Notes Are Key to This Exam

While other Ventura College students took finals this week, those in Music 14 and Music 15 courses prepared for their season finales.

Clarinetist Bernard Leventhal, 88, rehearsed for the solo performance of a sonata he has been studying for eight months. Trumpet player Daniel Palomino, 21, bought his first tailored suit. Aspiring conductor Markus Montgomery, 26, slept with the score to “The Great Gate of Kiev” and “Hopak” by Mussorgsky at his bedside, in case he woke up with an inspiration after his late-night cramming sessions.

Leventhal, Palomino and Montgomery are enrolled in the college’s Community Orchestra class, which gives its last concert of the school year tonight at 8 p.m. in the Ventura College Theater. This mandatory performance in front of at least 400 people is the final exam.

“Performing is a little bit more difficult than a regular test, because if you mess up, all the people are going to hear,” said Palomino of Camarillo, who also plays in his family’s mariachi band. “It makes you want to practice instead of procrastinate.”

The 50-piece orchestra, in existence for nearly three decades, is made up of 40 students and 10 paid semiprofessional musicians, brought in to round out the wind, string and brass sections.

The students run the gamut from teenagers to seniors and include teachers, engineers, lawyers and others who just want to keep up their musical “chops.”

“It’s the epitome of a community orchestra, because it puts a guy like me--who has been playing forever--alongside kids who are still in high school,” said Leventhal, a retired chiropractor who spent much of the 1930s performing Big Band music on cruise ships and in New York clubs.

During a semester, the class meets weekly, with some evening and weekend rehearsals before the orchestra’s two concerts. The orchestra will also perform the national anthem and “Pomp and Circumstance” at the college’s spring commencement exercises.

Students earn only 1.5 credits for their time and effort, but the course allows them to live out a piece of their dreams.

“There’s a certain amount of ego satisfaction that comes with being able to say, ‘I’m probably the oldest man ever to play this [Leonard] Bernstein sonata,’” said Leventhal of Oxnard. “I told them, ‘You’ve got to let me do this while I still can.’”

Montgomery said being selected to lead the orchestra during one of its pieces was an honor that left him speechless. Although he hopes to pursue a career as a conductor, he said that even if he doesn’t make it professionally, the leadership training will live with him forever.

Director Burns Taft, a veteran music professor at Ventura College, said his orchestra and a similar one at Moorpark College fill a void in Ventura County’s music scene, where opportunities to hear symphonic works performed the way the great composers intended are rare.

“To put a professional orchestra on the stage, you are talking about millions of dollars, so people don’t get many chances to hear one,” Taft said

Taft said the students who are retirees often tell him they enjoy performing with the orchestra because it “keeps them mentally and physically alert in a way that other activities don’t match.” For the working students, “it’s an island of serenity in a hectic world, and that’s something that people need,” he said.

Palomino, one of the concerts four soloists, is scheduled to perform a trumpet concerto by Haydn. Initially, he was hesitant about telling his friends he had signed up to be in an orchestra, but a year later, he is proud of it.

“I find a lot of people appreciate it even if they don’t understand it,” he said. “I will probably never get to play in an orchestra after this. But it’s a learning experience, and I’ve encompassed everything I’ve learned about blending and dynamics into my mariachi band.”

Tickets to the concert cost $10 general and $5 for students and seniors. Proceeds help defray expenses. The theater is on Loma Vista Road, between Central Campus Way and North Campus Way.