The Castro Valley Adult School
Chamber Orchestra Story
Many of you may be wondering how it came about that Castro Valley
now has an orchestra. In December of 2000 my son Aron Efferson, who
plays cello, won the Jenny Lin award and received a scholarship of
lessons with Dr. Allan Gove, teacher extraordinaire. As I attended
his lessons I was inspired to pick up my cello again, after a hiatus
of 17 years, and began to take lessons myself from Dr. Gove. After
about a year and a half I began to look around for a local group to
join, but could not find one. I did not want to drive up to Oakland
or out to Livermore. Then, one evening, as I was listening to one of
Aron‚s concerts, I thought to myself, why not start an orchestra
in Castro Valley? I thought that Jack Luedders would love to conduct
it himself, but he was still planning on working at the time. I then
discussed it with a friend Mark Spencer (switchboard operator at Eden
Hospital), who happened to have experience as an orchestra manager in
a previous life, and he said (in a nice way), "Are you crazy? Do you
have any idea how much work this is going to be?" He then provided me
with numerous resources to help me begin.
We then approached the Adult School, and found that Director
Dobie Gelles was more than willing to help us, by offering a class
through the school. Dobie's staff then worked tirelessly and
graciously to help us get organized. He hired Josh Cohen as Music
Director, who has donated enormous amounts of time to get this
venture off the ground. We were also fortunate to have Assistant
Conductor Asher Davison join us, who volunteers his time in helping
to develop the program and give guidance throughout the process.
Through weekly meetings of our core "board members", including
composer in residence Terri Schmidt, Josh Cohen, Asher Davison, Mark
Spencer, new members Todd Wetherwax and Darryl Berk, and myself, we
have put together Castro Valley's first community chamber
orchestra.
Regarding our future, we our happy to continue with the Adult
School, and have in addition decided to form a non-profit corporation
(The Castro Valley Chamber Music Society), which will enable us to do
fundraising to pursue musical goals such as offering scholarships to
local performers or students to play with us as soloists, pay our
assistant conductor, purchase music, buy music folders and many other
things.
There will also be a change in venue for concerts in 2003. We
will be playing in the beautiful Neighborhood Chapel, thanks to the
support and generous good will of Music Director Les Neal.
We do continue to need help in maintaining and building the orchestra! If
you are interested in becoming involved, please get in touch with us!
Laurie Chaikin, O.D.
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