If you’ve been around people in local rock bands for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly suffered though enough litanies of perennial band grievances to know most of them by heart: The drummer quit, the singer’s a twit, the amp is blown, the money — gone. We haven’t even started talking about music yet. The do-it-yourself ethic is an enticingly romantic prospect, but it’s a path fraught with any number of maddeningly predictable, ambition-derailing perils. And if you think finding a semi-competent bass player who’s not too drunk to play is hard, imagine how DIY might apply to someone assembling a 41-piece symphony orchestra from scratch. Not to mention securing a 450-seat concert venue, making sure the concert is well-promoted, and, oh yeah, composing the symphony itself.
Regardless of what you ultimately take away from the music of Golden Arm Trio’s Graham Reynolds and Brown Whörnet’s Peter Stopschinski, seeing their “underground symphony” vision come to fruition is bound to be inspirational. After all, not just anyone could convene an orchestra outside the financial tent of both universities and commissions.
“Everybody’s doing it because they want to do it, and there’s no pressure for us to do anything other than what we want to do,” maintains Reynolds. “It’s exciting, because it’s coming from a completely different source than virtually any other symphonic music.”
Though their classical compositions are far removed from the ragged strains of punk rock, the largely independent nature of Reynolds’ and Stopschinski’s approach to symphonic music echoes the transforming potential of punk’s greatest (yet oft-unfulfilled) promise: the ability to do anything you wanna do. By writing and staging their own symphony, the two local musicians are bringing an attitude normally confined to the garage into the concert hall. Is it any wonder that many in their audience are longtime veterans of rock fandom, desperately eager to be blown away in an era where Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is deemed safe enough for a flu-medicine commercial?
Saturday’s symphony performance is the logical culmination of previous ambitious projects undertaken by both Reynolds and Stopschinski. Within the Golden Arm Trio’s revolving lineup, pianist/percussionist Reynolds covers a wide musical range from jazz to funk, also collaborating on a number of local performance-art projects involving dance, puppetry, film, and even comedy. His collaboration with Cinemaker Co-op resulted in short films for all 26 tracks on the band’s 1998 debut, The Golden Arm Trio.
Stopschinski, a graduate of the UT School of Music’s composition program, plays keyboards for the avant-punk ensemble Brown Whörnet under the moniker RUN-PMS. Brown Whörnet integrates everything from punk and funk to jazz and epic soundtracks into their breakneck dynamic. They’ve collaborated with artists as disparate as Tony Campise and Daniel Johnston, and their Halloween performances of music set to the silent movie classic Nosferatu drew capacity crowds to the Alamo Drafthouse. All of this is to say Reynolds and Stopschinski are both visible and well-connected within a myriad of musical and artistic circles, a factor that went far in helping them assemble their orchestra.
“We didn’t have to put up a flier or take out an ad in the paper to get musicians,” says Stopschinski. “All the musicians were gathered by word of mouth. It was just friends of friends; people referring their friends to us and allowing us to call and say, ‘So-and-so gave me your number.’
“It’s intimidating to think of asking 41 people to think about that music for that long,” continues Stopschinski, “especially when we’re not able to pay them very much. But Graham is not afraid to call people up and ask them to put lots of time into things he wants to do. They can always say no.”
The full orchestra will include musicians from the Austin Symphony Orchestra, the Austin Lyric Opera, and the UT School of Music. Charter members of the orchestra included many Golden Arm Trio veterans along with the Tosca String Quartet, an offshoot of tango ensemble Tosca that played a selection of Reynolds and Stopschinski string compositions at the Hyde Park Theatre in June. Although the Quartet only had a week and a half to learn 20 pieces of music and the theatre was kept steaming hot due to a noisy air conditioner, the event was an unexpected success that provided much of the go-ahead impetus for the symphony performance.
“There was magic made that night,” recalls Stopschinski. “Those Tosca girls played their asses off. The audience was just leaning forward in their seats. They could’ve been playing anything, because the way they were playing was so great. I thought it almost made the music secondary. After the show, Graham said, ‘We didn’t deserve to do that good.'”
As a product of both the UT School of Music and the local underground rock scene, Tosca cellist Sara Nelson has watched these developments from a dual perspective. She’s the only person in town who can claim to have played with both Pavarotti and local pop-punks Stretford. The Tosca String Quartet now commands the rapt respect of audiences and fellow musicians alike, but Nelson remembers playing cello when cello wasn’t cool.
“When I was a kid, being a string musician made me a geek,” she says. “I didn’t want to tell anybody. Even when I first got to college, hanging out in the punk music scene here, I was embarrassed. I couldn’t believe it when so many people said, “Wow, that’s so cool!'”
Nelson’s incredulity was probably even greater when Stretford initially approached her to play cello on “Silhouette,” a song from their 1995 album Crossing the Line. Although cello on a Stretford album made about as much sense on paper as Burl Ives singing “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” the end result was a pop song with a much more harrowing emotional resonance than guitars could have produced. Nirvana achieved a similar effect with the cello arrangement of 1993’s “All Apologies,” but a cash-strapped local band like Stretford could not have done this without a classically trained ally in the scene.
“Usually it would cost at least $100 an hour to have a cellist come play on your album, but I was doing all this for a six-pack of beer,” laughs Nelson. “I figured the more stuff I got my name on, the better. Plus, these are my friends, so it’s fun. I want people to have the opportunity of having strings on their album without having to pay through the nose.”
Since then, Nelson has played on recordings by other local acts such as Silver Scooter and Bruce Robison. She has also played onstage with Lyle Lovett and Bernadette Peters, but her biggest “classic rock” moment was playing in the string section backing Robert Plant and Jimmy Page at the Erwin Center.
