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September 2000

Approaching the Amadors' house, there is the Rock 'n' Roll Ride toy, equipped with a sissy bar to keep the child on the vehicle, something for the parents to hold. Mary and Rico, their daughter Isabella, their music and more than the usual sense of motion and rest dwell here.

Rico and Mary are violinists in the Omaha Symphony. Rico is a full-time "core" member of the orchestra, while Mary is a part time "per service" player.

On a bright summer morning in the living room, they profess satisfaction with their place in the euphoniously named neighborhood of Morton Meadows -- great neighbors, old-fashioned streetlights, an easier place to live than San Francisco, whence they came.

©photocourtesy of Ricardo Amador

"I can actually afford to go racing," Rico said. This violinist, trained in conservatories, son of a San Francisco Symphony violinist, gets his kicks racing and working on cars.

"My grandpa always had ex-police cars," he said. "My cousin liked motorcycles. I idolized my grandfather as a kid." Anyone who knows the feel and sound of what people used to call a "police interceptor" engine knows what he's talking about. Anyone who thinks about the kind of precision and timing shared in music and mechanics, the math, the equilibrium, knows it makes a kind of sense. The passion for both pursuits leaps from him.

"Holding the car at the ragged edge of a turn is like holding a violin at the edge of sound," Rico said. "But if you crash and burn on the violin, you don't get hurt."

Rico races in events called autocross, sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America. In some events, the vehicles race one at a time in a confined course, locally at the Ak-Sar-Ben parking lot or at Offutt Air Force Base. They also have road rallies and wheel-to-wheel events in more familiar race courses. Despite this sport's self-proclaimed safety (Rico said only two people have died in 50 years of autocross) one wonders what Mary Amador really thinks of this pastime. She professes no objections, credibly.

She shares musical heritage with her husband. Mary's father was a marching band director in Moline, Ill. Both Mary and Rico got hooked on music as children. Mary's mother, a piano teacher, accompanied practicing students.

"I can do that," Mary recalls thinking.

Rico "kinda got suckered into it," he said.

"I was five or six years old watching my dad practice. 'Can I do that?' "

So his father gave him a miniature violin, very much like the one awaiting Isabella's inevitable reach to the mantel.

Mary received her B.A. at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and the Amadors met in graduate school at the University of Michigan.

After leaving Ann Arbor, they freelanced in San Francisco for a couple of seasons, and moved to Omaha in 1990. Here they seem to be thriving in a way that would be difficult for a young family of musicians elsewhere.

Mary also does some teaching and plays with the Nova String Quartet.

Rico also has a financial planning business.

But music brought this couple to Omaha. Their own tastes to beyond what audiences hear them play at the Orpheum. Rico, who's part Peruvian, Finnish and French, likes Salsa, among other things. At the moment, Mary said she likes whatever Isabella likes -- this day, a song about a purple dinosaur.

Rico admits to some musical proselytizing. "I've dragged my racing buddies to the symphony," he said. "And they keep coming back."

Music and racing both have their collegiality, but anybody with a '64 Galaxy 500 convertible in storage, anybody with a car parts catalog in the living room, has at least one story of lonesome road illegality to tell.

Rico's is about his '88 Mustang, modified, but still street-legal, on a famous California road. "I drove it easy for about 500 miles," he said. "Then I was out on an empty stretch of Highway 101. There was no traffic. No cars in front of me. So I said let's go for it. The speedometer only goes to 85. I was going very fast."

"I got a $600 ticket. I begged the judge for mercy. 'I've never had a car like this, and nobody would have been hurt but me.' He lowered it to $250." [email]

Mary teaches at the Omaha Conservatory of Music

Reprinted from the Omaha Symphony Program book with permission from:
Omaha Symphony
1605 Howard St.
Omaha, NE 68102-2705
phone: 402-342-8565
email: bravo@omahasymphony.org
website: www.omahasymphony.org

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