Classical commute

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Musicians Bob Bauchens, left, of Hampshire, Ill., and Jeremy Moeller, right, of Aurora, Ill., pose in the orchestra pit at the Lyric Opera in Chicago, Ill., on Thursday, January 12, 2012. | Andrew A. Nelles~For Sun-Times Media |

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Updated: February 29, 2012 10:22PM

The crowd of more than 3,500 people on opening night at the Civic Opera House is told by a voice on high with an English accent to silence all communication devices. The lights go down, the audience quiets.

The Lyric Opera Orchestra plays the romantic overture of composer Giuseppe Verdi. The opulent art deco curtain goes up to reveal a vision of ancient Egypt, where a golden pharaoh is singing in Italian to a warrior about an imminent battle with Ethiopia.

The warrior wants the gods to choose him to lead the charge. As this is opera, love complicates things as he pines for an Ethiopian slave, who toils for the pharaoh’s daughter, who pines for the warrior.

So begins the spectacle that is “Aida,” which dates back to 1871, and which remains one of the most popular operas in the world.

Below the stage, Bob Bauchens of Hampshire and Jeremy Moeller of Aurora help bring Verdi’s music to life for a 21st Century audience. The men are among a handful of Fox Valley residents who commute to careers with Chicago’s storied classical music institutions, keeping those grand traditions vibrant.

Their tales may not be as dramatic as “Aida,” but they do offer insight into what the four people interviewed see as dream jobs.

BOB BAUCHENS,
HAMPSHIRE

Bob Bauchens is retiring after this season, his 44th with the Lyric. Despite opera’s big city sophistication, “I’ve never really lived in a town,” he said.

In Hampshire, Bauchens and his wife Portia have a home on a 4-acre wooded lot with a pond, where they have resided for 25 years. At one time their closest neighbor was a half-mile away.

Bauchens, who had previously lived in St. Charles, grew up working on a farm in southern Illinois near Collinsville. His path to music started in sixth grade playing the cornet. He switched to tuba two years later, in part in tribute to an uncle who played the same instrument and who had a career in classical music.

After taking part in the music program at Collinsville High School, Bauchens enrolled at what is now Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where he studied with a member of the St. Louis Symphony. He later took lessons with Arnold Jacobs, the renowned tuba player for the Chicago Symphony.

That led to graduate school in the mid-1960s at Northwestern University. Sometime thereafter Bauchens started earning money playing jingles made by Chicago’s prosperous advertising firms. He also joined the Chicago Brass Quintet, for which he would play for 29 years; cofounded a Roaring ‘20s-style group, the Buffalo Shufflers, in 1967; and landed an audition with the Lyric in 1968.

He joined the Lyric a year after a musicians’ strike, when about a third of the members were new. Bauchens said schedules for opera musicians were more demanding then, which led to more time spent together and more camaraderie. These days, he added, things are more institutional.

Bauchens’ career also has included teaching for 17 years in the 1970s and 1980s at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb; and a stint as the head of the Orchestra of Illinois. With associate Terryl Jares, a violinist-violist with theater orchestras, Bauchens has been running ARTRA Artists Management since 1984, representing an eclectic assortment of musicians.

Many, if not most, weekdays, Bauchens rises early to take a train to the ARTRA office, keeping a disciplined routine. Not that the life of a classical musician is always serious. Bauchens said that even in the opera world, when a horse has an accident on stage it brings a laugh from the audience.

And in 2000, Bauchens told the International Tuba Euphonium Association a tale of playing a solo during the second act of Wagner’s “Siegfried,” when a blackjack video game he had in his pocket accidentally activated, confounding the conductor and bringing shuffles from his fellow musicians.

With retirement imminent, this winter 125 people applied for Bauchens’ spot. “There are very few tuba jobs, one in every orchestra,” he said.

Bauchens likened his tuba gig to being center on a football team: The position receives little glamor or attention but holds the offense together.

“It’s a fun job,” he said, “but not as easy as people may think.”

JEREMY MOELLER, AURORA

On his 45th audition for a professional classical music organization three years ago, Jeremy Moeller wound up with what he considers a dream job, playing trombone for the Lyric Opera.

Moeller started out wanting to be a saxophone player, having been inspired by John Cusack playing one to woo a girlfriend in the 1980s flick “Better Off Dead.” But a music instructor convinced him to try the trombone. And in high school in New Jersey, he was known for his (over)enthusiastic playing. That’s to say, while he was good enough to be taking lessons from a classical musician in Philadelphia, he was loud.

Moeller attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., then went for his master’s at Rice University in Texas, the state where he spent most of his childhood.

After grad school, Moeller moved to Chicago in 2000 where he tended bar and waited tables. But his talents soon had Moeller traveling the country, with an audition tape sent to the Sarasota Opera Company. That landed him a temporary job there in 2001, which led to performing with the Burning River Brass ensemble and the Charleston Symphony for two years.

In 2003, he wound up at Grand Valley State University in Michigan on the brass faculty, a job that involved performing as well as teaching. And in 2004 he found summer work with Chicago’s Grant Park Orchestra, where he would meet his wife-to-be, violinist Kjersti Nostbakken.

Moeller also played in the Chicago Philharmonic. He still performs with this group, and gets temporary work with other Chicago area symphonies, including Elgin’s.

“Chicago is one of the few cities where a musician can make a good living freelancing,” he said.

Moeller wound up back in the Southwest with the San Antonio Symphony in 2006, then took a job with the Cincinnati Symphony in 2007. Responding to an ad in the musician’s union newsletter in 2008, Moeller auditioned for the principal trombone opening with the Lyric Opera — a process that involved first playing behind a screen.