“The only thing that sucked was wearing earplugs when we played because it was so loud,” she says. “We don’t have frets, so every time we play, we have to make tiny adjustments. As soon as you play the note, you listen to yourself and adjust it accordingly. I had no idea if I was in tune or not, but you know what? It was fuckin’ rock & roll! Playing ‘Kashmir’ was the coolest thing ever!”
Nelson’s problems hearing herself onstage highlight one of the biggest challenges of introducing classical elements into a rock atmosphere. Natural instruments have no knob that cranks to 11 to compensate for crowd noise. That means everyone must be quiet to hear the music, something an audience member full of bad jokes and liquor might not care to do.
In addition to talking loudly during soft passages, Nelson reports some audience members have actually tried to ask members of Tosca questions in the middle of a song. Tosca accordionist and longtime Austin music fixture Glover Gill (81é2 Souvenirs, D-Day) has resigned himself to the fact that such pitfalls come with the territory.
“I just have to say to myself, ‘This is not a concert hall. This is a bar,’ and people go to bars to drink, scream, and have a good time,” he says. “There’s the very rare bar, such as some of the old jazz clubs in New York City, where you’re expected not to talk over the band, but those are rare. They’re paying our salary, because they’re able to sell whiskey, so I have to grin and bear it.”
On the other hand, playing in bars has enabled Tosca and its offshoot String Quartet to introduce elements of classical music to people who otherwise might never set foot in a concert hall. The fact that one can drink, smoke, and chat in a club goes a long way toward relaxing someone who might feel a bit uncomfortable and outclassed in a more formal setting.
“Classical music obviously alienated its audience a long time ago,” asserts Stopschinski. “Luckily, the audience wasn’t completely alienated, but most of it was. The size has dwindled so much. I think a lot of that is just the stupid formality of it and the pretension.”
Whether it’s Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” or the haute culture parody of a Grey Poupon commercial, classical music has often been portrayed — fairly or not — as the province of patrons, not proles, in America. While much of American popular music is fundamentally rooted in classical forms, classical music itself is usually segregated from pop music discourse. In many record stores, the classical section is literally walled off from the rest of the store. Moreover, the length of most classical music precludes its airing on commercially driven media except in bite-sized excerpts.
“The classical music world is sort of fossilized,” says Reynolds. “The traditional world has the same basic repertoire it’s had for about 90 years or so. It hasn’t really grown very much at all. A little bit here and there, but hardly. Standard pieces that you hear at orchestras around the country are pretty much the same. In the meantime, composers have become an academic institution that survives in that little, isolated pocket.”
That said, some orchestras are striving to expand their repertoire. The San Francisco Symphony’s S&M collaboration with Metallica has certainly raised their profile in the rock world. Meanwhile, Austin Symphony Orchestra conductor Peter Bay points to recent collaborations with Darden Smith and Nanci Griffith as one way in which classical and pop intersect on a local level.
“Because there is so much live music here, the citizens of Austin are attuned to all sorts of music,” says Bay. “Therefore, in order to keep up with the amount of music that is being presented, I’ve felt the need to keep up and not just be a staid organization.
“I don’t want to only present the same things that all orchestras present. As much as I love the mainstream classical pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, I really feel the need to also present other things. I’d like to have as much variety in our programming as there is in the city with popular music.”
The Darden Smith collaboration, titled “Grand Motion,” took place last November at Bass Concert Hall. It was a multimedia work that featured Smith playing piano and singing as well as the Johnson-Long Dance Company. Interestingly, Smith’s work was presented alongside compositions from the likes of Chopin and Ravel.
“We had a very mixed reaction to that collaboration, but in a way, I thought a mixed reaction was a very healthy one,” says Bay. “I didn’t think everyone who came to that program would accept it, but most people seemed to appreciate the fact that we were trying to do something new and fresh. I think that counted more than anything. It’s given me hope that we can do unusual things like that and have it be accepted by what is primarily a classical audience.”
Rock audiences, for their part, have had a similarly mixed reaction to the introduction of classical influences. While the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often credited as rock’s greatest contribution to high art, some critics dismiss it as a baroque overstatement that isn’t even the Beatles’ best work.
Opinions are even more sharply divided over the merits of “art rock” bands that emerged in Sgt. Pepper‘s wake. These efforts to introduce erudition into rock played a major role in fomenting the grass-roots discontent that helped spawn punk rock as a musical style and movement. But as more and more rock music becomes just as stratified and calcified as the old-guard forms it once rebelled against, a scavenger hunt of re-examination becomes essential.
“I think audiences are ready for something different,” says Gill. “The pop music world has become a little disappointing to your average audience. There’s not a whole lot of meat there to grasp. I think they’re pleasantly surprised to walk into a bar and see a string quartet.”
As the boundaries between high and low art become more blurred, the DIY ambitions of artists such as Reynolds and Stopschinski are further enabled. If their debut symphony performance is a success, they already have plans to put together a “season” of concerts featuring concertos, chamber music, and more symphonies. Either way, we’ll undoubtedly continue to see Reynolds and Stopschinski plying their trade in the clubs with the Golden Arm Trio and Brown Whörnet.
Perhaps the most novel aspect of the symphony project is that of personality. Not only are Reynolds and Stopschinski alive, they’ll be right there in front of you. This serves to humanize classical music where it might otherwise seem faraway and unreachable.
“A lot of times, people go to see the orchestra in their city without necessarily knowing what pieces are being played,” Stopschinski points out. “In this case, people know the composers and that’s why they’re coming.”
After all, who doesn’t like to see local boys make good? 
Golden Arm Trio and Brown Whörnet present “World Premiere Symphonies” by Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski, Saturday, February 12, at 8 & 10pm. Tickets, $10, are available at 33 Degrees and Waterloo Records.
This article appears in February 11 • 2000.
