Comment on 'Sarasota Orchestra Masterworks II concert with Conductor Thomas Wilkins'

Maestro Thomas Wilkins

Dominique-René de Lerma writes to the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

The following emails might be of some interest to you.

From: William J. Zick [mailto:wzick@ameritech.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2012 10:52 AM
To: Dominique-René de Lerma
Subject: YourObserver.com: 'Sarasota Orchestra Masterworks II concert with Conductor Thomas Wilkins'

Hello Dom,

Thomas Wilkins makes a splash in Sarasota:

http://africlassical.blogspot.com/2012/12/yourobservercom-sarasota-orchestra.html

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My reply:

Dear Bill,

              I knew Sarasota very well before my Indiana days.  Renée Longy and I were both added to the faculty of the University of Miami at the same time, as the first faculty appointments of Dean John Bitter (she had been his solfège teacher at Curtis, where he had had been a flute student  of Kincaid).  Mme Longy and I hit it off beautifully da capo (we even contemplated buying a French chateau in Goral Gables, which she thought wickedly delightful  to contemplate) because I knew her father had been first oboist with the Boston Symphony before Koussevitsky, who Georges Longy hated, and she retained great devotion for her father).  

When she said she would like to visit another former student, David Cohen, in Sarasota, I offered to drive her on our first break.   (Renée left Miami later to teach at Juilliard until her death).  I became enormously fond of David and he was crazy about chamber music (although by profession he was owner of a huge wholesale business -- Smith's Specialty Company, and he was amused as a Jew to have a firm with that name!).  

Dave had been a violinist at Curtis and he had friends who completed a string quartet, all passionate amateurs.  He enlisted me to join the group, which I did every time Renée and I got to Sarasota and often on my own.  The cellist was a superb dowager whose husband (who hated music) had owned a railroad in the Upper Midwest.  She, like Dave, was a person of substantial wealth -- I was greeted at the door by a butler, the first of two times with that experience [the other was when I was a dinner guest of Chicago's French consulate].  

Dave later paid for my graduate study (I was supposed not to know this) and became the city's mayor.   The orchestra at the time had as many locals as possible, but imported players from elsewhere for the concerts, conducted by Alexander Bloch (who was a very sweet guy).  I was booked for a concert and played the G-minor oboe concerto by Handel as well as the Swan of Tuonela (on English horn).  I played like a god, by the way.  I loved Sarasota and its rich blessing of music and art lovers.  Dave built a home on Siesta Key, such an architectural innovation that it won the international award for the year. It is featured on the Internet.  

When the New College was going to open, Dave wanted me to join the faculty (its head was the son of the composer of Mammy's little baby loves shortnin' bread) but I had just started the 14 years I spent passing through Indiana.  This was about the time the city imported the 18th-century opera house from Italy (Osolo, I think it was), in which my former Morgan student, Kevin Short, would appear several times.  More recently, Eileen Cline (formerly my dean of the faculty at Peabody) moved there. I knew all along that Sarasota would have a great future, and I am so happy to hear this news!  I hope this beautiful city never forgets David Cohen!!

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Dominique-René de Lerma

http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com