♪♪ Narrator: It's been said that the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.

But perhaps in the case of our story, a more appropriate saying might be, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single note.

As we navigate our path in life, sometimes we end up missing the most incredible things hidden right under our noses.

A great example can be discovered while traveling through the mountains on Interstate 80 towards Tahoe.

If you blinked you might miss the exit to the small town of Auburn, California.

But then you would also be missing many of the Auburn's hidden gems, like a lost gold mining town, frozen in time, filled with rich history, breathtaking National Forest, rivers, parks and culture.

Another hidden treasure in this area is the Auburn symphony.

This community Symphony comprised of professional and non professional members alike, are all volunteers.

It's that precise distinction that turned the daring climb, they were attempting into one of the most complex musical performances that any community orchestra has ever attempted.

This is the story of the Auburn Symphony, Scaling the Heights.

♪♪ ♪♪ Bill K.: Auburn's a very unique place, in a lot of ways.

It's one of the few cities around here that has its own airport.

It's one of the few cities that has its own symphony orchestra.

It's really nice to be in a community that is small and yet has the quality of the players in the Auburn Symphony who can really change people's lives.

Michael G.: It's such a joy working with the Auburn Symphony, because the musicians work so hard.

Together, we're able to almost take every concert to a new level.

Rob H.: I met Michael Goodwin, very interesting, great man, kind of almost an art-type conductor.

Funny, really kind of got the organization I think right in a path and we really liked.

It was a Tuesday rehearsal before our family concert.

Patty W.: Michael wasn't there yet.

Someone in the orchestra had received a phone call that he was having some issues earlier in the day with one of the tires on his car.

So we didn't think so much of it, because he had called and said that he may be late if he needs to stop and address this.

Kathy W.: It wasn't until later that evening that we got the news and and somebody had called me.

And it was just...

Rob H.: You know, I had always thought that the symphony was Michael.

And I went to bed that night thinking this was the end of the symphony, we had a concert coming up in three days.

He was so much of what I knew about the symphony that I just couldn't foresee a path forward.

Maestro Peter: When I heard of the unfortunate and tragic circumstances of his passing away, I actually called up the Auburn symphony and said, Is there anything I can do to help?

Because I knew basically that this organization, we were kind of in a triage situation.

Patty W.: I remember them asking the orchestra, "Do you want to continue with the family concert as scheduled, or should we, you know, just cancel it?

And the orchestra said no, this is what we want to do.

This is what Michael would want us to do.

Maki K.: Our hearts and many of us, you know, didn't... had not yet relinquished the orchestra from Michael to somebody new.

We just didn't feel like we were ready for somebody new.

Curtis K.: Peter was the only other one that we could see at that time, that could even step into those shoes.

And he was stepping into a lot.

You know, a lot of chaos.

Christopher J.: When I was much younger, I went as an undergraduate at Stanford.

I played in the Stanford Symphony.

And Peter Jaffe was getting his doctorate in conducting at that time, so why would he play for us he conducts a professional orchestra.

You know It's difficult for us to play at the level of what I'm sure he'd expect, demand and want.

Maestro Peter: Well they kind of corralled me in the meeting with them at the taco tree after rehearsal.

Now I just got to say that I'm sure that the taco tree is a wonderful eating establishment, but we actually didn't eat there.

And that's not because we didn't want to eat there, bear in mind that we're talking about, let's say 10:15 at night, and they really wanted to talk to me about the relationship we were developing.

And they hoped I would throw my hat in the ring.

And I guess I did.

I remember walking into the very first rehearsal with the Auburn symphony, up in the band room of Placer High School.

Maki K.: I remember wondering who is this character, his style was such contrast to Michael.

And he was so loud.

And he was really (to me), being mean to my friend, Patty Wassum behind me.

Patty W.: So it was a little intimidating, because you could tell immediately, he had very high expectations, and he wasn't going to settle for anything less.

Maki K.: Then you fast forward to when Peter came to really work with us.

And we soon learned quickly how fabulous he is as a conductor.

And he was also very intelligent in his transformation of the orchestra in that he tried to bring us into his world.

Maestro Peter: Being a conductor, in terms of study is a very lonely process, a lot of it is just with me sitting there, just staring at a score, and hearing everything in my head.

