A host of family, friends and former students help Mason cap off 40 years as orchestra concertmaster

Phil Mason remembers watching what he calls "one of the classic" play-off football games that was decided by a last-second, field goal.
     After the game, the place-kicker was asked what was going through his mind in a win-or-lose situation like that, when the outcome of the game rested on his composure and skill.
     Simple, he replied: "I just have to try to remember to kick the ball between those two yellow posts."
     Mason has his own yellow posts to conquer, you might say.
     Only "I just have to try to remember what I'm playing, to play what's in front of me," he jokes with a nervous edge.     

Saturday night, amid the hoopla of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra's 52nd season opener, the musical legacy of Dr. Philip Mason comes to an end.
     After 40 years - the Ion st tenure of any concertmaster of any orchestra in the state - Mason takes his final bows with what he warmly refers to as his "musical family," an organization to which he has devoted more than half of his life.
     "Frankly, it's time," says Mason,  the man JSO Music Director Stephen Osmond credits with "shaping the sound and soul" of the orchestra. As concertmaster, Mason is first violin, responsible for the sound of the violin section, and also serves as liaison between the conductor and players.
     "Forty years is long enough to be in one place," he says. "It's time for someone else to take over. It' s getting harder to give up the weekends and nights and things like that. I want to be able to come and go a little more.
     "It's been a good ride. I owe a lot to a lot of people."
     And they to him.

While the concert, -which begins at 8 p.m. in the Harold Sheffer Music Hall of the Potter Center on the Jackson Community College campus, features the music of such masters as Bartok, Mozart, Strauss and Vivaldi, the spotlight will be firmly focused on Mason.
     It only seems fitting, then, that the Albion violinist, who turns 68 three days before the concert, be joined on stage by his family - real and extended - for his final performance.
     Mason's son-in-law, Don Hodges, former orchestra director at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is flying in to guest.conduct Vivaldi's "Concerto for Four Violins," a piece that also will feature Mason's wife of 45 years, Coral, on harpsichord, as well as several of his former students, among them Michelle and Lisa Waits, Scott Stefanko, Scott Tribby, Edith Hines and Sheila Burlingame Smith.
     Many of Mason's former students also will be performing Mozart's "Concerto for Violin No. 4."
     Mason will not be performing during either of those, but steps into the solo spotlight on Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben" and. Bartok's "Two Portraits," which Osmond refers to as two classical music "biggies."

While the concert itself will be, a memorable one, says Mason, "to see these people again is a big thing for me."
      A week before the concert, there's a hint of nervousness in the voice of this soft-spoken man whose musical passions run deep and quietly erupt when he's performing, bringing Osmond to liken him to a musical Clark Kent.
     "Have dinner with him and he's mild-mannered. Put a violin in his hands and he's a tiger, It doesn't matter what he's playing."
     That tiger hopes "I can be as I usually am" for his finale Saturday night. "I'm already thinking ahead, trying to keep my focus so it doesn't get too big."
     Too late, Phil.
     With friends and colleagues of Mason's coming from all over the country, the JSO's opener has become as big as the season itself -- a five-concert subscription series maestro Osmond says is set, apart by its variety.
     While it's the music that is the essence of Phil Mason, it's the people who bring that music to life he'll miss the most when the curtain falls.
     "I've been thinking about this," says Mason. "It's sort of like I'm in a train station, watching the trains coming through. You're with people and they move on, but you stay put."

Mason has stayed put for an unprecedented 40 years, an unheard-of tenure for a musician in a large- symphony, let alone one the size of Jackson's.
     He's earned the respect, admiration and devotion of-not only the audience, but the musicians themselves.
     "It will be sad to see him leave," says violinist Jan Butterfield of Jackson, who has put in even more years than Mason, this being her 45th JSO season.
     "Not only is he very personable but very talented. He has been a wonderful concertmaster; it will be hard to find his equal. You can find talent,  but talent with all the other disciplines that go with it will be hard to find."
     While other orchestras tried to lure him away - and there were many - Mason was content right here, this man whose first violin lessons, he admits with a chuckle, came from a door-to-door instrument salesman.
     "I was so scared of him that when I saw him I'd run upstairs because I didn't like him," remembers Mason, who was 5 or 6 at the time. Still, "I think he gave me a pretty good (musical) foundation, as scary as that is."
     Nevertheless, Mason is hard pressed to explain what led him to the violin, or what seems his natural music ability, either, for that matter.
     His mother loved music, and his grandfather was a Lutheran minister who "did all the music in the little churches, playing the piano and organ." Music was a big part of life for his German relatives on his mother's side, because, as Mason puts it, "they all grew up so poor they couldn't do anything else."

Mason's thoughts drift to a Saturday night in the spring of 1998.  He's in his usual spot on stage at the Potter Center, this time as soloist for the celebrated Korngold "Concerto for Viiolin and Orchestra," a complicated piece performed by such noted violinists as Itzhak Perlman.
     Mason pulls it off with the grace and charm and patient passion audiences have come to expect over the years, despite the inner turmoil in his life at the time.
     Two weeks before the concert, Mason's oldest daughter, Kathryn, died of breast cancer.
     "It was very hard that night," says Mason, his voice barely rising above a whisper. "Very hard."
     It was in 1962, at about the same time Mason took a job at Albion College, that he was asked to join the Jackson' symphony as its concertmaster, replacing Richard Massmann, who was taking over as conductor.
     "I figured I'd stay a few years and move on" - he begins to laugh before stating the obvious - "and it turned into 40 years. That was OK, because as I look back, the kids got a chance to grow up with their grandparents, who both lived within an hour of Albion."
     Mason retired in 1994 after 34 years at Albion, where he taught everything from music theory to the violin. "At a small liberal arts college like that, you wind up teaching a little bit of  everything" He also directed the college orchestra for several years.

Over the years, Mason and Osmond have developed a unique relationship that goes beyond the roles and responsibilities of conductor and concertmaster.
     "It's been his orchestra from the time he started," says Osmond of the man he calls "the best musical friend I have." Mason "has been the constant link. For 80 percent of the history of the orchestra he has been the concertmaster. The first 11 years they got along without him. I don't know how."
     Osmond lauds Mason not only for his "tremendous amount of talent," but for the "personality to deal with musicians on a variety of levels," which is part of the responsibilities of the concertmaster.
     The admiration is mutual.
     "I can't say enough for what Steve has done for the orchestra and the community, says Mason. "What makes it so much better for the players is that he wears his expertise lightly. He is good. He's got all the tools. But he doesn't display that in a big way like some other conductors do.
     "It's fun to play with him. You trust him because you know he's good.,'
     The two even hit the golf course together whenever they get the chance. Or at least they used to. "He got better than I am," jokes Mason. "That's why I don't like to go out with him anymore."
     No, but Osmond will still be able to see Mason on most concert nights, only in a different seat. Mason has already bought season tickets.
     "You really didn't expect, me to stay away, did you?"

- Reach reporter Dave Hoger at dhoger@citpat.com or 517-768-4971.
borrowed from Jackson Citizen Patroit
Sunday, September 30, 2001  (section C, page 1)