Gaffers' Band

At his first rehearsal last spring, 48-year-old Conductor Frieder Weissmann could only stand and wonder at his own youthful helplessness. His musicians were all over 60, and "everyone knew everything." The venerable violinists were all showing each other how to play--and no wonder, there were eleven ex-concertmasters in the string section. It was the same with the wise old woodwinds and the boastful brasses. After a frustrating hour, Conductor Weissmann felt like flying back to the peace of his Scranton (Pa.) Philharmonic. But when the Old Timers Orchestra of New York's American Federation of Musicians, Local 802, begged him to come for just one more rehearsal, he had to admit "I fell in love with them."

The admiration was understandable. Inquiring around in Local 802, 66-year-old Cellist Abram Goutkin had found an orchestra-full of retired symphony musicians who had yielded their chairs to younger men but were by no means ready to quit playing. Onetime New York Symphony First Trumpeter Vincent C. Buono, 74, and such 78-year-old gaffers as Violinist Fred Schaefer and Violist Solomon Pressman were enthusiastic about Gout-kin's idea of forming an old fellows' outfit. Sixty others were rounded up in no time.

We Want Culture. Local 802 officials were skeptical at first. But when, after several rehearsals, they heard the orchestra play, they decided that some of Local 802's share of the A.F.M.'s $4,500,000 in recording and transcription royalties should be used to help the old boys along. Czar James Caesar Petrillo himself dropped in, listened and rasped with approval: "That's what we want--culture." Local 802 agreed to pay the Old Timers the minimum scale: $9.00 for one rehearsal, $30 a performance. By August the musicians had polished their work enough to give their first free concert for an audience of 4,000 in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

One possible snag to the orchestra's further progress was the Taft-Hartley Act provision forbidding the A.F.M. to administer its royalty fund itself. But the new fund administrator, Philadelphia Lawyer Samuel Rosenbaum, gave the Old Timers the go-ahead too."

Brasses & Bows. Last week they were going ahead to beat the band. In Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum,' art lovers joined music lovers in the Great Hall for the first of three free symphony concerts by the Old Timers. First, to demonstrate that new music is not beyond oldsters, they sent Virgil Thomson's dissonant Seine at Night flowing down the corridors --and the brasses got their chance to show they still had both wind and beauty of tone. In Chausson's Poeme, with Violinist Ruggiero Ricci as guest soloist, the strings got to prove that they improve with age, like a fine old Stradivarius. By the time they had wound up the concert with a powerful performance of Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, with everybody bowing and blowing their best together, they had won themselves a hearty hand.

Conductor Weissmann hoped his Old Timers had won more than that. Their share of the royalty fund will cover only three museum concerts. Weissmann was hunting a sponsor.

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