Ruth Stevens plays viola and is the co-founder
of the Lyric Chamber Orchestera. Photo by Tim Stepien
By Steve Plunkett
The Lyric Chamber Orchestra has a new conductor, a new soprano and a new focus: After nine seasons, it’s going pops.
But it still feels largely unappreciated.
Clark McAlister is the Lyric’s new conductor.
McAlister also is a music publisher.
“Here you have a gem in Highland Beach that so many people don’t know about,’’ said Ruth Stevens of Boynton Beach, one of the orchestra’s co-founders and its principal violist.
It’s not easy getting the word out, Stevens said. None of Highland Beach’s many condo buildings will let them put up posters, she said, and the town won’t air an announcement on cable TV ’s government channel.
The Lyric Chamber Orchestra’s 22 members
practice each Thursday. Their next concert is April 1.
Town resident Seymour Strauss, whose wife, Dorothy, is also a Lyric co-founder, uses the public comment portion of Town Commission meetings to put in a good word for the all-strings orchestra.
“Please come, we need the attendance,’’ the retired dentist said at one meeting. “Some of our musicians spend as much as a hundred, a hundred and fifty dollars a year of their own money paying for gasoline to get to the rehearsals.’’
The Lyric’s first of two concerts this season drew about 150 patrons to St. Lucy Catholic Church. The parish hall can hold 100 more people, and orchestra members hope to pack the place for their April 1 season finale.
Chet Olson plays bass during during a rehearsal
of the Lyric Chamber Orchestra at St. Lucy Catholic
Church in Highland Beach. Photos by Tim Stepien
The orchestra’s 22 musicians practice every Thursday at the church. At a recent rehearsal they went over Franz Schubert’s Eight German Dances, from 1823-25, and Irving Berlin’s A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody, from 1919.
April’s performance will also include the Britten arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony and Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves, said McAlister, a composer, music publisher and former assistant conductor with the now-disbanded Florida Philharmonic.
Also joining the orchestra this year is soprano Josephine Dolce, who sings for Opera Night at the restaurant Josephine’s of Boca as well as concerts sponsored by the Friends of the Highland Beach Library. Dolce recently became St. Lucy’s music director, Stevens said.
Despite this year’s changes and a sense of optimism for the coming performance, the musicians chafe over not receiving any money from town government. The current season would not have been possible, Strauss said, without “generous” contributions from Stevens and the Lyric’s principal violinist, Vera Rosen of Coral Springs.
Highland Beach gave the orchestra $5,000 in its first year and again in 2005 but nothing since.
“I don’t think we can stay there much longer,” Stevens said. “It would be a pity to leave, but there comes a
point where you say,
‘So long.’ ” Ú
The April 1 performance begins at 7:30 p.m. at St. Lucy’s, 3510 S. Ocean Blvd. Tickets are $15 and $20. For information, call Ruth Stevens at 733-3245 or see http://lcohb.org.
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