2003-05-02-IDF_trumpetplayer

2003-05-02 IDF Trumpet Player Lior Ron

San Diego
County

San Diego

Lawrence
Family JCC

Soldier blows his horn for
Israel's Defense Forces

San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, April 11, 2003
Music file

By Donald H. Harrison

Trumpet player Lior Ron can boast of some pretty spectacular gigs. He has played at the State of Israel's reception for King Abdullah of Jordan. He was there when the most recent Knesset was seated. He has played for Israel's President Moshe Katsav. He performed at the change-of-command ceremony for the chief of staff of Israel's Defense Forces.

Now he's coming to San Diego to blow his horn at our community's Yom Ha'Atzma'ut (Israel Independence Day) celebration, 12:30-4:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 18, at the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family Campus.

As usual, Ron will be in the company of other wind musicians who are members of the Israel Defense Forces' orchestra. They were assigned to the enviable duty of touring the United States on a goodwill music mission. They will play a combination of traditional Jewish songs and modern Israeli melodies.

Ron began playing the trumpet at the age of 6. He said that while there are no school orchestras in Israel, his hometown of Nahariya— like almost every other city in Israel— has a community youth orchestra, where he perfected his skills.

The grandson of Holocaust survivors on both sides of his family and the son of former kibbutzniks, Ron said that, to his knowledge, no one in his family before him was musically inclined. Nevertheless, they encouraged him to play his trumpet. His inspiration came from the tapes and CDs of the American trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, who plays both jazz and classical. Ron prefers Marsalis' classical repertoire as the Israeli is "not into jazz."

However great a trumpet player like Louis Armstrong might have been, Ron said he just doesn¹t care for the jazz style. "I can¹t connect to that kind of music," he said. "I don¹t know what they are doing." Instead of improvisation, Ron prefers "notes on a page. I like to know what I am
doing."

After high school, he was conscripted into the Army. He was among 150 musicians from community youth orchestras who competed for five spots in the IDF orchestras. Winning earned him the opportunity to learn under the orchestra's legendary conductor, Itzhak Graziani, known popularly by the nickname Ziko.

"He is the spirit of the IDF orchestra," Ron said almost reverentially. "He has been the chief conductor since 1952 or 1953, and he will be celebrating his 79th birthday in August."

"He¹s still conducting?" asked Erez Strasburg, the shaliach at San Diego UJF's Israel Center who had set up the telephone interview with Ron for Heritage.

"Ziko will never stop," Ron asserted.

Another influence on Ron is his teacher Ramy Oren, the trumpet player in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Many of the musicians in the IPO are former members of the IDF orchestra. For San Diegans, two of the best-known graduates of the IDF orchestra are former San Diego Symphony conductor Yoav Talmi and his wife, Er'ella, a flutist.

The U.S. goodwill tour will find members of the IDF wind section shuttling back and forth between the East and the West of this country. Their first stop is Tucson, then they go to Hartford, Conn., then to Tulsa, then to Philadelphia, before completing the tour here in San Diego.

Although the itinerary sounds like it was scheduled by someone without a sense of geography, Ron said he actually is quite pleased by all that extra flying. "I signed up for the Delta frequent flyer" program, he said. All those points may come in handy after he completes his Army service this coming July. Like most Israelis, he plans to do some traveling and relaxing before enrolling for university studies.

He's not sure what his university major will be, but like the music he prefers, it will be something with order: perhaps mathematics, physics or chemistry.