Keyboards and Kids: A Marin Symphony Life

Onstage in their long black dresses and tuxes, the ladies and gents in a professional orchestra like Marin Symphony would seem to have lives as smooth and well-paced as the music they play. You might assume when they’re not rehearsing, they’re home practicing on their strings or woodwinds, percussion or brass, or listening to beautiful music on their state-of-the-art sound systems. Not to say there’s never a broken string or personal crisis, but you might imagine their daily lives are more serene than average, or at least than your own.

But you could be wrong. For instance, in addition to rehearsing for the symphony’s next concert, Cross Currents & Vocal Splendor, tomorrow and Tuesday, keyboard player Heather Creighton has (for one thing) been trying to set up meetings with several young violinists who study with her friend Patricia Minor. Creighton accompanies Minor’s students during solo performances at recitals (one of which, a benefit for the Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra, is March 19). Each needs to come to her house in Kentfield to rehearse.

Two days a week, Creighton cares for a couple of her grandchildren, in Fairfield; once a week, she watches another two grandchildren, in Mill Valley, then hurries off to give piano lessons. She accompanies a choral group once a week. When she isn’t doing any of the above, or practicing up to five hours a day, depending on the piece, or rehearsing, not to mention cooking or cleaning, “I’m working in times to meet with four very busy high school kids.”

The Marin Symphony concert will open with Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (such a dynamic piece, you don’t even miss Russ Tamblyn and Rita Moreno). The orchestration calls for piano and celeste, which looks like a small upright piano or big wooden box and sounds something like a soft glockenspiel. (Think “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”)

Creighton says the two instruments will be pushed close together almost at right angles, so that she can play both from the same bench and never have to turn her head away from the music.

Interestingly, the first piece Creighton performed with Marin Symphony, about 16 years ago, was also by Bernstein.

“They were playing a chamber music program for the opening of the Jewish Community Center,” she recalls, “and were desperately trying to find an organist for Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. I’m not really an organist, but in a pinch I would do what I could. The symphony started using me more and more … and now that I think about it, we played something that had a celeste part a few months after that.”

The other half of Creighton’s half of the program is Zipperz (a soaPOPera), by the young San Francisco composer Nathaniel Stookey. Now this sounds fun: Based on the “zipper” poetry of Bay Area writer and sculptor Dan Harder, Zipperz is “a breathless affair,” according to the press material, that takes two singers (soprano Elsa Davis and tenor Manoel Felciano) through the social rituals of dating; naturally, that includes a cell-phone call, with “ring tones” for flutes and woodwinds. Stookey says the piece combines “the romance of opera, the sizzle of pop, the guilty pleasure of daytime television.” What more could you want?

While Creighton could head home after Symphonic Dances, she expects she’ll stay on to see the rest of the program. After intermission, the 85-member orchestra and 115-member Marin Symphony Chorus will perform six popular opera choruses and overtures, among them the Anvil Chorus from Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the Bridal Chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin, and the Bell Chorus from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.

As usual, music director Alasdair Neale, perhaps joined by guest soloists, will talk about the evening’s entertainment before each concert. Afterward, on Tuesday, audiences can join Neale, orchestra members, and guest artists at nearby Embassy Suites for conversation, free hot hors d’oeuvres, and a no-host bar.

Sunday, March 13, and Tuesday, March 15, Marin Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, 7:30 (6:30 for Neale talk), Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael; $29-$70, half price for students, Marin Center Box Office, 499.6800; marinsymphony.org. Benefit recital, March 19, 2:30, Mt. Tam United Methodist Church, Mill Valley.