In 1989, when Hal Lepoff and his partner George Truett bought a house in rural Humboldt County, Hal was prepared to bid a sad farewell to the Berkeley Symphony. But when he mentioned this to Kent Nagano, Nagano replied, “Hey, man, I’m traveling to most of our concerts from Europe. You only have to drive four hours.” He decided to give it a try, and continues his association with the orchestra to this day, staying with friends in Berkeley during the rehearsals that precede each concert.
Hal first took up the violin in the 4th grade through a public school music program in Skokie, Ill. He almost switched to percussion after the thrill of playing a cowbell solo in a grade school concert but stuck with the violin, playing in school orchestras through high school. He moved to California in 1970 and gained a wide range of musical experience over the next ten years, including stints as a violinist with Major Crumleigh’s Combined Traveling Circus and Pandemonium Shadow Show and as an electric violinist with a rock group called the Ed Blake Band. The late seventies found him pursuing a music degree at San Francisco State University, where he met a fellow student named Kent Nagano.
Hal joined the Berkeley Promenade in 1975, a few years before Nagano was named conductor, during the era when the orchestra spurned traditional concert garb. Longtime audience members may remember him as the violinist who wore purple silk trousers and a flowing violet silk scarf at concerts. In 1982, Nagano invited him and BSO colleague Jean MacRobbie to solo in the Bach Double Concerto.
The move to Humboldt County spelled a lot of changes. Hal says he soon “learned to use a chainsaw and a rototiller, and I also became a pretty good country fiddler.” When he told Nagano he had won the Humboldt Open Championship at the Blue Lake Fiddle Contest several years running, Nagano asked composer and then-principal hornist Glen Swarts to write a fiddle concerto for Hal, which he performed with the orchestra in 1994.
Remembering the public school music program that got him started in music, Hal says he is “committed to providing that opportunity for the kids in my community, a very poor rural area that otherwise has no other musical opportunities.” On the basis of his own fundraising he has created a program that makes music lessons available to students from kindergarten through the 4th grade at Redway Elementary School.
An avid gardener, Hal has planted thousands of daffodils and more than 100 rose bushes on the land surrounding his house, not to mention corn, tomatoes, beans, fruit trees, water lilies, and lotus. In addition to his school teaching, he has several private students, some of whom pay through barter arrangements. He plays chamber music often and is recording a CD with a local East Indian trio made up of sitar, violin, and dumbek (a Middle Eastern drum).
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