Pacific Index

This year’s concert provides a unique experience for performers and viewers 

According to Kevin Lefohn, this year’s Pacific Philharmonic Orchestra is not just fun for viewers, but is also an important learning experience for the musicians. Lefohn, an adjunct music professor at Pacific with years of experience performing and teaching, says of this year’s program that, “I wanted to make sure that the difficulty and the variety of the repertoire stylistically was all helping the educational experience.” Lefohn is the guest conductor for the orchestra. 

Lefohn is an instructor of violin and chamber music at Pacific. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in music performance from the University of Oregon, then later a master’s in music performance from the University of Cincinnati. After college, he began his international and teaching careers, saying, “I have taught at universities for a long time, my first professional job out of graduate school was teaching at a university in New Zealand.” 

He continues his career as a violinist, soloist, chamber musician, and conductor while teaching in Oregon. “I have two other orchestras that I conduct,” he says. “Currently, I have a large private studio of advanced students based in west Portland area, and I conduct for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, with two of their ensembles in Hillsboro.” Lefohn adds that he enjoys, “coming to somewhere, to a community, and bringing energy and the skills and expertise that I’ve amassed.” 

Currently, Lefohn is using his knowledge of music to conduct the Pacific Philharmonic Orchestra in their concert on November 21. His selection of music for the concert shows extensive consideration of the musicians. Lefohn explains that there isn’t a theme for the concert because “what’s most important to me is the educational experience of the students.” He adds that choosing music around a certain theme can take focus away from the performers, and their learning experience is vital. 

Furthermore, in consideration of the students, Lefohn says it’s important to keep their varying circumstances in mind when picking music. “What’s important for an orchestra like this is that it’s not too difficult to play, not because they couldn’t do it but because you have a limited amount of time and students are busy, and not every student is a music major and so you have different levels of time commitment…”.   

The audience plays into music choice as well, as Lefohn goes on to explain. Lesser-known pieces were chosen because “I wanted the experience for the audience to be new and novel and unique, and playing a composer that many of the people in the audience may not have heard of becomes an introduction to them.” 

The result of this is a program starting with Edward Elgar’s “The Gavotte from Three Characteristic Pieces,” described as, “kind of a fanfare type piece welcoming people to the concert, helping them get settled, but also it’s big and loud and energetic.” Next is Christopher Wilson’s “Suite for String Orchestra,” a piece featuring string instruments only. For this piece, Lefohn notes, “There’s two movements there. The first one is slow, we could really focus on beautiful sounds from the strings, really listening to each other, and then there’s a fast, dancing movement to finish that.” To end the concert is Emilie Mayer’s “Symphony No. 1,” which Lefohn says is, “Very classical in nature and familiar stylistically to people because most people know and recognize the style of Beethoven. While Emilie Mayer was not Beethoven, she loved Beethoven and she kind of expanded upon his style.” 

Another unique aspect of this concert is the range of musicians. The orchestra includes Pacific students, advanced high school and middle school students from the area, and volunteer musicians from the community. This is because, as Lefohn explains, “The university wants a full symphony orchestra, which includes all instruments… and from semester to semester the university students who are available and at the level the orchestra needs changes. So, one way to fill a full orchestra is to broaden the scope of where the musicians come from.”

Though many may assume the younger students would struggle to perform with older musicians, this is not the case. In fact, Lefohn says, “Sometimes the younger students are more advanced than the adult amateurs, or more than adult Pacific students, and so one of my colleagues said to me, ‘It must be such a wonderful mentoring experience for the college students’… and I said ‘Yes, but there are several occasions where it’s flipped inside out,’ so it’s a really good learning experience for everyone.”

In different ways, the Philharmonic Concert is a valuable experience for performers and audience alike. Lefohn adds that he hopes by having this concert at Pacific, it will spark interest in students who have previously or currently played an instrument. Admission is free to students, and for the music lovers out there, Lefohn adds that the Metropolitan Youth Symphony will be performing the following day. 

 The Pacific Philharmonic Orchestra Concert is November 21 at 7:30 pm. in Taylor-Meade.