El Paso Symphony

Once they were just 25 amateurs, sawing and whuffing under the baton of a music-store proprietor. Last week they were still partly amateur. But with near-professional gusto, in the final concert of its season, the El Paso Symphony bounced through a professional program: Delius, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, the Beethoven first symphony and--with an imported professional soloist, Violinist Henry Temianka --the Lalo Symphonic Espagnole.

Decade ago, Manhattan's Juilliard School of Music sent one of its greenest sprigs, highbrowed Henry Arthur ("Hine") Brown, to the Southwest to stir up sweet sounds. Mr. Brown taught violin at New Mexico College of Agriculture, didn't stir up much until he went to El Paso. Then he waved a stick over the amateurs, and they turned into an orchestra. In five years the symphony, selfsupporting, was coming and pahing with as much assurance as any young outfit in the land.

Conductor Brown, now 34, glares professionally at 85 musicians at three rehearsals a week, half a dozen concerts a season. Half the orchestra is professional, and unionized, about one-third of it feminine (including Hine Brown's pretty, violin-playing wife). The players average $10 a concert, get nothing for rehearsals, and the union looks the other way. One reason: Biago Casciano, first horn and librarian of the orchestra, is president of the union local. He is also a barber. When Pianist Marcus Gordon arrived in El Paso to play with the symphony, he dropped into the barbershop for a trim, was amazed at being asked some shrewd questions about phrasing in the concerto of the evening.

When the symphony's assistant concertmaster, Violinist Dr. Eric Spier, is missing during a concert, the orchestra and audience know why. When he arrives late, smiles and raises two fingers, everyone knows it was twins; he is one of El Paso's leading obstetricians. The El Paso Symphony has numerous Mexican players, several Cavalry officers from Fort Bliss. An Indian janitor, Chief Guadalupe Serna, a dead ringer for the brave on the buffalo nickel, plays the bull fiddle. At one time the orchestra's schedule had to be accommodated to the schedule of the Southern Pacific Railroad, because the clarinetist was a Pullman conductor. He was an absent-minded clarinetist. When the orchestra played Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, in which the clarinet roops a rooster call, he missed his cue. After the closing chord, the Pullman conductor realized his omission, leaped to his feet, played the rooster call, sat down amid riotous applause.

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