Neither Darien Cande’s parents nor any of her siblings were musically inclined, but when Santa Rosa music teacher Jack Murphy visited her third-grade class and gave the students an ear test, he encouraged Darien to take up an instrument. She chose the violin because, she says, “that was the only thing I could think of,” and began taking lessons in the fourth grade. Her studies were interrupted the following year, when she broke her arm, and when she returned to her lessons in the sixth grade she decided to switch to the viola, which she says felt more comfortable to her than the violin.
From the beginning, says Darien, she benefited from the fact that she was just about the only student viola player around. She began playing with an older string quartet in the seventh grade, because they needed a violist, and since there were no viola players at Santa Rosa High School she was able to begin using an excellent instrument that had been donated to the school even before she started there.
Asked what it is that attracts her to the viola, Darien says “The viola has its own voice, and I like the fact that it isn’t a solo instrument. I like being in the middle of the harmonies. The violas have wonderful parts in chords and can really affect the sound of a string quartet.”
Darien attended San Francisco State for three years, then transferred to the Mannes College of Music in New York City, where she studied with William Kroll and started to play all sorts of gigs, from weddings to regional opera companies. But after three years in New York, she wasn’t sure she wanted to pursue music as a career and returned to the Bay Area, enrolling at UC Berkeley to study history.
She continued to play music, but says “I didn’t like the way I played.” It was Gennady Kleyman, a Russian who immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-seventies, who pulled her out of her musical funk. “He was a wonderful teacher,” says Darien, “who made the viola a whole new thing for me. He showed me how to make an expressive sound by relaxing my left hand and using very small increments of bow speed and weight to get the instrument resonating.” After a year at UC, she dropped her history studies and expanded her playing, joining the Oakland Symphony and subbing with the San Francisco Opera and Ballet orchestras, the Berkeley Promenade, and many other groups.
In 1976, she met UC cell biologist and amateur cellist Zac Cande while playing string quartets, and a year later they married and started a family. When Zac got the opportunity to take a sabbatical at Cambridge, they moved to England for a year and Darien took part in a very active professional and chamber music community there.
By the time they came back to the Bay Area, Kent Nagano had taken over the Berkeley Promenade and turned it into the Berkeley Symphony. “Kent was doing some very ambitious programs,” remembers Darien, “and I thought he was an incredible conductor. He could conduct the most complicated meters, and you always knew exactly where in the measure he was.” In particular she remembers the excitement of doing Olivier Messiaen’s big orchestral works at Davies Hall, with the composer providing input during the rehearsals and his wife, Yvonne Lorriod, playing piano with the orchestra.
Darien’s instrument is an 1840 Italian viola by Trucco, which she purchased in 2003. “It has a very dark but resonate, projecting sound,” she observes, “with a lot of patina.” In addition to the Berkeley Symphony, she is currently a member of the Marin and Fremont symphonies, and continues as a frequent substitute with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and other groups. When not playing her viola, she enjoys cooking, gardening, reading, and walking the dogs. Darien and Zac’s older daughter, Jessica, also a violist, is now a grad student at UC in molecular developmental biology. Erica, their younger daughter, just graduated from Carleton College and is applying to law school.
—Richard Reynolds, January 2006
.