Retirement Is Music to Ears of Chiropractor

In a dusty corner of the Ventura Salvation Army thrift store, Bernie Leventhal found a bassoon inside an old black case.

“The keys were tarnished, so I knew they were silver,” Leventhal said. “It was quite a good instrument.”

He bought it and began taking lessons. That was three years ago. Leventhal was 79.

Leventhal, a retired chiropractor, now plays bassoon in the Ventura College Community Orchestra. He also plays solo saxophone--which he took up as a teenager--for the orchestra.

That would be plenty for most musicians. But Leventhal, who also plays clarinet, performs locally with two other groups: The Sweetest Dixieland Band, a seven-piece group he leads, and The Bernie and Paula Duo, with pianist Paula Tresslar.

He occasionally performs in local trios and quartets. In fact, he will perform with the Ventura College Community Orchestra on Jan. 11, and with a quartet at the Carnegie Cultural Arts Center in Oxnard on Jan. 20.

At home, he practices two hours every day.

After a couple of false starts with the piano and the violin, Leventhal at age 13 began playing saxophone. From his home in Staten Island, he rode the bus, ferry and subway to lessons in Manhattan. After high school, he attended the Julliard School of Music and launched himself into a professional career in music.

But after a few years, he found the lifestyle too hard. At age 20, he went back to school to become a chiropractor. But Leventhal never left his instruments behind.

“I used to teach clarinet and saxophone,” Leventhal said. “I also played in clubs. That’s how I paid for school.”

During World War II, Leventhal played in a military band. And after moving to North Hollywood, where he had his chiropractor’s practice, he held biweekly jam sessions with professional musicians.

Leventhal moved to Oxnard when he retired in 1990 and immediately began organizing his band here.

“It keeps me in touch with younger people,” Leventhal said. “I’m usually the oldest player. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to keep up with them.”

Leventhal said he likes jazz and classical music but doesn’t care much for rock music. A flier advertising his duet reads, “A journey back . . . to the halcyon days of radio, when Beatles were bugs, and Sting a sharp pain inflicted by a bee . . . and you could, at the turn of the dial, hear the Benny Goodman Quartet doing their nonpareil rendition of ‘Avalon.’ ”

Leventhal said learning to play bassoon was no easy feat.

“It’s much more difficult than the saxophone,” he said. “The fingering is very tricky. It’s like playing two clarinets at once.”

Leventhal said he wrote to the Guinness Book of World Records asking to be listed as the oldest person to begin learning to play bassoon. He got a polite reply saying they recognized his achievement, but they did not list that category.