Brandon Community Orchestra continues to thrive after 32 years

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This article was published 23/04/2018 (2902 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At 88 years old, Marie Graham continues to live out her childhood dream of playing in an orchestra.

The cellist spoke about her lifelong passion for music that doesn’t dim over time, but continues to shine through.

“Music is something you can do all your life. It isn’t something you have to give up,” she said. “As long as you have a voice you can sing … and even when you can’t play, you can listen and celebrate with other people.”

Graham reflected on her childhood, when learning Christmas carols at school was about all the music she was exposed to.

“The idea of music and singing was highly attractive to me … I didn’t have any music as a child, so playing in an orchestra, period, was wonderful, playing with other people was wonderful, singing with other people was wonderful,” she said.

As a young mother in the 1950s, Graham was loaned a cello. With a laugh, she said that she “self-taught for a while — badly.”

Later in life she picked it back up again and went to play chamber music and sing in choirs.

Graham has now been a member of the Brandon Community Orchestra for more than 20 years — a group she joined after she retired.

“For the first time in my life, I had time, opportunity, an instrument and a teacher here,” she said. “So I got hooked and I started playing in a piano trio … and played in the orchestra ever since.”

Graham has her dear friend and fellow cellist, Helen Sibbald, to thank for encouraging her to take the leap and play in the orchestra. Sibbald passed away Jan. 5, at the age of 91.

The Brandon Community Orchestra will hold its year-end concert on Saturday at the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium.

It will be bittersweet, as Sibbald’s celebration of life will also take place earlier in the day.

“Helen was a beautiful person,” said Gwyneth Pickering, a founding member of the BCO. “She was an enthusiastic member, and she donated her cello to one of our young cellists … She was very generous in nature, and just naturally giving,” Graham said.

Pickering began playing the violin when she was 12 years old in her home country of Wales. Her passion continued through the move to Canada in 1974. She was part of a string group in Glenboro before moving to Brandon where she helped launch the BCO in 1986.

“There was enough people that were interested in having an orchestra and … one thing led to another, and we got off the ground,” she said. “And since then we’ve grown considerably.”

Pickering is pleased to see the group continue to thrive after 32 years.

“It seems that we are able to get young musicians joining on a continuous basis,” she said. “There’s a really good range of ages in there … It’s really nice to know that it’s going to keep going.”

Luis Ramirez began as BCO conductor last September, and says it has been one of the most enjoyable experiences he has had, music-wise.

“I’m mainly a pianist, but as a conductor it’s a completely different thing. I get to be even more up close with the music,” he said. “What I’ve liked about this orchestra is that they’re willing to take some new challenges and that they approach them with lots of interest and curiosity, and they end up doing a great performance.”

Ramirez said the members have a wide range of skill sets, from music students just starting out to older generations that still have that love for music.

The BCO’s final concert of the year will feature Prairie Blend Men’s Choir as a special guest.

The group has 23 singers, ranging from high school graduates to seniors, and is conducted by Deanna Ginn.

“We’ve been singing now for 15 years and have worked with lots of different ensembles, but never the community orchestra, so this is a first,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”

One of the pieces Prairie Blend will perform is called “Dragonborn,” which is from the video game Skyrim.

“It is really different for us. There’s a lot of rhythmic grunting,” Ginn said. “It’s challenged us in some ways because we needed to learn how to pronounce this entire Dragonese language that was made for this game. So it’s been a different sort of challenge and super fun to work on.”

BCO will perform music by Delius, Ponchielli, Powell, Soule and Marquez. The concert will feature two world premieres, including “A Prairie Sunset” by Jason Vanwynsberghe, a Brandon University School of Music graduate and former concertmaster of the BCO, in commemoration of Canada 150. It is a soundscape representing the grandeur and peace of the prairie landscape at dusk.

The other premiere is a new composition by Ramirez, “The Threshold of Sleep.” It represents the time between being fully awake and falling asleep and is never the same twice as the musicians improvise entries of structured groups of notes.

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