His Signature on a Symphony

In 1978, Barry Epperley was so passionate about starting a chamber music orchestra in Tulsa that he sold his baby to pay for its first two seasons.

His baby, at the time, was a Mercedes 190SL Roadster. It had been his pride and joy for a dozen years. He had rebuilt the engine twice and repainted it himself. But for $7,500, he traded it in for something that turned out to be priceless--nearly 30 years of chamber, classical and pop music in Tulsa.

"I finally said, 'Okay, if you're really going to do this, jump in with both feet,'" Dr. Epperley recalled, laughter echoing his words.

The $7,500 earned from the sale of his Mercedes paid for programs, posters, royalties and musicians' fees.

Today, under his directorship, the Tulsa Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College, a group he founded, has become a fixture in the city's fine arts panorama. Performing an increasingly popular classics and pops season, the orchestra reflects the artistry and charisma of Epperley, a man whose passion for musical performance took root in Oklahoma's red dirt country.

Rock'n'Roll Lifestyle

Epperley is movie star handsome, appearing much younger than his 63 years, with dark hair flecked with silver, warm eyes and a deep, almost gravely voice. His straight, white teeth are a prominent feature on his usually smiling face, outlined with a black and gray goatee. On the day he met UTW, a blue and red hooded University of Tulsa sweatshirt, blue jeans and white sneakers draped his long frame.

His conversational style is warm and friendly, many of his sentences punctuated with short laughter initiated by self-effacing humor and anecdotal notes sprinkled in for good measure.

One of Epperley's greatest fans is marketing and public relations specialist for Public Service Company of Oklahoma Andrea Chancellor, who has served as Tulsa Signature Symphony Board Chair since 2006. She said when she first met Epperley for lunch, it was like "having lunch with a rock star."

"Barry's our wow factor," she said.

She spoke excitedly about his charisma and creativity. She said what she enjoys most about being a part of TSS and being friends with Epperley is the creativity he brings to the symphony, using visuals, dance and live readings to engage the audience in the music beyond "just sitting and listening."

"He has such a connection with the audience," she said. "People line up after the performances to talk to him and shake his hand.

"And, he's the best looking man I've seen in a tux," she added, laughing.

Epperley grew up in Stillwater, earning both a bachelor's and master's degree in Music Education at Oklahoma State University. Education and music were always important fixtures in the Epperley family. His father was a music teacher and his mother a fourth grade teacher.

While the country was at war in Southeast Asia, he embarked on a college education, earning an undergraduate degree at OSU and immediately afterward, a master's while participating in ROTC on campus. Upon graduation, he received a deferment of duty and enrolled in the University of Southern California, where he earned a doctorate in Musical Arts.

During his stay in Anaheim, Epperley worked at Disneyland as the conductor of a musical entertainment act called Kids of the Kingdom that performed mostly pop and patriotic music. He wrote arrangements for the group and conducted its five-to-six concerts per day during three-day weekends.

By 1969 The Kids of the Kingdom achieved such popularity that they were invited (and strongly encouraged to accept the invitation) to perform at a party President Richard Nixon threw for astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, who landed on the moon that year.

The event was also to feature the Army Chorus. Epperley was near graduation and, being one who was able to recognize a good opportunity when he saw one, approached the leaders of the chorus and informed them that he would be graduating shortly and would be interested in any openings they might have.

They invited him to audition in Washington, DC, a place Epperley had never traveled.

"They put me through the paces," Dr. Epperley recalled. "I had a four-day audition, and I think I got about eight hours of sleep during the whole four days. I would go in one day and work with the chorus and they would say, 'I want you to arrange this and this and come in tomorrow and conduct it.' Things that would normally take me a month to do, I was doing overnight. I did a brass arrangement, an orchestra arrangement and a band arrangement. They liked it and invited me to come be a part."

So after graduation, Epperley and his wife Jane, who is a psychologist ("the best in the city," according to the expert and not at all biased Barry, packed up and moved to DC for what would prove to be the best learning experience of Epperley's life.

Playing for the Big Wigs

One of the most fascinating elements of his job with the U.S. Army Chamber Orchestra, Epperley said, was "understanding the power of the music and the differences of each (president)."

"Nixon loved to project who he was in music," explained Epperley. "In fact, his favorite song was 'Stout Hearted Men.' Especially when things started going south, he wanted us to sing 'Stout Hearted Men.'

"Ford was a down-home guy, and he wouldn't allow us to play 'Hail to the Chief' for the first nine weeks. It sounds really strange, but he had come very quickly (into his presidency) because Spiro Angew had been sent away. He was the vice president first for less than a year and then he was the president. And so he really wasn't settled for that, and so we played the Michigan Fight Song when he would enter the room. It was kind of strange.

"But then President Carter came in and he was so serious minded. He loved classical music. And that was very telling, I think, because they wanted people to understand who they were through their music."

