When Thao Pham got together with a couple of friends and suggested creating a classical music ensemble seven years ago, she didn’t imagine it would become the local institution the Mansfield Philharmonic is today.
Started in 2017 when she realized the city didn’t have a group dedicated to bringing classical music to its communities, the group began as an ensemble that Pham said she and co-founder Fletcher Rudd didn’t see growing beyond a small chamber orchestra.
Now, Pham said, it’s a diverse group of musicians from countless backgrounds and professions — none of them members of a professional orchestra.
There are plenty of professional musicians in the group, namely music teachers, who are joined by students and musicians with careers in engineering, marketing, research and medicine.
But none of them are paid for their time rehearsing with the Mansfield Philharmonic, usually about two to three hours on Thursday nights. The concerts are free so they’re not making money on performances, either. It's a passion project for everyone in the group, Pham said.
That ensemble that started as a hobby project for Pham and friends in 2017 has grown exponentially in the years since.
D Magazine declared the Mansfield Philharmonic “one of the most diverse orchestras in America” in an article last year — something Pham believes is not only true but one of the reasons the orchestra is so unique.
“There’s a very small percentage of people other than Caucasians in symphonies and stuff,” Thao said. “Our group is very special in that everyone comes from a different background, not just their demographic but just what they do in life.”
She gives credit for that growth to Eldred Marshall, the philharmonic’s conductor.
Marshall is a pianist, conductor, teacher and lecturer who has toured internationally, joined the Mansfield Philharmonic when in 2018 a pianist just stopped showing up to practice.
After making calls to a few different pianists in the area they got Marshall on the phone. He agreed to step in as the soloist for George Gershwin’s iconic 1924 jazz piece, Rhapsody in Blue.
Marshall had three days to prepare to perform the complex piano pieces that are part of the beloved Rhapsody in Blue. Had he not performed it before, he said he doesn’t know if it would have been possible.
“It’s not the easiest piece but I had played it once before, so it was already in my fingers, so it was definitely in my system,” Marshall said. “It didn’t take much for me to pull it together.”
Pham said Marshall just naturally fit into the role of the orchestra’s conductor after that performance. His experience paired with his passion matched what the growing ensemble wanted from a conductor.
He recalled her coming to him after the concert, a big smile on her face and excitement unmistakable in her voice, saying she heard he was a conductor. The philharmonic, at the time called the Next Gen Chamber Players, didn’t have a full-time conductor. Someone volunteered to help out for that performance and they needed to find a permanent director.
Marshall led orchestras across the globe, including the Ukrainian State Academic Orchestra, the Filarmonica Oltenia Craiova in Romania and the Vidin Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria.
When he took the reins for what was then the Next Gen Chamber Players, Pham said the interest in joining from other local musicians exploded.
Marshall said the first thing he did was ask if they could change the name from Next Gen Chamber Players to Mansfield Philharmonic. He told KERA the change helped emphasize that it wasn’t an orchestra simply for young people, but anybody in the community who knew how to play and wanted to join.
Diversity makes a difference
In 2019, NPR reported less than 2% of American orchestral musicians and 4.3% of conductors were Black.
More recent data from the League of American Orchestras found that number has grown in the years since, but white musicians still make up 88.2% of representation in orchestras, with white conductors accounting for 68.6% of all conductors, including music directors.
It’s become a bit of a cliche to say that diverse representation in an industry can show young people that they can do it, too, but Pham says it’s still important, nonetheless.
Seeing Black, Asian and Latino musicians on stage during a Mansfield Philharmonic performance really can demonstrate to young, aspiring classical musicians that it is possible to make it in this industry.
Diversity wasn’t something that was planned, Thao said, but it can be something that inspires young musicians of color.
“We’re not out there seeking for people from different ethnic backgrounds to join, it just kind of happened,” Thao said.
A teaching orchestra
The Mansfield Philharmonic doesn’t pay the musicians who come to each rehearsal and take the stage during performances.
But that can be freeing.
“There isn’t the insane expectation of perfection,” Marshall said. “Of course we’re all going to want to play our best, do our best, but if there’s a wrong note or a slightly botched entrance it’s not the end of the world.”
That lack of pressure for perfection gives the Mansfield Philharmonic and other community orchestral groups like it flexibility, he said. School teachers, accountants, nurses, engineers and students all have opportunities to find a seat in the philharmonic.
It’s also a good pit stop for professional musicians looking for another full-time orchestra, Marshall said, especially with the repertoire the Mansfield Philharmonic tackles. From Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 in E Major they performed in concert on Nov. 24 to concertos by Tchaikovsky and Mozart, the philharmonic doesn’t shy away from challenging scores just because they aren’t an all-professional outfit.
It gives those who are between full-time musical jobs a place to keep their skills sharp.
Those pieces are possible because of the time the philharmonic takes to prepare them and, perhaps more importantly, lacks those professional expectations.
“If you were to make a mistake with the DSO, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra? Oh, you might have to find a new job,” Marshall said. “Because we’re a community orchestra, we give ourselves several rehearsals to figure it out. In a professional setting we would have two rehearsals or less, so we get to lavish more time on this complicated repertoire.”
That’s not the case with the Mansfield Philharmonic.
Musicians can make mistakes in a concert and come back to the next rehearsal, and it won’t stop them from one day having a professional career in music, if that’s what they want.
All the organization asks is they stay committed to learning and improving.
The musicians aren’t the only people learning, either. The ability to put on concerts with such challenging pieces means those in the community can learn more about classical music than they might at other amateur concerts.
Depending on the score, Marshall might give a short explanation standing in front of the stage, or he might literally run back and forth across, going from percussion to strings to winds while acting out the drama of a piece and dissecting the history and the composer’s intent.
That educational element is one of Marshall’s favorite parts, he said. He gets into it, excited to share what he knows with the audience.
“I’ll be going from one section to another and suddenly my inflection changes and it’s like I’ve become a color commentator for a sporting event of a theme of a fourth movement,” Marshall said, smiling as he recalled one time he acted out a piano battle in Beethoven’s Eroica. “Even some of the players have told me they enjoy the educational aspect of it, it’s not just the audience.”
The Mansfield Philharmonic’s next performance, Stravinsky's The Soldier’s Tale, is slated for Jan. 26, 2025 at Farr Best Theater in Downtown Mansfield.
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