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When I was nine or ten, Dad was contracted to be the evening's soloist with the Chicago Symphony on a pops concert. He was also represented on the program as a composer, as he played his own Suite for solo viola and orchestra, a work he wrote as part of his masters thesis. He'd performed it as soloist with the Kansas City Philharmonic, and also in Kenosha, but CSO was the big time.
He practiced for hours every day to prepare. Aunt Bertha, Dad's sister, came for the performance, and I sat with her in box seats at Orchestra Hall. My mother was backstage. My brothers were all too young, so were home with a baby sitter. It was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened in our family. I'd been told it was to be Dad's big ``solo.'' Afterward I expressed my disappointment in the experience when, as I said to Bertha, ``I thought it was supposed to be a solo. The orchestra kept butting in!''
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