An interest in music brings a diverse group of people to Salem Lutheran Church on Monday evenings. Some are still in school while others are enjoying retirement. Some are members of the military or medical professionals, others are teachers and business owners. Some pursued careers in music, and others had hardly played a note before these Monday meetings.
All are members of the New Horizons Orchestra, a Spokane-based group that welcomes musicians of all playing abilities.
The variety in skill levels isn't intimidating for conductor Mark Tietjen, who has degrees in music from Washington State and Eastern Washington universities and finished his 30-year teaching career at University High School in 2019.
"True beginners, it will take some extra stuff, but I've rewritten the parts for literally everybody in the orchestra," Tietjen says. "I've simplified them down to whatever it takes to get a person through any measure, and if they have to play a whole note, I can get them to that level where they will be successful at whatever we're playing."
At the end of the day, Tietjen says he wants both aspiring and advanced musicians to embrace the opportunity New Horizons Orchestra presents: the chance to make music part of their lives in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
The orchestra rehearses every Monday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 pm from September through May at Salem Lutheran Church in Spokane's West Central neighborhood. Members pay $40 a month and are welcome to join at any point in the season.
New Horizons Orchestra is part of the New Horizons International Music Association, which supports New Horizons organizations in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and Australia. The inaugural New Horizons band played its first notes in 1991 with Roy Ernst of the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music at the helm.
"When I started the first New Horizons band in 1991, my philosophy was that anyone can learn to play music at a level that will bring a sense of accomplishment and the ability to perform in a group," Ernst writes in his book, New Horizons 2004. "Thousands of New Horizons musicians have proven that to be true, many starting in their late retirement years with no musical background at all."
Tietjen has been with New Horizons since October 2019, taking over the reins from Jerry Thomas, who stepped away for health reasons.
COVID made meeting in person impossible and virtual meetups just didn't work, so for some time, Tietjen says New Horizons became a community check-in via weekly email. The orchestra has now been back in full swing for two seasons.
The orchestra currently boasts about 60 members, though they're always looking for more. And in keeping with Ernst's philosophy, musicians of all skill levels are welcome.
Gail Hammer, for example, joined New Horizons in 2018, two weeks after she began playing the trombone.
"I was never in band when I was a kid, and I can't even describe how happy I was the first time we sat in this big bunch and I was making music with this many people," Hammer says.
Bass trombonist Scott Rima, one of Tietjen's former University High School students, on the other hand, performed in the orchestra, jazz and pep bands in high school but had to step away from music after graduation. He, like many others in the orchestra, was drawn to New Horizons because it offers a welcoming environment for those looking to return to music.
"It's like riding a bike," he says. "If you haven't done it in a while, the balance takes a second. It's like 'I know these notes, but I can't remember where they are.'"
Five section coaches — Karen Bart (cello and bass), Dale Emery (violin and viola), Craig Catlett (woodwinds), Stanton Cobbs (brass) and Paul Raymond (percussion) — work with musicians for the first hour of each rehearsal before the whole orchestra comes together in the second hour.
Bart has worked with New Horizons for about 13 years. She likes to teach and especially enjoys teaching people who want to be in the orchestra.
"As a middle school teacher, sometimes your mommy makes you do it, but nobody here is like that," Bart says. "It was also an opportunity to engage people who maybe didn't have a chance to play when they were younger."
New Horizons typically performs twice a year, once on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the third Monday in May.
At this year's closing concert, "Potpourri," May 20 at University High School, the full orchestra is set to perform four pieces, beginning with Jacques Offenbach's "Can Can" and Icelandic composer Ilari Hylkilä's "Return to Indian Valley."
"Movie music has so infused itself into classical music," Tietjen says of the latter piece. "Many, many new composers now are taking those similar kinds of colors, so it's very familiar."
The pivotal piece in the concert, Tietjen says, is Brooke Pierson's "Symphonic Sketch No. 1," an at times sparse, but other times sweeping piece. He says it's the most difficult and requires the musicians to be confident in their abilities.
The Who's "Pinball Wizard," suggested by an NHO trombone player, closes the full orchestra section of the concert. Each section of the orchestra also performs a piece together.
The concert will also be livestreamed on New Horizons Orchestra's YouTube channel.
At a recent Monday rehearsal, the orchestra worked through three of the four pieces. As a conductor, Tietjen is fun and expressive, shouting encouragement and praise mid-song. Even when critiquing, he puts a positive spin on things.
"What else was unique?" he says at one point when trying to recall a section that needed more work.
Trombone player Keith Adolphson says Tietjen is the one who makes New Horizons Orchestra the supportive environment that it is, but Tietjen will just as quickly give credit to the musicians who return to their musical roots after years away or pick up an instrument for the first time.
"I'm biased beyond words, but it is a skill for life," Tietjen says. "We have a subset of people that come and go again as their vicissitudes allow them, and they do the best they can with what they've got at any given day, and that's the most we can ask of them. Again, the community and fellowship is really overarching and transcendent, and the music is a vehicle for that." ♦
New Horizons Orchestra: Potpourri • Mon, May 20 at 7 pm • Free; donations accepted • University High School • 12420 E. 32nd Ave. • facebook.com/new.horizons.orchestra.spokane
To register for New Horizons Orchestra, call or text Mark Tietjen at 509-370-5807 or email [email protected].
