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Playing well; making beautiful music
Sylva musician Bill Henigbaum will turn 85 next Wednesday, which means he’s been playing the violin for 77 years.
He joined the Quad Cities Orchestra in his hometown of Davenport, Iowa, at age 14, and except for the four years he spent as an infantry platoon leader during World War II, he played continuously with that orchestra for 50 years. A second violin initially, he became the orchestra’s concertmaster (leader of the first violin section who plays solo passages and often serves as the conductor’s assistant) after the war.
Though he retired from the Quad Cities orchestra and moved to Sylva in 1985, Henigbaum shows no sign of slowing down as a violinist, teacher and conductor. He led the Western Carolina Civic Orchestra, which he has conducted since its 1995 formation in an April 9 spring concert, and he will appear as part of the Asheville Symphony in a 3 p.m. performance of Brahms’ German requiem this Sunday, April 23, at Western Carolina University’s Fine and Performing Arts Center (details on that concert are on page 5C). In addition, he plays with the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra and continues to teach advanced violin students.
During a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” in December 2004, I found my eyes returning to Henigbaum on a stage crowded with other musicians and singers. Because it was a joint performance of the Civic Orchestra and WCU’s choral department, the university’s Bob Holquist was conducting and Henigbaum was in a familiar role – concertmaster.
When I mentioned how intriguing it was to watch Henigbaum to Susan Davis of Andrews, the Civic Orchestra’s current concertmaster and former Henigbaum student, she said it’s because he is so at ease with playing.
“It’s something he’s done all his life,” she said.
“His confidence and competency are awe-inspiring,” is the way Civic Orchestra member and retired art teacher Ray Menze described Henigbaum’s playing. “Music is his life.”
Though he’s quiet and unassuming, Henigbaum has a memorable air. Before every Civic Orchestra concert and well before our weekly deadline, he climbs the long flight of stairs to the newsroom to bring us the program information he has typed out on his manual typewriter. The first time I ever saw him was at a Suzuki recital in about 1994. My son, Scott, then 8 or 9 years old, was one of Cathy Arps’ (who is Henigbaum’s daughter) violin students, and Henigbaum, along with other Civic Orchestra members, was on hand to fill out the orchestra sound for the kids.
As anyone knows who’s ever been part of such an occasion, it takes a village to get the small people’s instruments in tune. From the back row, I watched Scott make a beeline for Henigbaum, who accepted the tiny violin and devoted his full attention to its tuning. He turned the pegs and plucked its strings several times before he was satisfied with the sound. Then, with a slight nod, he carefully handed the instrument back to Scott. I was struck then by Henigbaum’s patience and commitment to detail for a child who was only halfway through the first book and would only be on stage for about three minutes; I was even more amazed after I learned of his celebrated musical background.
That quietness and confidence is a hallmark of Henigbaum’s conducting style as well. When I asked one of his former students, Will Stern of Cullowhee (now a violin student at the N.C. School of the Arts) what makes Henigbaum stand out as a conductor, Stern spoke of a connection with the players and lack of ego.
“A lot of conductors go so over the top that they lose touch with the players,” Stern said. “Too many conductors think it’s all about them, but for Mr. Henigbaum, it’s all about the music.”
Davis, who initially played next to Henigbaum when he was concertmaster for the community orchestra that preceded the Civic Orchestra, echoed Stern’s description.
“My conductor in high school, who was also a good violinist, had a horrible temper,” she said. “He would get mad and throw his baton across the room. Bill’s not like that – he’s calm and even-tempered, and he’s really good at dealing with people.”
While Davis has nothing but praise for Henigbaum the conductor, she said she misses having him sit beside her in the orchestra.
“It was more fun to have him playing beside me,” she said. “He’s such a musician, and when I first began playing my violin again it was nice to have someone to rely on so I didn’t miss my cues.”
Another former Henigbaum student, Amanda Dills (now Stewart) of Cullowhee’s Fiddling Dills Sisters, put it this way: “I love to play along with him because he sounds so good.”
Stern used more words to express a similar point of view.
“I always learned a lot when I played beside him, because he’s so rhythmically accurate and knows exactly what’s going on at all times,” Stern said. “Being a concertmaster for so many years makes him a wonderful model for good orchestral play.”
In a similar vein, Stern values his experience as Henigbaum’s student.
“He’s a wonderful teacher, and his years of experience give him great insight,” Stern said. “He never tells you something is good if it isn’t. I had many a lesson that ended with him saying ‘back to the drawing board.’ This always kept me practicing and trying to please him. He doesn’t talk a lot in the lesson but everything he says is helpful and important.”
For those reasons, other teachers sometimes suffer when compared to Henigbaum, Stern said.
“Most teachers have a hard time standing up to Mr. Henigbaum in my personal opinion,” Stern said. “Some teachers talk so much that the violinistic truth is lost in a sea of nouns and verbs. He approaches complex technical issues in a simple and straightforward manner – he is all about playing well and making beautiful music.
Lessons with Henigbaum gave him the preparation he needed to succeed in his current conservatory environment, Stern said.
“My teacher here has a very different style of playing and teaching, and I have had to change a few things in my technique, but Mr. Henigbaum gave me so much of value,” Stern said. “Learning an ‘old-fashioned’ style of play gives me a sound that a lot of my fellow violinists here don’t have and makes me unique. His wonderful orchestral skills also helped me prepare. Though this is a tough conservatory, I keep up because of what Mr. Henigbaum gave me.”
Stern, Davis and Menze all pointed to Henigbaum’s extensive knowledge of orchestra repertoire as another of his strengths – “he’s the encyclopedia of music,” Menze said – and his daughter, Arps, agrees.
“I think Dad is the perfect conductor for a community orchestra such as ours because he is a string teacher and can give all the string players good advice, and from his long experience as an orchestra member, concertmaster and conductor, he can lead all the sections in matters of style, tone and tempo,” Arps said. “He knows so much about orchestra music that he can choose music that will be challenging but also achievable,” Arps said.
Stern, Davis and Menze agree that Henigbaum is a conductor in the right place at the right time.
“He’s one of our precious gifts,” Menze said. “He’s very caring, and not all conductors are that way.”
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