Just like reading.

There's an intermediate internalization process.

For anybody who's had kids, you know that there's this relatively brief time when your kid is learning how to read when they start pronouncing the words out loud.

And then it goes to whispering.

And then finally, and it's amazing how quickly this happens just over the span of a few weeks or months.

Finally, they go to just internalizing everything.

And it's the same thing, when you learn how to read music in a really big complex score format, you might first start doing something on the piano to play the notes, or you might imaginarily play your violin or sing whatever your background is, and then eventually, it becomes in this kind of tweener thing where you will imagine you might be playing.

And then finally, it just becomes internalized, where you just look and you listen.

David L.: He's not about simply making music with his group.

He's about educating them.

He wants them to be better.

He wants them to deeply understand the music and be passionate about it.

Aaron S.: In my teaching, I've found that I've modeled a little bit after Peter just in the way that he's really wanting a lot for me right now.

But he's not angry.

He's not like, belittling me.

He's just trying to get more out of me.

Richard A.: First of all in rehearsals, he was saying, let's just play through this, we're gonna fright-read this.

I said "fright-read", that's very funny.

We all understood that fright-reading meaning sight-reading a piece of music from beginning to end, without ever having played it together before.

And try not to make mistakes.

It's a lot of pressure on everyone, including me, a nervous wreck.

So he uses his term "fright-reading".

So again, adding the humor does pretty much cut the anxiety a little.

Then I was saying, "Why is he picking such challenging music?"

You know, "Metamorphose" and by Heinemann this and that.

And finally, when things started to congeal, and the ensemble started to improve, and the technical abilities of each individual player, being able to play with others with specific articulations, it became obvious he was doing that to improve the orchestra.

♪♪ ♪♪ Richard A.: Ever since I was a kid, I felt that I could hear and recognize someone's personality through their instrument.

And so let's say I was listening to someone that was known to be kind of a mean or gruff, nasty, violinists a famous violinist, and they're out there and you hear their music, but you can hear that in their playing.

You can hear that tightness that grittiness that because you know, ultimately, music is a spiritual thing.

And a good musician wants to express innermost emotion, as far as it is appropriate for that piece of music he's playing, and Peter is a brilliant and joyful.

And like I said before, he's very informed and intellectual.

And he's also a kind person and you know that he likes people, and the audience hears him all that comes through humor, the energy everyone talks about that.

And that really projected the technical prowess of the symphony, and their morale to a huge high level.

Rob H.: So one of the great evolutions of the Auburn Symphony was when we decided to add a pop concert to our repertoire.

Peter suggested that we might do a Halloween concert.

Bill K.: Peter encouraged everybody in the audience to come in a costume.

But he also encouraged the musicians to come in costume.

And that was really, really strange because I came in and sat at part of the tail end of the rehearsal to look up and watch all these musicians dressed up and the sort of unusual costumes was really, really interesting.

Richard A.: Half the music was classical music inspired by the macabre or the grotesque, and going back 200-250 years.

And then I had to play in a cape, and a cowl and tights.

I mentioned before about the humor of our conductor, Peter Jaffe, I mean, he's a stand -up comedian level humor.

(Audience laughter) Maestro Peter: (Audience laughter) Have I got hat-hair?

Too bad.

(Audience laughter) Fayth V.: I love that the audience is so engaged and they really find it enjoyable and have a good time.

I love how Peter interweaves classical works in with the themes of more of the pop music.

So I think someone that necessarily isn't into Classical music will come to the concert to hear those other works, and then still be exposed to possible pieces they wouldn't normally listen to.

Rob H.: People showed up in costume.

Peter was in costume that the entire orchestra was in costume, honestly feel like it was really one of the funnest concerts that we ever had.

At the Auburn symphony, we had a parade of folks that came up, it really allowed us to bring families and to expose folks, because it wasn't just pops, there was also spooky songs that were part of the canon, you know, and those were interspersed with like Rocky Horror Picture or whatnot, and it was just a blast.

Fayth V.: I think they're lots of fun, because I do love the costume aspect.

I like planning my own costume.

And I love how all the different sections of instruments usually, like have a plan.

So sometimes the flutes are The Three Musketeers or, you know, there's the alien band in the back or something like that.

