Hitting All The Right Notes
Kathy Waters/Highlands Today
Ralph Bell has been a member of the Heartland Symphony Orchestra for two years.
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Published: September 4, 2008
Updated:
SEBRING - Ralph Bell wasn't a musician. The 80-year-old played a trumpet in a battalion band during World War II, but he gave that up and never picked up another instrument until a fellow Lions Club member showed him a violin 20 years ago.
Kim Houser of Avon Park thought it was in her genes. The flute and piano instructor's father plays the flute, her mother a grand piano, her great-grandparents built instruments for a living and her son plays the electric guitar.
Bell's violin and Houser's flute can be heard among 20 to 30 other instruments in the Heartland Symphony Orchestra when its rehearsals begin later this month.
Bell and orchestra conductor Bryan Johnson described people ranging from experienced high school band players to retirees playing in it.
"It's a hobby," Johnson said. "Just like the... very active community bands in the Avon Park and Sebring area, a lot of people who enjoy playing."
Each year the orchestra travels from South Florida Community College to several of the area churches, doing three or four major performances between more than a dozen rehearsals.
Johnson said the orchestra is approximately the size of those that existed during the classical era of the 1700s, when composers such as Bach and Mozart were around. These orchestras typically played in venues such as private homes and small theaters.
"They played to an upper class audience," he said.
Some like Johnson and Houser had a lot of experience in other groups. Others, like Gene Longo, came simply for the fun of it. Longo saw the orchestra as a way to fill his life up when he had the spare time.
"I always wanted to play a violin since I was a child," said Longo, a former president of the Heartland Symphony Orchestra. He first joined a philharmonic band in Miami after a divorce when he was 35, before moving to Lake Placid and joining what was then called the Highlands Symphony Orchestra in 1996.
Johnson could not tell how long the orchestra existed, even though he took it from June Zweidinger while it was the Highlands Symphony Orchestra three years ago.
"She wanted someone to take over for her," Johnson said. "You just don't want to leave them but it was something I wanted to do ... I enjoyed it ever since."
The orchestra's next show will be a performance of George Frideric Handel's Messiah. Tentatively, it's scheduled for December.
Johnson said he is still looking for a few more players that are interested in joining. For more information on the orchestra, its rehearsals or shows, call Bryan Johnson at 863-638-7231.
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