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October 2000

You have to have lived a long way from the Great Plains to really appreciate the subtle skills this land asks of a serious pilgrim. Like opening and closing a livestock gate properly.

Ross Snyder, associate principal french horn with the Omaha Symphony, can show you that, among other things, like playing and teaching horn, or counting bugs on thistles or helping tend the Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve. Or pondering and writing about humanity's place on the planet for the website he built to document the glory of the 60,000-acre preserve and its work. {this website is currently unavailable}

Snyder's been roaming most of his life: born in Alaska, his family followed his father's Air Force base-trail to Offutt, Massachusetts and Maine. Educated at Rice University, he worked as a musician in Chicago, then Omaha, then Hawaii, where he got homesick for the prairie, and came back.

He's also done as much sampling of musical instruments. He started violin at age 6; moved on to trumpet; piano, at his mother's initiative; then to trombone, which was on a band director's "agenda," not his own; then baritone; and finally, seventh grade, the french horn, for all its charms.

There he found his niche, after the usual yearnings to be a baseball player, a sportswriter, a novelist. As ever, a teacher is responsible for his deciding to become a musician. It was a band director in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, John Leite. "You're good, you should do this," Snyder was told. So he went to Rice and majored in Music and English.

Right out of college in 1994, Snyder joined the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the training ground for the Chicago Symphony. There he played for Omaha Symphony Musical Director Victor Yampolsky. He got a part-time position in Omaha, then moved to Honolulu for a full-time position, got homesick for the Old West and returned to Omaha. He credits his teachers, Bill Ver Meulen in Houston, and Dale Clevenger in Chicago, for making him the musician he has become.

Here he also teaches a clutch of his own students an instrument that sounds... temperamental.

To some, the french horn sounds as if its mellow, arching tone could turn into a squawk at the slightest provocation.

"Definitely if you get a bunch of beginners in a room, the french horn will sound the worst, Snyder said.

He is, at least a little, a believer in the nascent science associating personality types with the musical instruments they play. "If there's a gathering of five or ten people, we'll be yakking the most."

He loves the instrument's versatility. "We have to be bright with the brass, colorful with the woodwinds, blend a little with the strings. There's a lot of doubling with cello."

Lately, Snyder has been part of the Symphony's educational program at Skinner Magnet Center, where the curriculum integrates music into their other subjects. "I've always loved kids," he said. "I went yesterday for the first time. It was a blast!" The first unit was showing the children the sources of sound.

He shows the same kind of enthusiasm for How He Spent His Summer Vacation - out on the prairie as a volunteer at the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

"This summer was my first extended time getting hands-on experience, instead of reading about it in books," he said. "The people who live out there are so cool. Hangin' out with cowboys. I love that culture."

"I didn't grow up on the ocean, but it was part of my life. To have that expanse of nothing is peace for your mind. To me the Plains are like that."

Snyder spent his time maintaining trails, mowing, working on computer files, and a variety of chores. He even took the horn. "I did a little playing out there for the locals," he said. "The coyotes thought I was something to yap at."

He tells a story of another teaching experience, a residency at Red Oak, Iowa, where he took junior high school kids out to the country to listen to "everything."

"It's important to go out in the country and hear how amazing all those sounds are,' he said.

"I like people to open their ears."

His last night at the preserve, he opened the ears of the staff by playing popular TV show themes on the horn. Then they all went to the exclusive Meadville Social Club for refreshments. [email]

More information on the Omaha Symphony's Education program:
http://omahasymphony.org

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

© 2006-2007 Omaha Symphony Musicians' Organization