I think that just adds a lot of joy to the music and fun for the audience.

Anne B.: To put on a concert is this huge undertaking that involves so many people.

It's not just the musicians, right, who've been preparing for weeks to come and play.

But it takes all these other people to put a concert on.

You know, we work with the staff at Placer High School.

You know, they're working a lot behind the scenes, with the venue setting it up.

They're up in the sound booth, we have our stage manager and our business manager who also does front of house.

It just takes this huge village of people.

By the time it's over, I'm literally exhausted, but I always have a smile on my face.

Maki K.: Auburn Symphony also has a wonderful young artist program.

It's a competition for students of elementary through senior High School.

Rob H.: It was in the young artist competition that we discovered young Amaryn Olmeda.

Amaryn O.: When I did my first young artists competition and they made dreams come true.

I wanted to be professional violinist.

So yeah, I just loved playing the orchestra ♪♪ Maki K.: and then the grand prize winner is then selected to play as soloist with the orchestra in the following season.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (Applause) Amaryn O.: It was the best experience of my life.

If someone asked me if I wanted to go to Disneyland, or perform onstage at the Mondavi, I would totally choose Mondavi, because it was so amazing for me anA with the whole orchestra behind me and it's great acoustics.

It was just wonderful.

I was so happy I got to do that.

Narrator: As their journey together, continued, Peter and the symphony set their sightsA on higher and higher peaks.

What they were about to discover, was that the joy of ascending a musical mountain is much more of a challenge than meets the eye.

Maki K.: He often asks the musicians, what would you like to do and solicits ideas for concerts?

Christopher J.: One of the pieces of music we always loved, was the Alpine symphony.

It's a huge Symphony had wonderful brass parts.

And Peter looked us What do you think about that?

And I, I looked at and said, "Are you kidding me?"

This is our bucket list piece that Victor and I both wanted to play, I couldn't believe that he'd would consider it.

Maki K.: And I said, Chris, here, he'll get you every horn player you need.

And Robin behind me here, he will build the wind machine.

Rob H.: When Peter said, I want to do the Alpine Symphony, I'd never heard of it.

And so immediately, I started groaning internally, because I'm like, oh God, what am I going to do with this thing?

I don't.

And it was a tone poem on top of that, which both words scare me, honestly.

So I started to research it.

And I was amazed.

I was like, holy cow.

Richard A.: As most people know, they probably heard the title Alpine Symphony, but they've never heard that piece.

Because it's too hard.

And it involves too many instruments.

And 5% of the instruments don't even really exist.

They're really weird arcane instruments, that you have to find online or garage sales, or make yourself or find in the collection of aficionado of unusual instruments.

Rob H.: It was unbelievable, I think we had like over 120 musicians, I got really excited about it, then I was like, oh my God, this thing is, nobody plays it.

Fayth V.: One of my favorite parts of the Alpine Symphony is when the thunderstorm occurs, because I played organ for it.

And so that's when you get to play the loud, crashing chords, and just make like a lot of sound.

And it's very tumultuous.

And you can hear the wind and the rain, the lightning and thunder.

And so that was really one of my favorite parts of that whole piece.

♪♪ Robin H.: We needed a whole bunch of other stuff.

For the Alpine Symphony, we needed a heckle phone, we needed an off stage brass choir, we needed an organ, we needed a lot of other stuff plus a wind machine.

And to be able to do that, I thought, what how can I contribute?

How can I persuade Peter Jaffe to conduct the Alpine Symphony?

And the only thing I could do because I have a woodshop.

At home, I could build a wind machine.

What do you do when you don't know how to make a wind machine, you Google it.

And that's what I did found out lots of wind machines that exist in pictures only.

And they exist in various sizes, I knew I needed a pretty big one, too, because you're talking about an orchestra of over 100 people playing at the same time.

And the sound of the wind machine needs to carry over that.

(Wind Machine) Robin H.: And I designed this, by the way, so that would fit in my Subaru the back of a Legacy wagon.

And knowing that usually guys have to go to the bathroom at intermission, including our conductor.

I wheeled it in front of the men's room.

And sure enough, Peter came down and I started playing the wind machine for him.

And he laughed.

And he said, "Oh, we've got to do something with the wind machine."

And I'm going Really?

