In blue-collar Burns, chamber music helps bring a small community together
written by James Sinks | illustration by Kristiina Almy
A former county commissioner plays tenor sax. A research ecologist plays the violin. A police officer plays bass clarinet. And a college student and enrolled member of the Burns Paiute Tribe plays tuba.
Twice a year in the Oregon high desert, the nonprofit Chamber Music Society of Harney County brings together volunteer musicians from Burns and the vicinity for free concerts. The most recent, in March, featured fifty-four musicians, and a crowd of more than 200 came to watch and listen to their friends and neighbors in the association’s three ensembles: a choir, bell choir and orchestra.
The repertoire is wide, from folk songs to movie soundtracks to patriotic marches. And the shows are a testament that even in one of the more remote places in the country, music has the power to bring a community together.
“There are people here who love to do music, and the raw talent here in Harney County is amazing,” said Toni Brown, the charity’s board president, a stand-in choir director and a onetime Utah hairdresser who moved to southeast Oregon after meeting her future husband at a black powder shooting rendezvous.
Donations collected from concertgoers, sponsorships and $30 annual memberships help fund scholarships for local students to attend music camps, buy instruments or take private lessons.
Southeast Oregon’s sage-blanketed Great Basin is home to more cows than people, and it’s also long been a locale where those people romanticize the arts. When founded in 1889, the county seat, Burns, was named after the Scottish poet Robert Burns. And a century ago, Harney County earned statewide acclaim for what became known as the Sagebrush Symphony.
Before World War I, a classical violinist named Mary Dodge moved to the high desert with her husband, who was working on an irrigation project. After arriving, she began giving music lessons and built a youth orchestra. The Sagebrush Symphony toured towns of Eastern Oregon and then charmed crowds in Salem at the State Fair and in Portland in 1916, even earning coverage in The Oregonian newspaper.
A few years later, after the Dodges returned to Portland, Mary launched what would become the Portland Youth Philharmonic.
While not formally connected to the youth symphony of old, today’s Harney chamber music association is fueled by the same passion for performance, and also by the camaraderie that forms when artists bring their voices and instruments together, said Pete Runnels, a former Harney County judge, tenor sax player and now human resources director for the Burns School District.
“Everybody is welcome,” Runnels said. “Some of the members are in seventh grade and still learning, and then you have people my age and up to 80. The appetite is here for the arts, from cattle folks to businesses and doctors to everybody in between.”
The concerts at the high school and churches also help high-light the need for a community performing venue, said association president Brown. A separate but allied organization is spear-heading fundraising for that dream, she said.
Community music nonprofits dot the map in Oregon and across the country, ranging in size from a few performers to 1,000 or more—and all of them do more than just entertain, said Sarah McElfresh, National Membership and Composition Contest Chair for the New York-based Association of Concert Bands.
The pandemic was hard on many community performing groups because people couldn’t share airspace, but they’ve made a resurgence since, she said.
“Music is an expression, and if you can express yourself through music, whatever you choose, it can give a community a soul,” she said. “When you come together, you are a family. You rally around this thing, and no matter how different we can be, we can do this common goal of making music.”
Robert Burns was known as the “poet of the people.” In his best-known work, “Auld Lang Syne,” he sang about the enduring bonds of friendship, and old acquaintances who should not be forgotten.
Chances are, he’d be pretty pleased about the chamber music—and the people making it—in the town that bears his name.
The next Harney County chamber music performance will be in December.
Learn more at www.harneycms.com
