The view from the back of the stage

Jennifer and Peter Schmeiser moved to Evanston from Florida in 2017 for better jobs, better weather, and, as it turns out, a better orchestra! Pete joined the ESO in early 2018 because, as he says, “if you play bassoon (which nobody else does), the best thing to do when you move to a new town is to join a community orchestra or band. Then you have about 80 people you have a good chance to make friends with!” (Pete says he hasn’t made an enemy yet…) Jen came on board during the pandemic when she was recruited to be Assistant Principal Trombone and is currently in her third season as ­
Acting Principal and now Principal.

Both say that the ESO is “amazing!…It’s a fantastic group and plays really great literature at a high level.” They added that they love the professionalism of the orchestra and find the programming interesting. Given that both the trombones and bassoons sit in the back of the orchestra, we asked them about the view from the orchestral hinterlands.

“Lots of backs of heads!” they both said and, if the program includes a choral work or a piece by Mahler or ­Stravinsky that has a lot of extra winds, they get pushed back even farther, where “we really don’t get to see Larry in ­complete, glorious, high definition!”

Jen says that one interesting thing about sitting in the back is that she “can hear everybody. I can hear the strings as a whole. Now, I might not automatically know what Violin 2 is playing against Violin 1, that kind of thing, but I can definitely hear the strings as a whole. And I can hear the woodwinds very well, too.” However, she has to wear an earplug for the trumpets directly to her right because they have a higher pitch, which hurts her ear! 

As for the bassoons, Pete says “we’re always pretty much dead center and in the back of any group so I just get to project all my sound on everybody else! We’re quite surrounded and you have a row of noise hitting you from the back but, like Jen said, it’s very comprehensive and you get a really good impression of the entire sound field. You don’t get an overbalance of one thing or another — unless the trombones are really going for it, then all you hear is just trombone in your ear. So now I wear earplugs, too…”

The view: the backs of lots of heads; a good impression of the entire sound field; earplugs are a necessity; and sometimes Larry isn’t in complete, glorious, high definition!