After being faced with the very real prospect (albeit briefly) of leaving the orchestra for another position, my thoughts have turned to the many people who I have watched leave, either through retirement, resignation or moving on to another job. It’s a sign of just how much the orchestra has changed, in purely personnel terms, since I arrived in 1995.
Here’s a list of those members (in score order, or close to it) that I have been able to cobble together in my memory. Any omissions are entirely accidental.
Note: this list does not include those many fine musicians who served in one or more full season contracted positions.
Flute
Dawn Weiss
Oboe
Judy Litt, Fred Korman
Contrabassoon
Juan de Gomar, Leon Chodos
Trumpet
Fred Sautter
Trombone
Jack Elmore
Tuba
John Richards
Piano
Katherine George
Violin
Gretta Eder, Sigrid Clark, Leah Frajola, Hugh Ewart, Michael Foxman, Matthew Faust, Tristan Lehnert, Ann Leeder-Beasley, Michael Sigell, Ron Williams, Denise Huizenga, Rachel Sokolow, David Brubaker, Lisa Hansen, Paloma Griffin, Gyrid Hyde-Towle, Lajos Balogh, Catherine Knoll, Alicia Yang, Amy Schwartz-Moretti
Viola
Peggy Swafford, Marian Fox, Patricia Miller, Andrey May Pearn, Nancy Lochner, Anna Schaum, Mara Lise Gearman
Cello
India Jobelmann, Stephanie McDougal, Bridget Kelly, Naomi Blumberg, Deloris Plum, Pansy Chang, Mark Votapek, Margo Tatgenhorst, Uno O’Riordan
Double Bass
Burke Shaw, Paul Denola