I heard from an old school friend the other day. He was throwing out stuff and came across a photograph that he thought would have involved me, and he asked if I'd like to have it. I certainly did, and he mailed it to me.
While waiting for it to arrive, I realized how few photos I have from my college years -- not just of me, but of anyone or anything I was involved with. Like, practically none. How could that be? Well, I thought about it, and can only say that during those years, I had no camera at school with me and I just wasn't in a picture taking mode. That was the case with almost everyone I knew. If there was a photo of a concert or something, it would have been something the local newspaper published, or one the school had used in its catalogs or other publicity. In short, to say that the photographic evidence in those days was nothing like it is today would be the understatement of the millennium.
That's why even the surfacing of this photo meant something. It's a Polaroid on heavy card stock that had survived the years by being kept in a box. The friend had snapped it while visiting and observing a rehearsal at Meadow Brook, the summer music festival at Oakland University in Michigan, in June 1969.
I think you can click to enlarge.
The young James Levine is conducting. I'm standing in back, second from right, playing something in the percussion section (don't remember what) in Pictures at an Exhibition. At first I thought I was the one on chimes, but I think not in that piece. (Must investigate. I have a recording of the concert a few days later, and that might jog my memory.) I know all who were there, but they're hard to pick out. Lynn Harrell, cellist, is visible. Michael Ouzounian, later principal violist at the Met, is in there. Jorja Fleezanis, future concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, is on the second desk behind Tania Rudensky, concertmaster here who later married Met baritone Cornell MacNeil. Two players who in 2017 achieved notoriety re their personal histories with Levine, are present. And so it goes. Interesting times. I only wish I had a hundred such photos.
