Of all the talents flutist Tina Burr Apelgren will display at a benefit concert at the Orchid Island Beach Club next week, one will be imperceptible: her stamina.
Never mind the breathing, the double- and triple-tonguing, the furious fingering.
There is the organizational nightmare that is her schedule as an independent musician. Last week, she got back to her Indialantic home at 4:30 a.m. after rehearsing from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. for Epcot’s Candlelight Processional show, a huge production with orchestra and chorus and celebrity narrator – Neil Patrick Harris, Whoopi Goldberg and Meredith Viera are on the schedule – they can’t start rehearsal until the theme park closes.
Then there is the intense focus of performance, even more so when it involves the orchestra, an effort so mentally taxing that she barely surfaces in time to hear to an ovation. “You cannot imagine the level of concentration it takes. You really don’t have any room for nerves,” she says. “At the end of an orchestra concert you are mentally exhausted.”
Today, the stamina that Vero should appreciate most is Apelgren’s quarter-century of dedication to orchestras that have become part of Central Florida’s cultural landscape. Apelgren, who regularly subs for the Orlando Philharmonic, is principal flutist for both the Brevard Symphony Orchestra and the Atlantic Classical Orchestra.
She is a founding member of ACO, coming on board for the orchestra’s first concert under Vero’s Andrew McMullan, its creator. When McMullan retired, she went on to play for well-known conductor Stewart Robertson, and this season, for Robertson’s prospective successors, the four candidates being considered to become ACO’s new artistic director.
Apelgren – and that is Tina Burr’s new surname, only officially acquired this past summer, though she married three years ago – was part of the committee that plowed through 125 applications, watching hours of concert videos to narrow the list to four.
Now she will play under the candidate conductors’ batons, essentially face to face from her position at the center of the orchestra.
Before the official season begins in January, she will entertain a smaller crowd Tuesday afternoon at Orchid Island Beach Club, playing Saint-Saens, Mozart, Bartok and some new works from Latin America with harpist Bridget Kibbey.
“She’s phenomenal,” says Apelgren. “Bridget was a soloist with the orchestra a couple years back. She’s a big deal. The audience loved her.”
The event, with its $125 tickets nearly gone at press time, is a significant fund-raiser for the ACO, which now includes performances in Palm Beach Gardens as well as Stuart and Vero. For Apelgren, this season is the bridge to a new era under a new conductor with his or her own vision of the orchestra.
“The orchestra is night and day from where it started,” she says.
Under Robertson, she says, the caliber of the groups’ musicians steadily rose, in particular as ACO gained renown for a repertoire that increasingly included contemporary music and, lately, commissioned works under an initiative funded through the foundation of board member Jerry Rappaport.
“Most working musicians consider it to be one of the best orchestras in the state,” she says. “It was very bold on Stewart’s behalf to have started the commission project.”
Brevard Symphony Orchestra has also improved, she says, but it is a much older, more established group, now over 60 years old.
Fans of classical music may recall the name Tina Burr for her long-time classical music radio show on WQCS, the Fort Pierce-based public radio station.
She is an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology, where a minor in music was recently introduced. In addition, she has a studio of 25 students whom she teaches in her home, from middle school to college, and a few adults besides.
Her husband, Scott Apelgren, owns a Melbourne music store, The Horn Section, that rents and repairs school instruments.
Born in New York City, Tina Burr Apelgren grew up on Long Island. Her parents weren’t musicians, but they loved good music and it played in their house all the time. In particular, Tina loved classical flute – “loved it since I can remember.”
In her last two years of high school, she spent Saturdays taking the train into the city to attend Juilliard’s all-day pre-college program.
“It was everything from private lessons to flute ensemble, music theory, and ear training.”
She went on to State University of New York at Purchase and graduated with a BFA. When her first husband was transferred to Stuart, FL, she scouted the ads in music magazines and found an opening in Fort Lauderdale’s South Florida Orchestra.
“I flew down, and I got the job.”
By the time the orchestra folded in 1989, Tina Burr was two years into a radio career at WQCS, and soon became the station’s music director. In addition to programming the station’s music, she hosted her own live classical music show weekdays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Broadcasting came naturally; she had no anxiety in front of the mike talking about her favorite subject, music. “It wasn’t nerve-wracking, but it eventually became exhausting.”
Having by then started to play flute with Brevard Symphony Orchestra as well as with ACO, she was spending days at the radio station and nights at rehearsals in Melbourne, then driving home to Stuart.
“I was basically working from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. At that point, I stepped back from radio. It was a very hard decision. I loved the station.”
That was in 1997.
To this day, she has focused on orchestral playing as opposed to solo performance. “That’s what I enjoy the most. I like the feeling of being part of this big, complex piece. And with a symphony orchestra, the repertoire is so endlessly satisfying,” she says.
“You’re working with other high-level players in the moment creating something. You’re listening to them, you’re reacting to them. If you hear one of the players play this great line, it definitely inspires you, when you come in, to match what they did. And they’re reacting to the conductor. You’re all on the same wave length, coalescing.
“To me, there’s nothing like a live orchestra experience. It can’t be recreated. Once it’s happened, it will never happen that way again.”
With the Epcot gig running through Dec. 30, Brevard’s six-concert season underway since October (plus three concerts at Vero’s Community Church), and the ACO season starting Jan. 13, Apelgren cherishes her rare days off.
“I call them white square days, where nothing is written on my calendar,” she says.
Apelgren plays with harpist Bridget Kibbey at the Orchid Island Beach Club Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. with a cocktail reception following. Go to atlanticclassicalorchestra.com.