It is Sunday evening, February 2, 2025 and I am watching the Grammys. It makes me think of my group, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, of which I was a member for 36 years (1978 – 2014). Fact is, we won a Grammy – at the 43 rd Annual Grammy Awards in the category of Best Small Ensemble Performance for “Shadow Dances,” music of Igor Stravinsky, on February 21, 2001. I was one of the principal players on the recording. Over the years we were also nominated three different times for Grammys.
Orpheus started out (1973 – 77) performing mostly for free. In 1978 we got a big break. What I remember is that an orchestra canceled at the last minute in Carnegie Hall and we (Orpheus) were asked to substitute for them. We had been rehearsing, just in case something like that might happen, and when it did, we were ready. What a thrill it was to see and hear the stamping of seemingly thousands of feet and listening to the cheers from the audience as we took our bows. Maybe we were on to something.
As a member of Orpheus, it seemed that our career just took off after that concert. The following season, 1979/80 we went on a tour through Italy, Israel, India, Northern Europe including Vienna and Amsterdam. Deutsche Grammophon, perhaps the most prestigious classical music recording label in the world at the time signed us to a 70 CD contract and we made regular appearances in the music capitals of the world, from Tokyo to Vienna, New York to New Delhi for the next 30 plus years after that.
What is most impressive, in my opinion, is that to my knowledge, there has not been another large classical music ensemble in our country of at least 25 – 30 musicians that has gone from playing for free to reaching the very heights of the classical music world in terms of artistic accomplishment, commercial success and recognition, before or since Orpheus.
How did it happen?
In 1978, I remember meeting other musicians from Orpheus at Empire Szechuan Restaurant on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, 100th St and Broadway, around 9/10:00PM to discuss musical ideas. We ate quite a lot of cold Szechuan noodles – probably because they were the cheapest option. I also remember going over to my new colleague’s apartments, listening to their favorite recordings. I brought my favorites too. Truth is, although Orpheus continued to evolve in the years and decades to come, a lot of the talking and theorizing about how we were going to go about creating the orchestra of our dreams without conductor was pretty much in full swing by the time I joined the group. In the years ahead it wasn’t always clear how we were going to turn our ambitions, our ideas and ideals into reality, but we made it work.
It turns out that our recipe for success included: rehearsing a lot, having many great musicians in our group from the Juilliard, Curtis, Eastman Schools and others, with a little Marlboro Festival spice thrown in. That, and quite a bit of good fortune was all we needed. Today the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is celebrating its 52nd year of making music!
You can read more about Orpheus and the musical life of NYC in the 1980’s and 90’s: Leonard Bernstein, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Andre Previn, Stockard Channing, Kathleen Battle, Yehudi Menuhin, the Marlboro Music Festival, and plenty of funny stories in my memoir, From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and most anywhere quality books are sold.
David Singer, Grammy Award-Winning Professional Musician for 55 years
Author of “From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall“
www.singerclarinet.com
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