Musicians Fear an Unfinished Symphony

The bassoon player is holed up in Texas. The violins are scattered across Ohio, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois and Tennessee. The French horn player, who also solos on the garden hose, is stuck in Nashville.

Katrina has blown the 68-member Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra -- the only full-time symphony in America owned and operated by its musicians -- into exile. No one knows whether their ensemble will survive.

The orchestra’s audience, the city of New Orleans, is gone. Its venue, the ornate Orpheum Theater in the business district, has taken on water. Many of its musicians have lost their homes.

“There’s no reason to have an orchestra if there’s no one to play for,” said Howard Pink, who escaped with his instruments, all 30 or 40 of them, including his French horns, his ram’s horns and a 15-foot alphorn, all of which he uses on his second job as the star of a traveling road show called “Howard Pink and Musical Garden Hoses.”

Pink’s house in Gretna, La., is ruined. “The water damage is insane,” he said. He is staying with friends 450 miles from home and can no longer bear to look at the images of his destroyed city. “It’s too horrific,” he said.

The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra is the proud offspring of the New Orleans Symphony, which went bankrupt in 1991, leaving its musicians unemployed and stunned. “They didn’t tell us,” said bassoonist John Fairlie, who’s staying in Temple, Texas.

So the members decided to rebuild the orchestra. They sold their own tickets. They enlisted friends to conduct.

“For the first few years,” Pink said, “we paid all the bills first and divided what was left as salary. Sometimes that was $50 a week.”

Professional horn players, like every other orchestra member, aren’t in it for the money. You have to love the music, and you have to have at least one other job. Pink has his garden hoses. Cellist Kent Jensen conducts a youth symphony and gives private lessons, and sometimes paints houses.

An orchestra struggles in New Orleans, where music means jazz, blues and zydeco -- not necessarily Mozart.

“We’re not what people think of when they think of music in New Orleans,” said Jensen, who has taken refuge at a friend’s house in Baton Rouge. He fled the day before Katrina hit, with his wife, who teaches Japanese at Tulane University, his children and the family guinea pig. And, of course, his cello.

Less easy to tote while high-tailing out of a flood are the kettledrums. The timpanist stored his turn-of-the-century instruments in the basement of the Orpheum, which most likely is submerged.

No one has been able to reach the theater, but photos show it engulfed by water.

On a website and a Google chat group, the orchestra members post messages to one another, giving out phone numbers and e-mail, passing along job possibilities -- the orchestra in Kalamazoo, Mich., has openings -- wondering what is left of their scrappy group, and whether they will collect enough funds and public aid to continue.

“We are dependent on the goodwill of donors,” Fairlie said. “And considering the terrible state of our city, I’m just really worried that the arts will suffer. And without the arts, what makes us human?”