If you ask Chicago Symphony Orchestra librarian Wally Horban what was the most exciting thing that happened to him on the orchestra’s recent tour of Japan, he is quick to mention the new synthesizer he picked up, “much cheaper than I would have paid in the States.” Then he adds, “It was great, because I actually set up a portable studio in my hotel room and wrote two songs over there.” And what kind of songs does the CSO librarian write? “R & B, mostly. But pop and rock as well.”
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“Actually, I’ve always been involved in popular music, ever since I began at seven on the accordion and played polkas in northern Wisconsin, where I grew up. I had a four-piece band that used to play weddings and parties, and had a Chordovox, an organ- accordion. So my interest in layering sounds goes all the way back. I also wrote and arranged for the group.”
Horban started studying English at DePaul University, then switched to music. Later he became a part-time librarian for the Civic Orchestra, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony. “Lionel Sayers, [the CSO’s] principal librarian at that time, saw that I could do figured bass, arranging, transposition, copying–a lot of things that he didn’t like to do because he wasn’t very fast at them. I was fast at them, started to get a name for myself that I could do all of these things, so he asked me to become his assistant.”
The piece has been performed in Wilmette and Oak Park, but this week it will be performed in Orchestra Hall, with Horban’s wife Diane as soloist and with the Classical Symphony Orchestra–a training orchestra for young people who want to be professional musicians–under the direction of its founder and music director Joseph Glymph. A second performance will be given on Sunday at the Public Library Cultural Center.
