From Don Julin's living room to a standing room only crowd, the 88 Strings Plucked String Orchestra has come a long way in 18 months.
Presenting a public concert Wednesday evening at the Traverse Area District Library, the ensemble's second public performance ever, the overwhelming response and enthusiasm of the crowd pleased the veteran musician and composer.
"I'm really proud of them,” said Julin, who has been playing the mandolin for about 26 years. "I felt that everybody's hard work was well worth it, when you consider that the first time they saw any of that music was when I handed it to them at the end of September.”
The concert featured 18 musicians playing a range of music, from folk to traditional and Bach to Tchaikovsky, with a Lennon/McCartney number thrown in for good measure. The first half of the concert featured small group ensembles; after intermission the whole orchestra gathered to perform five pieces plus three selections from The Nutcracker. Julin, who arranged every piece for the orchestra, also included his original composition "White Hair and Wisdom” in the full orchestra line up.
"With some of them not being very good readers, they had to memorize most of this so they worked hard at it,” said Julin of his players. "The next music is going to be even tougher for them: I'm focusing on the film composer Nino Rota, he's most famous for the themes from "The Godfather” and he did most of the themes from the old Fellini movies.”
A private mandolin teacher in the area riding a wave of interest in the instrument, earlier in the year Julin helped create an Extended Education course at Northwestern Michigan College. The 19 class members, including three guitar players, gathered every other week during the fall semester to play together and master their music.
Most players were novices to the instrument and also took private lessons from Julin to further their development. The orchestra draws from a broad swath of Traverse City, including four teenagers as well as airline pilots, a landscape architect and a doctor.
"The whole idea is that this is supposed to be community education for people who want to get better at their instrument,” said Julin. "Everybody learns from everybody; what a cool group of people who are intelligent and want to be creative.”
While the guitar has been ascendant in popular music for decades, the mandolin has had a respectable history since it's invention around 1700 in northern Italy. Classical composers including Vivaldi and Beethoven wrote pieces for plucked string orchestras that also included mandolas and mancellos, other members of the mandolin family.
European immigrants brought their instruments with them across the Atlantic Ocean, including the mandolin. These small, plucked instruments were easy to carry and, as players settled into their new homes, the traditional sound evolved to include an American twist.
"They started to experience this new music, ragtime and all this American sound,” said Julin. "There's actually a body of work written for mandolin orchestras, mostly American music from the late 1800s, early 1900s, that sounds like Scott Joplin rags.”
At the turn of the 20th Century, the Gibson Guitar Company actually sold more mandolins than guitars but by mid-century guitars had gained their place thanks to rock 'n' roll.
"Most towns around [the turn of the 20th Century] had mandolin orchestras, they included guitars, banjos or whatever plucked instrument,” said Julin.
A relatively obscure instrument, the mandolin, when it is thought of, is today mostly associated with bluegrass or folk music. However, with its roots in American ragtime and a heritage of Old World compositions, Julin is ready to bring the instrument into northwest Michigan's consciousness in a new way.
"I've been to some conferences and seen some very authentic mandolin orchestras and thought that might be fun to try that,” he noted. "What I'm doing with the guitars is filling in for the mancellos and mandolas, because there are so many guitar players around and it's a similar sound that blends well with the mandolin.”
For more information on the 88 Strings Orchestra, see the website www.donjulin.com/88strings.ivnu.