Lyric Opera bassist leads youth string ensemble

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Lyric Opera bassist Andrew Anderson coaches a young member of the Westminster Christian string ensemble last Friday at Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee. | Dave Shields~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: January 24, 2012 8:06AM

If you happened to be at Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee a couple Fridays before Christmas and heard a young string ensemble from Elgin’s Westminster Christian School bringing holiday cheer to center court, you witnessed one of the first public performances by the budding musicians.

“The group started only three months ago and meets before school at 7 a.m. two days per week,” said their director, Andrew Anderson. “They are a really exceptional group of kids. The carols they played today, they just learned in a week.”

And in Anderson, the youngsters have an instructor with some pretty impressive credentials, too. Anderson is a bassist with the Lyric Opera in Chicago. In summer, he also plays with the Grant Park Orchestra.

Anderson started with the Lyric when he was 26. Now 33, he remains the youngest member of his section, and he knows he is fortunate — blessed even — to be among an elite group of performers doing what he does.

“I hear there are 485 musicians who are making a living playing bass (in the classical music world), and I am one of them,” Anderson said.

In the four-person bass section at the Lyric, the last hire before him was in 1986. Anderson said that about half the players in the orchestra have been members since before he was born.

Playing music since he was 4, Anderson at one time considered becoming a mechanical engineer. A music scholarship brought him to the Midwest and the University of Michigan, where he eventually decided to pursue music.

From there it was off to Indiana University for a master’s degree, then to the University of North Texas for advanced studies.

Anderson noted that the audition process in the classical music world typically comes about through notices listed in trade publications. Traveling across the country for such can cost $1,000 or so, given the expenses of bringing a large bass along for the journey.

Anderson, though, was able to land a spot with the Lyric on but his eighth tryout for a professional company. That, in turn, led to work with the Grant Park Orchestra. The work with those organizations also has led to teaching at Roosevelt University in Chicago and at the Wheaton Conservatory.

Spouse support

Anderson married his wife Rose when he was just 20, and he noted his gratitude to her for helping support him through college with jobs as a hospice worker, then a massage therapist. She now home-schools the couple’s three young boys Eli, Isaiah, and the eldest, James, 6, who plays cello in the new Westminster ensemble.

Also performing at Spring Hill were violin player Emma Loane, viola player Adam Smekrud and bass player Noah Zuniga, with Anderson leading them along on violin.

With a spring gap between the Lyric’s 24-week season and the GPO’s 10-week outdoor one, the home-school arrangement allows Anderson to bring his family back to Portland, where his father, David, teaches string music and was a musician with the opera company in that city.

His father led, and now works part time with, a program that “is one of the nine remaining public school orchestra programs of its kind in the state of Oregon. The high school I attended didn’t have an orchestra, so I’m not too surprised,” Anderson said.

The family settled in Elgin because of its affordable housing and because Anderson can take the train to work for matinees and some rehearsals. However, since operas tend to run long, he drives to night performances so as not to have to wait for a very late train.

Those show lengths were something Anderson said was something new for him as a performer, especially given that the Lyric has produced some of Wagner’s marathon operas during his tenure. Getting used to the different styles of conductors had to be learned, too.

But, with the level of musicianship at the Lyric, Anderson said that whatever the conductor’s ways, “sometimes it’s as if we’re playing by sense of smell.” And when things are going well, “there’s nothing like it. We’re playing as if by osmosis.”

One of the things Anderson said he loves about the job is “watching the audience watch the show.” Another: “When you have the right singer in the right role, the moment is such you know it won’t happen again.”