the orchestra will apply those to the places where they’re relevant,” Heaton said. “We got through the rehearsal having just played everything maybe once or twice — and then in the concert, it felt very alive, and the audience was big and responsive.”
CSO musicians play in the nation’s most prestigious orchestras during the off-season, Heaton said, but look forward to Chautauqua like nothing else because of how special it is.
“That’s a great feeling to come in and play when everyone wants to be there; they’ve been very welcoming,” Heaton said. “… It’s just a good, positive energy. Everyone here is in great American orchestras, but they’re happy to be here and happy to play music together.”
Roffman, who began playing violin at the age of 2, said it was never a question for her what she was going to do with her life — “it was just always who I was.” Her mother, who was a violin teacher, loves to tell the story of when Roffman, still in diapers, picked up her sister’s violin and tried to start playing. Roffman’s son now has the opportunity to grow up surrounded by music as well, sitting and listening to the entirety of a symphony.
Joining Chautauqua from Paris, where she lives during the off-season, Roffman has been concertmaster in the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and guest concertmaster at a variety of opera houses and symphony orchestras. She likes the fast-paced nature of the CSO, with only one rehearsal before a concert; that adrenaline can make for both “scary and yet also exhilarating concerts and gives it an edge.”
Performing with a variety of different orchestras lets Roffman appreciate the “sense that the orchestra is a community that is also part of the bigger community” at Chautauqua — which is unique, she said. At a picnic this summer, her son Lucas recognized a friend from his class — one of the violist’s daughters in the same room at Children’s School.
“It just reinforces the sense of community. In real life, when you’re in an orchestra, it’s not very often that you meet other people’s children, because you just go to work and you come home. So here it’s quite a bit of a family feeling. It’s nice to get to know people in different ways; it changes the way you perceive each other on stage,” Roffman said. “Those moments translate on stage, because when I need people to look at me and to follow me — I need people to feel like they can trust me. When someone sees me in that light, or I see someone else in that light, it creates that kind of bond that can translate into more trust on the stage.”
One of the most valuable things she’s learned through her career, she said, has been to be generous about listening to others as a leader. Recognizing that sound travels differently and often, the critical factor is perspective.
“I do a lot of adjusting to other people,” Roffman said. “In a sense, if a leader is always in front of everyone, you’re never together.”
