Youth Takes Center Stage for San Diego Symphony

Despite the San Diego Symphony’s newfound fiscal stability, the players’ wages remain at the low end of the scale for U.S. symphony orchestras. As some of the more ambitious players take positions with better-paying orchestras in Los Angeles and San Francisco, their ranks are filled with younger recruits.

Rodney Mack, a 23-year-old musician from New Orleans and recent graduate of Philadelphia’s Curtiss School of Music, just joined the San Diego Symphony as assistant principal trumpet. Mack discovered that one does not slip into such a post with quiet anonymity.

“My first concert here was a run-out concert in Rancho Bernardo,” he recalled. “In my position, if the principal trumpet cannot play, then I play principal. He wasn’t there, so having to play principal the first time out was like jumping right into the fire. Then the first concert here at the new pops site I had to play principal again. That program included Holst’s “The Planets” and “Star Wars”--all those really big-blow tunes. When you have to lead, the rest of the guys are checking you out.”

Mack survived his initiation and has only praise for his colleagues in the brass section. He had already gained a favorable impression of the San Diego Symphony when he attended performances of the Mahler Second Symphony under music director Yoav Talmi during the trumpet auditions in April. Besides the orchestra’s level of performance, Mack was struck with the audience’s serious response to the Mahler.

“I remember when I was playing with the New Orleans Symphony before it went under. There, people walked away saying, ‘I hope they’re still in business next week,’ or ‘Did you hear they haven’t paid the players?’ I thought San Diego might be the same situation, since I knew they had been locked out before. But, when I went to the Mahler, everybody was talking about the music. ‘What did you think about the section where the voices came in?’ or ‘I think he did it a little differently than he did last night.’ “I was surprised by that. I guess I expected a lot less, since San Diego is not Boston or Cleveland or New York. I was pleasantly surprised they were actually talking about the music.”

Fellow newcomer Matthew Zory joined the San Diego Symphony last fall as assistant contrabass only to move into the principal slot a few weeks into the season when then-principal Oscar Meza joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In May, Zory won the audition for the permanent first-chair position.

And Zory, like Mack, has his impressions of the symphony’s audience.

“I’d describe our audience as small but dedicated,” Zory mused. “What I find interesting, is that when I’ve given tickets to new friends here in San Diego, they attended a concert, enjoyed it and made it back again. But it is disappointing that they hadn’t known about the symphony before that experience. I think there’s a bigger audience out there that would enjoy the symphony.”

Zory, too, has nothing but praise for the other musicians of his section.

His journey to San Diego from New York City, where he was a free-lance bass player, included playing a year with the Phoenix Symphony. It was there that he first encountered Talmi as a guest conductor, an experience that encouraged him to take the audition for principal bass in San Diego.

Zory is pleased with his westward migration, but he misses New York’s contemporary music scene.