The field of more than 75 players was narrowed to a few finalists. Moeller was one of two called back in March for another round, and he got the spot.

With his wife and her daughter, Kalliyan Paulding, the family lives in Aurora, not far from Naperville off Route 59. Most rehearsals start at 11 a.m. It takes Moeller about 90 minutes to get to work, where he frequently parks six blocks away to save money, toting his horn case back and forth. A home in the Fox Valley also affords him an easier commute to another position, teaching trombone at Northern Illinois University.

Moeller said two of his most memorable experiences at the Lyric were last season with Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Wagner’s “Lohengrin.”

“They were two of the more interesting and exciting trombone parts that I’ve played so far. The Britten has only one trombone part and plays a funny role in the opera. I had my biggest moments when Nick Bottom becomes the donkey and the fairy queen falls in love with him. It coincided with the more comedic parts of the story. It was fun playing glissandos and other funny licks and hearing the audience giggle at the same time (between the music and what was going on onstage),” he said.

As for the Wagner, Moeller said, “It was special just because of its size and scope. It was a four-hour and 45-minute opera, and the low brass section (three trombones and tuba) has some huge moments by ourselves.”

Though the job sometimes means 15-hour days, “I get to work somewhere,” says Moeller, “where I get to do what I love doing.”

REBECCA MCFADDEN, NAPERVILLE

At the Chicago Symphony, two women from the Fox Valley have behind-the-scenes jobs with that legendary organization.

For over six years, Rebecca McFadden of Naperville has been one of two production managers for the CSO.

She went to school for oboe performance at the University of Cincinnati, hoping to play in an orchestra someday. She ended up transferring to the University of Illinois at Chicago, and upon graduation, took a job at the school’s Department of Performing Arts.

McFadden said her background in music is a big plus for her job. “People may not realize how many events go on at Orchestra Hall throughout the year and how difficult it is to schedule everything, with enough time for soloists to rehearse and enough tech time to set the stage, focus lights, and do sound checks.”

There’s something going on most every night at Symphony Center. Also, live music is unpredictable. “You never know,” she said, “what will happen on the day of a concert, including artists’ travel delays, changes in back-line (instrument) needs, personnel changes, or locating musicians’ missing luggage or equipment.”

McFadden recalled an instance where a bass player noticed a hum in the sound system. In trying to fix that, the sound post (a dowel in the instrument) collapsed, making the bass unplayable and in need of a luthier to repair it.

“In addition to being a live concert, it was being recorded for future broadcast on NPR, and this happened just a couple of hours before the concert. I called every luthier I could find, but it was Friday at 6 p.m, and no one was answering. Fortunately, the bass player ended up getting the sound post fixed on his own,” she said.

McFadden’s job allows her to meet many of the performers on concert day. One of her favorite concerts was the CSO’s annual corporate night fundraiser in May 2009, where the symphony performed with Sting.

In addition to her weekday schedule, McFadden works 60 concerts per year, Her husband also commutes to Chicago, so they live within walking distance to the Naperville train station.

She likes the friendliness of Naperville and the city’s downtown, as well as Centennial Beach.

“There’s nothing like that in the city,” she said. “At the same time, I like the energy and pace of downtown (Chicago), and there’s nothing like the CSO in the suburbs.”

RACHELLE ROE, AURORA

While McFadden attends to production details, Rachelle Roe of Aurora is the director of public relations for the CSO. She, too, grew up with musical dreams.

She started playing piano at age six, switched to flute at age 12, and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the latter instrument.

“My hopes had been to play in an orchestra,” Roe said, “but of course, every flute player wants that.”

Instead, after graduate school in Boston, Roe took an arts-related marketing and PR job in that city. She moved to New York City with husband Andrew, a freelance trumpet player, where she worked for the Lincoln Center. She joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic; then, after a short stint with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Roe signed on with the CSO.

What she likes about her neighborhood on the Aurora/Naperville border is that it offers good schools (son Jackson is six years old), and a close train line. It also offers “space to breathe.”

As for her PR role: “I can’t imagine a better job, and I’ve found that perhaps it comes easily to me because I love what I do.”

FROM THE STORYTELLER

The four people interviewed for this week’s storyteller commute from Aurora, Hampshire and Naperville to jobs that are part of Chicago’s cultural history. And they work in buildings, that if not haunted by musical ghosts, are at least filled with memories that accompany the passing along and the growing of traditions.

The Civic Opera House opened in 1929. In 1954 it became home to what is now called the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The Lyric purchased the building in 1993 and had it renovated by 1996.

The Chicago Symphony has its roots in the Chicago Orchestra, which was formed in 1901. Orchestra Hall, designed by Daniel Burnham, opened four years later, and these days is part of a larger complex called Symphony Center.

Today, the Lyric and the CSO are considered among the most prestigious classical music-related organizations in the world.

Given all the above, to a person, each subject of this story felt privileged to have such careers and part of something bigger as a result.

And here they are, living amongst us in the Fox Valley, part of our mix too.

I mention this because of the rarefied stereotypes a good many of us have about culture beyond pop. It’s not all Frasier Cranes, tuxedos and champagne-sipping smarty pants types. Or even the Marx Brothers.

The problem too many of us have with experiencing new things is we think we’re supposed to know everything about them in advance; or we have a predisposition as to what those experiences should be.

So we don’t go to the opera, or the symphony or a play, or to a jazz concert, or maybe even to hear a new rock band or to a new restaurant.

All of which is a long way of saying, if a guy like me can go to the opera or the symphony and enjoy it, you might as well give it a try, too. Who knows? You could be visiting your neighbor’s workplace.