I wonder what that could be?

Maestro Peter: I'm glad they did.

Because basically what they did, is they helped me overcome my fear about whether something like this would ever even happen in my lifetime.

Just to put this in perspective.

I'm used to conducting professional orchestras as well as community orchestras.

And this piece is not even affordable, by most midrange professional orchestras, because if you're paying by service, it requires too many people.

And not only people on the stage, but people off the stage.

And so this is one of the reasons why it's a bucket list piece, because it's impossible for so many groups to even think about performing it.

Fayth V.: I loved how it brought in so many musicians from all over Northern California.

It was a lot of fun to see people I hadn't seen for a while and got to play with them as well.

And it was just a really great experience to be in such a large force at one time.

Anne B.: So the morning of our concert at the Mondavi Center, we have rehearsal before the performance, and it was just - there was a lot of tension, but it was also very exciting.

And as you know, in this concert, we had all this backstage brass.

So as a stage manager for a while I would I was sitting right outside of the shell, listening to Peter giving instructions and then yelling it at all the brass so they could hear what was going on.

And they did eventually have a TV back there so that during that performance that all the backstage brass would be able to get the cues from Peter as to when they had to perform.

So it was just people everywhere.

And it was very exciting.

Bill K.: Well, so the Alpine Symphony, obviously a very complex piece that never really has any breaks in it, and has multiple episodes, if you will.

And I thought one of the great things that Peter did at Mondavi was putting up subtitles, if you will, up on the screen, so people could know where one part ended, and another part started.

Anne B.: These are words projected up above the orchestra so that the audience could follow along with the story of the journey up the mountain and all the things that happen and down the other side.

So we had to bring in another conductor to actually sit in the sound booth with a staff at the Mondavi Center and follow along with a score.

So he could cue them as to when the supertitle should be projected up on the screen.

So there's so much going on behind the scenes that people don't even realize.

Maestro Peter: And by the way, not only is this an incredibly descriptive tone poem, but it's all true.

When Richard Strauss was a 15 year old kid, he went on this big mountaineering expedition up one of the Swiss Alps and everything that happens in the tone poem actually happened to him.

He really did go by a lake, he really did go by a waterfall.

On the way down, he really did get super drenched by a storm.

Finally, when he was a mature composer, I mean, this is Opus number 64.

You know, so that's his 64th major work that he composed.

Many years later, he's recalling this adventure that he had as a kid, and putting it in his mature orchestral style.

Christopher J.: The piece calls for eight onstage french horn players, and four of those eight players, they've played regular french horn, but also during part of the piece, they have to play the Wagner Tuba.

So I'd like to show you some of these unusual instruments.

Of course this is the French horn.

We call it a double horn.

And this is the most common instrument, but for the Alpine symphony some of the players had to double and play some of these other instruments which are called Wagner Tubas.

We had to get about 20 French horns.

And every player has to be good, you can't get a weak player because that if somebody cracks notes and makes mistakes and really hurts to performance.

So everybody has to be strong.

And then it's part of the story, as they're going up the mountain, they meet another expedition.

And so you hear these horns in the distance, which is supposed to represent this other expedition.

And that requires about 12 horns, also a couple of trumpets and trombones to represent this other hunting horn expedition.

So the people on stage were busy, they had to play their regular horn, they had to go off stage, play the horn backstage, come back on stage, play their horn and then switch over and play the Wagner Tuba, and then come back and play they're very good horn there.

They were quite busy.

But I know they enjoyed it.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kathy W.: It was a very huge concert.

It was very, very emotional.

Of course, we're looking at Peter most of the time, certainly out of the corner of our eyes.

But when you look up and you see that he's in tears, I immediately - we are so connected.

I just - I'll fall into tears as well too.

Rob H.: The Alpine Symphony was probably the pinnacle of the Auburn Symphony's work.

It's such an achievement, that I don't think it can be overstated.

Anne B.: When we got to the end of that performance.

It was just a electric and huge standing ovation.

The musicians were ecstatic.

Several were just in tears.

It was just a beautiful performance and everyone was thrilled to be a part of it.

Maestro Peter: To me, you know, that gets you all choked up, that a group thinks that it can do this, and that it wants to do this, and in the end, it did do this.

(Applause) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