If music is so telling of a man, UTW wanted to know Dr. Epperley's favorite brand of music. He thought for a moment after the question was asked and finally replied, "It's really funny, but I don't have any favorites. It's what I'm doing at the moment."

And different genres of music and different musicians touch him in different ways.

"I have a Beach Boys CD in my CD player next to my Mendelssohn 3," he said. "There's hardly anything I don't like, as long as it's done well."

He's even grown to appreciate his son's interest in techno music.

Epperley's job as conductor with the U.S. Army also included making sure the presidents were presented with the music they loved and also that the presidents' guests were met with appropriate music during their stay at the White House.

For instance, if the president were hosting a guest from Germany, Epperley would research the guest and his hometown and present, if possible, music that was very specific to the area of Germany from which the guest came.

Epperley also spent a good amount of time in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which had opened in 1971, only shortly prior to his arrival in DC. A trumpet player in the Army Chorus orchestra was also the head usher at the Kennedy Center and would let Epperley know when certain acts or conductors would be rehearsing there.

Because every major artistic group wanted to play the Kennedy Center, Epperley said he got to see some of the world's most important ballet companies, symphony orchestras and their conductors.

"I would take my score and go up in the balcony in the front box, where I could look straight down, and I learned more there than I ever did in school," Epperley said. "(I learned) how they actually did what they did. And that's where I really fell in love with conducting."

And that was also one of the major influences that pushed him toward the idea of starting his own chamber orchestra.

And, with any job, there were other incidents, moments you couldn't recreate if you tried, that end up amounting to great memories and even better stories.

"The year (President Nixon) retired (1974), we did the '1812 Overture,' and it was the entire ensemble--the band, the chorus and the herald trumpets," Epperley recounted. "We were at the Jefferson Monument, and I conducted the cannons because I was a junior officer. We had five howitzers with blanks, and I would cue the guy with the beat before he would fire."

Epperley hummed the notes before cuing himself to make an exploding noise with his mouth, meant to signify the cannons erupting.

"It was a Thursday morning, I think, and all of a sudden, these Secret Service cars just come (screeching up), and a guy jumps out and tells me I can't do this.

"'You can't do that,'" Epperley converses with himself. "'I can't do what? What are you talking about?' They're just blanks, you know. And finally he says, 'Look, the president was looking out the second floor of the White House, and you have the guns pointed in that direction.'

"So, we turned the cannons toward the treasury, and he let us do the concert," Epperley finished, laughing. Whoops.

One Man's Dream

Epperley was inspired to start the city's first chamber orchestra during his six-year tenure as the conductor for the United States Army Chamber Orchestra. A close relationship with the leader of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, conductor Dennis Russell Davies, also influenced Epperley's decision to bring everything he knew and loved about chamber music back to Oklahoma.

There was nothing like the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Oklahoma, and Epperley said one of the things that fascinated him about the group was its commitment to education.

"They would travel and do workshops with kids, which, having grown up in an educational house, was something I thought then and still think is a very important part of professional music," said Epperley. "You've got to bring the next generation along."

When he returned to Tulsa, Epperley contacted the Oklahoma Arts and Humanities Council to relay his idea of emulating the St. Paul orchestra in Tulsa. He also took on a teaching job at Oral Roberts University. At the same time, his good friend, Murry Sidlin, who had been the conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, took up residency with the Tulsa Philharmonic, and it wasn't long before the pair contrived a plan to marry Dr. Epperley's dream of a chamber music orchestra with the Tulsa Philharmonic.

The Phil, though, already nearly $400,000 in debt, couldn't afford to take on a chamber orchestra. So, after careful thought and having fought off the temptation to give up on his dream, Epperley rounded up the necessary cash and gave it a go on his own.

Although the orchestra would be separate from the Philharmonic, it would employ several of the Phil's musicians and maintain a strong, close working relationship during the Phil's existence. In fact, when Epperley's little smidge of an idea actually did became a 501(c)3 under the name Tulsa Little Symphony Orchestra, the co-signer's to the non-profit's charter document were Philharmonic musicians.

The Tulsa Little Symphony Orchestra opened its first season in the John H. Williams Theater of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, which had opened only one year earlier in 1977, with two concerts, both of which sold out.

Going into any new venture is fraught with uncertainty, and so the orchestra's initial success came as a bit of a surprise to Epperley as well as those close to classical music in Tulsa. There had been some question as to whether or not Tulsa was ready for a full-time, professional chamber orchestra. Having been out of Oklahoma for about 10 years, Epperley said he just wasn't sure what the response would be like. He was excited, though, to receive such a warm response from the citizens. The following year, the orchestra performed four concerts, and as the audience grew, so did TLSO.

The Masterplan

In 1985, still working under the moniker Tulsa Little Symphony Orchestra, Peter Mayo invited Epperley and his team to be the house band at the Brady Theater and start a pops series there. For almost seven years, the orchestra performed five or six pops concerts in the fall and five or six in the spring. In this new capacity, the group changed its name to Oklahoma Sinfonia.

