Louisiana Phil, from AP

[MileMarkerZero]

BY DEBORAH HASTINGS
Associated Press

The bassoon player is holed up in Texas. The violins are scattered across Ohio, Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois and Tennessee. The French hornist, who also plays the garden hose, is stuck in Nashville. Katrina has blown the 68-member Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra - the only full-time symphony in America owned and operated by its musicians- into exile. And no one knows if their beloved ensemble will survive.

The orchestra's audience, the city of New Orleans, is gone. Its venue, the
ornate Orpheum Theater in the business district, has taken on water. And
many of its musicians have lost their homes.

"There's no reason to have an orchestra if there's no one to play for,"
said Howard Pink, who escaped with his instruments, all 30 or 40 of them,
including his French horns, his ram's horns and a 15-foot alphorn, all of
which he uses on his second job as the star of a traveling road show called
"Howard Pink and Musical Garden Hoses."

Pink's house in Gretna is ruined. "The water damage is insane," he said. He is staying with friends, 450 miles from home and he can no longer bear to look at the images of his destroyed city. "It's too horrific," he says.
The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra is the proud of offspring of the New
Orleans Symphony, which went bankrupt in 1991, leaving its musicians
unemployed and stunned. "They didn't tell us," said bassoonist John
Fairlie, who's staying in Temple, Texas. "We found out because we got
letters from our health insurance company saying our policies had been
canceled."

So the members got together and decided to rebuild the orchestra themselves. They sold their own tickets. They enlisted friends to conduct. "For the first few years," said Pink, "we paid all the bills first and divided what was left as salary. Sometimes that was $50 a week."

Professional French horn players, like every other orchestra member, aren't in it for the money. The pay is lousy - about $18,000 a year in the
Louisiana Philharmonic. You have to love the music, and you have to have at least one other job. Pink has his garden hoses. Cellist Kent Jensen conducts a youth symphony and gives private lessons, and sometimes paints houses. And in New Orleans, an orchestra struggles. Music in the Big Easy means jazz and blues and zydeco - not necessarily Mozart.

"We're not what people think of when they think of music in New Orleans,"
said Jensen, who has taken refuge at a friend's house in Baton Rouge.
"We're not the sexiest thing out there. We're not the biggest thing on the
block."

He fled the day before Katrina hit, with his wife, who teaches Japanese at
Tulane University, his kids, and the family guinea pig. And, of course, his
cello.

Less easy to tote while hightailing out of a flood are the kettle drums. The
timpanist, who owns his own turn-of-the-century instruments, stored his in
the basement of the Orpheum, which most likely is submerged. No one has been able to reach the theater, but photographs show it engulfed by water.

"Most of us are attached at the hip to what we play," explained Fairlie.
"We would never leave without it."

On a Web site and a Google chat group, the orchestra members post messages to each other, giving out phone numbers and e-mails, passing along gig possibilities - the Kalamazoo, Mich., orchestra has openings - and wondering aloud what is left of their scrappy group, and whether they will collect enough funds and public aid to continue.

"We are dependent on the good will of donors," said Fairlie. "And
considering the terrible state of our city, I'm just really worried that the
arts will suffer. And without the arts, what makes us human?"

[tubajoe]

Robert Nunez is the tubist with this orchestra. He is a great player and nice guy. He is safe in Houston with his family, but now out of work.

Please see my other thread about NOLA tubists.