This Minneapolis orchestra doesn't just make music — it forges community

If it's Tuesday, it must be orchestra night. In 63 households around the Twin Cities, someone completes their workday, grabs a quick bite to eat, picks up their instrument and heads to 7 p.m. rehearsal.

Freshly minted college graduates sit next to veteran players of 40-plus years. Their careers are varied, but all share a desire to make music together.

They're the musicians of the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis, and this ritual has played out for almost 70 years.

Minneapolis' oldest community orchestra, the Civic typically performs about a half-dozen concerts each year, including one next Sunday that will be the group's first indoor performance since the start of the pandemic.

Why do they set their Tuesday evenings aside for this?

"Music making is a part of my soul," said violinist and concertmaster Carol Margolis, who has been an orchestra member since 1975. "I have to do it and feel that it isn't even a choice. Making music with others brings me such utter happiness, it is hard to describe. It is my church!"

In fact, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in southwest Minneapolis is where the orchestra rehearses each week, and where they'll perform on Sunday.

The orchestra meets in the basement Fellowship Hall, the musicians assembled in concentric semi-circles of plastic folding chairs, their instrument cases dotting the surfaces of tables at the back of the room. Some read from yellowed sheet music while others employ tablets with foot pedals for page turning.

These weekly rehearsals are where the creative work takes place, music both old and new taken apart section by section, then reassembled into a harmonious whole.

The community in a community orchestra

Some members say it's the community as much as the music that keeps them coming back.

"Orchestras can be very species-ist," said the orchestra's principal bassoonist of eight years, Ann Hagen, a University of Minnesota administrator by day. "String players only talk to string players, wind players only talk to wind players, no one talks to percussionists.

"Civic isn't like that. I can talk with everyone and they don't run away. Everyone talks to our timpanist. At my first rehearsal, the oboist turned around and welcomed me to the group. In the land of 10,000 introverts, that's not a common move and it was so nice."

Mary Miklethun is a senior vice president with U.S. Bank who's been playing viola with the orchestra since 1994.

"There are plenty of times when I don't look forward to an evening rehearsal or a weekend concert," she said, "simply for the fact that they take time, and I might rather have downtime from work and other commitments. But I keep going for the pleasure of making music, the swell of emotion with a particularly lovely or energetic passage, the satisfaction of getting a difficult part right. The teamwork of playing together as a section and melding our sound with the rest of the orchestra."

Since 1994, the orchestra has been led by Cary John Franklin, who is known as much for composing as conducting. He's committed not only to revisiting beloved masterworks, but performing 21st century pieces. Beethoven's Third Symphony, the "Eroica," will share space on Sunday's program with William McGlaughlin's "Angelus" and Arturo Marquez's "Leyenda de Miliano."

At a recent rehearsal, most musicians were masked, some wind players placing their mouthpieces through small slits in the fabric. A weighty grief came through in the funereal second movement of the "Eroica," likely bearing resonance for many of the musicians during this time of pandemic.

Such moments may be therapeutic for Dr. Nicolette Myers. One of the orchestra's newest members, the violinist is a pulmonary and critical care doctor at Park Nicollet Clinic and Methodist Hospital.

"The pandemic has been grueling," she said. "I needed an outlet for my work stress, so I decided to start playing my violin again. It has been grounding to get back to music. As of August, I became an empty nester. I decided I needed to find a group to join so I would have something to look forward to each week."

That grounding has also proven valuable for Elizabeth Glidden. Deputy executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, she has played violin with the orchestra since 1994.

"I've gone through three major career changes during my time in Minneapolis, got married, had two kids, moved homes," Glidden said. "Through it all, playing with Civic has been pretty much a constant. I had a period where I did not play regularly with the orchestra when I was a City Council member for Minneapolis. I really missed Civic so much, and the feeling of playing in a large ensemble."

One of the orchestra's longest tenured members is principal oboist Lorelei Giddings, a member since 1986.

"I love that I'm sitting next to the same person that I sat next to in the University of Minnesota Orchestra in 1984 — our principal flutist, Rachel Hest," Giddings said. "But I also love that we are incorporating younger players into the orchestra. We need that. I would love to see more diversity in our ranks, and that may become part of our recruitment."

The orchestra's three French horn players burst forth in the "Eroica's" jolly trio section, and, at the next pause, bows tapped against music stands and hands slapped thighs in applause for their efforts. The musicians' energy and enthusiasm was growing more palpable by the minute.

Making music and memories

When asked about their most indelible performances, both Margolis and piccolo player Dawn Witt Saxton pointed to a February 2017 performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" at Wayzata Community Church. In addition to having great solos for violin and piccolo, it's a feast of marvelous orchestration.

And "as corny as it may be," Miklethun loves how the audience invariably applauds after the high-energy piccolo solo on John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" during summer concerts at Minneapolis' Lake Harriet Bandshell.

The Civic performs at least one concert a year geared toward children. That gave violinist Melissa Stanley a chance to see her young niece lead the orchestra.

"To watch her as a young girl get to see, hear and feel what it's like to stand on a director's podium and conduct an orchestra while holding a baton filled me with immense joy," Stanley said. "It's something I want more young girls to experience and to know they can do that as a career."

And if that doesn't work out, a community orchestra could prove a satisfying second choice.

Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis
What: Works by William McGlaughlin, Arturo Marquez and Beethoven.
When: 3 p.m. Nov. 7.
Where: Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 4801 France Av. S., Mpls.
Tickets: Free, information at civicorchestrampls.org.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities freelance classical music writer. wordhub@yahoo.com.