"There were all sorts of misunderstandings about the term Little Symphony Orchestra, whether it was a youth orchestra or a group of little people or something," said Epperley.

So the group changed its name and "enjoyed the Old Lady" for a time, according to Epperley, until the owner's refusal to repair the old, run-down seats in the orchestra (one of which did some serious damage to a satin jumpsuit worn by guest artist Roger Williams).

It was at that time a new opportunity with TCC led the orchestra in another direction.

Dr. Dean VanTrease, former dean of Tulsa Community College, approached Epperley at a Rotary Club meeting and informed him that the college would soon be making an addition to its Southeast Campus in the form of a large, state-of-the-art performing arts center. He wanted to know if Oklahoma Sinfonia would like to be the orchestra in residence.

Because of Epperley's continuous commitment to education through the orchestra, the new match seemed a perfect fit, and Dr. Epperley spent the two years prior to the center's opening working on the advisory board--and costing it quite a bit of money, he adds, but toward the eventual enhancement of the center. For example, Epperley explained that before he intervened, the pit originally planned for construction only held 15 people, which wasn't big enough in his mind.

"I said, if you're going to do stuff in here, do it," said Epperley. "So I had them cut the pit in under the stage. They lost one trap door and some storage, but now we can do musicals and shows with the pit. But that was about $120,000 just to do that little thing."

But, thanks to many of Epperley's modifications, the VanTrease Performing Arts Center for Education (PACE) is one of the finest theaters in Tulsa for musical performance.

Today, the Tulsa Signature Symphony performs five classics and five pops concerts per year, bringing in top-notch musicians from across the country and around the world.

For the classics series, Epperley focuses on the music of one or two noted composers every year and teaches Performance Plus classes to accompany the series.

The concerts take place at the PACE Center Thursday evenings at 7:30pm, though that will change to Saturday nights next season (parking on a night when class is in session had proven to be a hurdle to the program's success). Performance Plus classes, which include about an hour of lecture and an hour of performance, are Monday nights once a month at Tulsa Community College's Southeast campus, where TSS has been in residence since 1995.

When the Tulsa Philharmonic folded in 2002, Epperley and his crew of musicians took it upon themselves to add a classics series to the already popular pops. They began the first year with music by Mozart, and employed only about 35 (out of 80 or so now) musicians to play the concert, so the orchestra would be similar in size to what Mozart may have had.

For the pops concerts, there are usually about 50 musicians.

It wasn't long before the symphony was selling out nearly every show, and it continues to do so today. In fact, next year, Epperley is considering adding one more pops concert to each series. Now, the concerts are on Friday and Saturday nights, and he said a Sunday matinee may be necessary next season.

Another group connected to TSS, the Signature Quartet, co-hires players from Tulsa Public Schools who teach 20 hours per week, traveling across Northeastern Oklahoma as well as sticking close to home in TPS schools, and performs as well. The quartet gives them the opportunity to be full-time players and to also continue TSS' commitment to education by reaching nearly 3,000 kids per week on Fridays.

With Tulsa Symphony Orchestra's inauguration almost two years ago, one can assume there has been some speculation as to whether or not the orchestra organized to replace the Tulsa Philharmonic and the Signature Symphony are poised for any type of competition. Epperley's group enjoyed a good working relationship with the Philharmonic, but the same cannot be said, unfortunately, for that with TSO.

Until 2006, the Tulsa Signature Symphony had performed in the pit with the Tulsa Ballet. The orchestra was invited by the Ballet to be in its pit in 1989, and Epperley said he enjoyed working there for 15 years.

When TSO formed, though, spearheaded by retired brain surgeon Dr. Frank Letcher, the new orchestra took upon itself the duty to be in the pit with Tulsa Ballet and Tulsa Opera (though it does not currently perform with the Opera). So, TSO "made them an offer they couldn't refuse," essentially, by donating its services to the ballet.

TSO played the first two performances for free, and for its first full season, it sold the Ballet $130,000 worth of orchestra fees for $40,000. It was a tough deal to beat, and Epperley couldn't compete. He couldn't afford to provide the symphony's services at that cost and still pay his musicians, and he didn't have the background and wealth Letcher did to be a private donor to his own orchestra.

And though he misses performing with the Ballet, he looks forward to the Signature Symphony's future and the improvements it continues to make.

When Epperley's orchestra first formed, he wanted to make it very clear that it was not intended to compete with the Philharmonic, but to provide Tulsa another source of classical music. And, he says the same is true for TSO. Epperley said he's glad to see the new orchestra's success and even more glad that there is such an appreciation in the city for classical music that both orchestras can be very successful without thinking about competition.

"It's been a trip," he said. "I'm having such a great time. I love what I'm doing. I love that the orchestra is playing beautifully and that people are loving it."