001
"America the Beautiful."
"We'll have Stephen
Foster numbers, tradition-
al hoedowns and reels and
great classics by George
M. Cohan, Irving Berlin,
Richard Rodgers and
George Gershwin."
To add some non-musi-
cal fun to each event,
sportscaster Ernie Harwell
will narrate "Casey at the
Bat," and there will be a
fireworks display.
Mr. Levine, 45, will be
making his second appear-
ance with the Detroit
Symphony. In December,
he shared the Orchestra
Hall stage with the Dallas
Brass, an instrumental
quintet.
For the past four years,
much of his time has been
spent establishing the
Oklahoma City Philhar-
monic, which he organized
to replace the previous city
orchestra, Dwindling oil
industry profits in the '80s
resulted in a loss of oil
industry funding for the
symphony and forced it to
disband.
Mr. Levine, who had
been associate director of
the orchestra after moving
to the area as a musical
theater conductor, would
not give up.
He is hoping to raise
enough money to afford
full-time musicians.
"My major goal is to
establish the Oklahoma
City Philharmonic on a
permanent and sound
financial footing,"
explained Mr. Levine, who
In the aftermath
of the Holocaust,
conductor Joel Levine
loves celebrating
the 4th of July
Sounds Of Freedom
SUZANNE CHESSLER
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
uest conductor Joel Levine
holds a special apprecia-
tion of freedom as he pre-
pares to lead the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra in
two concerts celebrating
Independence Day.
With his mother being
the only person in her fam-
ily to survive the Nazis, he
grew up hearing how she
took refuge in a Catholic
orphanage in France and
worked for the French
underground.
Mr. Levine, music direc-
tor of the Oklahoma City
Philharmonic Orchestra,
accordingly has planned a
very festive program for
the evenings of July 3-4 at
Greenfield Village.
"The concerts will have
a lot of patriotic and
Americana music," said
Mr. Levine, who will begin
with "The American
Salute" and conclude with
was a recipient of his
state's 1989 Governor's
Arts Award for his efforts
in founding the orchestra.
"So far, we're five years
into it, and every season
has been in the black, but
just barely. We're working
on a major endowment
drive right now. We want
to get the concert hall
upgraded and raise $2 or
$3 million for our endow-
ment fund."
Long before he started
to think about financing
orchestras, Mr. Levine
thought about the
prospects of conducting
one. His musical interests
started at age 5, when he
began studying piano;
later he turned to the clar-
inet.
"I was 15 or 16 when I
started playing in semi-
professional orchestras,
and I kept bugging the
conductors for a chance to
conduct," recalled Mr.
Levine, who has since
learned the identity of
another performer launch-
ing a career from the same
city — Lakewood, N.J. —
at the same time.
"When I was 16, I con-
ducted a pops concert per-
formed by the State
Orchestra of New Jersey,
and much to my surprise,
the musicians liked my
work. Just before I went to
the Eastman School of
Music and decided to turn
professional, I was con-
ducting musical theater in
my hometown.
"There was a girl who
used to try out for a lot of
the musicals in community
theater, and her husband
played in a rock band.
Sometimes the rock band
used to come to the shows.
"After the performances,
the cast would go out, and
they always asked me to
come along; but I never
was particularly interested
in hanging out with a rock
band. Well, it was the
Springsteen band, and it's
kind of funny to think at
the time nobody knew who
they were."
Mr. Levine decided on
the Eastman School
because it provided a cur-
riculum balanced between
the classical and the popu-
lar and between theory
and performance.
"It was a place to have it
all," he said.
That spirit carried over co
to Mr. Levine's work as he
sought a variety of experi-
ences, including an assign-
ment as music director of
the Maryland Ballet,
where he collaborated with
Agnes DeMille, Alvin Ailey 0
FREEDOM page 76