[Dixielandjazz] The "Legal" Orchestra

[Stephen G Barbone]

Who said Lawyers have no soul?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
http://www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

January 1, 2010 - Associated Press - NY Times Article
To Get to This Orchestra? Law Practice, Law Practice


LOS ANGELES (AP) — If a defense lawyer, a prosecutor and a judge  
walked into a concert hall, what would be the first thing they would do?

“Spend a half-hour arguing legal motions,” David Waller, a longtime  
Los Angeles lawyer, said one of his colleagues told him on learning of  
his plans to tote his cello to a rehearsal of the fledgling Los  
Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic Orchestra. That night, in the fall,  
players had just two hours to run through Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.  
5, Grieg’s “Triumphal March” and a rousing John Philip Sousa number,  
followed by another couple of classical and pops pieces.

In just a few days the group’s 60-plus members would be decked out in  
evening wear and playing their biggest gig to date, the grand opening  
of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s new downtown office. Not  
that anyone in the ensemble of brass, woodwind, string and percussion  
sections looked nervous.

“We’re not just a bunch of lawyers playing music,” Gary S. Greene, who  
held the group’s first rehearsal last January, said before putting it  
through its paces as conductor. “We’re actually a good orchestra.”

Mr. Greene, a litigation lawyer, didn’t threaten to sue anyone who  
intruded on anyone else’s solo. “Blend,” he implored as the players  
struggled with a challenging selection from the Rodgers and  
Hammerstein musical “The King and I.” “Play softly. That’s where I  
want everybody soft so you can hear the trombone.”

Brett Klein, a superior court judge and the orchestra’s first trumpet  
player, refrained from holding anybody in contempt. The judge, who  
recently oversaw a dispute pitting the estate of Michael Jackson  
against an auction house, was too busy concentrating on nailing his  
part in a fanfare.

By showtime he and other members of the group, which bills itself as  
“L.A.’s only legal philharmonic orchestra,” were ready to appear in  
the large lobby of the bar association building, opening with a  
Purcell “Trumpet Voluntary” before moving on to uptempo favorites like  
Souza’s “Washington Post March.”

“I played in the U.C.L.A. Symphony Orchestra as a student,” the  
principal bass player, Jack Lipton, said before the show. “It’s just  
wonderful to be playing in an orchestra again.”

The ensemble hit its stride at a Christmas-week concert in which it  
performed a mixture of classical and pops pieces. At the end of the  
two-hour performance, hosted by the actress June Lockhart, a longtime  
friend of Mr. Greene’s, the audience of more than 300 gave a standing  
ovation.

“The thing that’s so amazing to me is to see all these judges and all  
these lawyers who are such brilliant musicians,” Ms. Lockhart said.  
“As children they must have said, ‘Mommy, I want to play the violin.’  
And Mommy must have said, ‘No, you’re going to go to law school, and  
then you can play the violin.’ “

The group joins a handful of lawyer-driven orchestras around the  
country, including the Chicago Bar Association Symphony, where Judge  
Diane P. Wood, who was on a short list of candidates for theUnited  
States Supreme Court last year, heads the oboe section. Atlanta and  
Boston also have lawyers’ orchestras.

Mr. Greene, who in his spare time is also concertmaster for the Los  
Angeles Junior Philharmonic, said he never doubted he could recruit an  
all-lawyer orchestra for Los Angeles. What did surprise him, he said,  
was the quality of the players.

“We have two Juilliard grads and a number of people who studied at the  
nation’s top conservatories,” he said. “We have people who received  
master’s degrees in their instruments.”

The first violinist, Natalia Minassian, simultaneously studied music  
at Juilliard and political science at Columbia University before going  
on to earn a law degree. When the opportunity to play in an orchestra  
came along she jumped at the chance.

“It’s the only environment,” she said, “where lawyers are making  
harmony as opposed to dissonance.”