Itzhak Perlman’s Back in Town and Loud

The eighth annual Perlman Music Program is up and running in Sarasota.

On Thursday evening this year’s class of 36 string musicians – from violin to bass – sat down for their first orchestral practice for the program. Their ages range from 13 to 20, and they come from all over the world.

They’re playing in a tent — a very nice tent in a community that knows all about acts in tents. And Thursday’s free rehearsal was a near full house. You could hear the squeaks and squawks of strings being tuned behind a makeshift curtain before the performers took to a low stage.

Once assembled, Itzhak Perlman rode a scooter and then used crutches to come before the orchestra. He contracted polio at the age of 4, and has walked with crutches all his life. And what a life.

By trade he is a fiddler. One of the best of the 20th Century, and maybe the 21st. He was one of a quartet to play during the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

In 1995 his wife Toby — also a violinist — started the Perlman Music Program, beginning as a summer camp on Long Island for string musicians between the ages of 11 and 18. And eight years ago, they expanded with a partnership with the USF Sarasota-Manatee and a host of local sponsors.

It’s become a late-December/early-January cultural event for the two-county area. Again the emphasis is on young virtuosos. And in this case, they are on their Christmas vacation from schools across the United States and the world.

Norway, China, Indiana, Israel, Texas, California, Korea, Germany, Ohio, Tennessee, England, Japan and Georgia (the American Georgia) have members in the band.

“It’s our first attempt to play this,” Perlman said to the audience.  He then raised his baton, and began to make communal magic. It became a tent full of angry bees, with piercing point and counterpoint and pinpoint musical expressions.

They stop and they start. One of the starts is hair-raising. Perlman picks a point in the score, which is a crescendo. With a simple “one–two,” he takes the orchestra from silence to full-bore loud in a split second. The discipline of these young musicians is breathtaking.

Perlman was droll. “Well, we survived this,” he quipped. They will continue to practice a 1939 Béla Bartók piece, his last adaptation of European folk themes before he came to the United States.

On Friday, the orchestra will rehearse again at 7 p.m. It’s free. Ditto on Tuesday and Thursday — both at 7 p.m. If you prefer voice to strings, the chorus rehearses at 5 p.m. on the same days under the direction of Patrick Romano.

There is a special concert for children on Jan. 6 at 3:30 p.m. in the tent. It’s free too, and is an opportunity for kids to watch other young people play challenging classical music. Part of the Perlman Music Program is not only to refine the skills of the young and brilliant, but also to inspire other young people to make music.

The program comes together for a final performance at the on Jan. 7. It is the only performance of the Perlman Music Program that isn’t free. You can buy tickets through the Opera House.

For information you can call 955-4942 or jump on the web to perlmanmusicprogramsuncoast.org.

A final and eerie observation: The performance tent at USF is on the western side of the campus, screened behind oaks and palmetto.

I left early, on deadline. As I walked away into the night, the tent disappeared but the music was loud and came straight out of an old Florida hammock — like somebody hid an orchestra in the bush. 

Classical music unbound and loose in the night.