The first thing Bruce Roberts encountered when he arrived in the Bay Area in 1988 to join the San Francisco Symphony for an international tour was an orchestra on strike. The French hornist had taken six weeks off from his job with the Utah Symphony, so that was an unpleasant surprise.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “I had been offered a contract, but I didn’t know whether I’d get paid.”
Instead of playing with the orchestra, however, Roberts got a chance to sit in on the musicians’ meetings. It was a revelation.
“I watched various people discuss the pros and cons of all the issues that were being negotiated, and I was struck by how they were all so thoughtful and patient,” he said. “They had put a lot of time and consideration into it, which was a real lesson for me because I hadn’t been around any orchestras that did that.”
Purely musical excellence, it turns out, isn’t the only recruiting tool an orchestra has at its disposal.
Roberts, who retired last month after 35 years with the Symphony, is among a host of local orchestral musicians who have recently put a seal on multi-decade careers with the same organization. One of Roberts’ colleagues, violist Wayne Roden, stepped down earlier this year after an astonishing 49 years on the job. Anne Pinsker and Carolyn McIntosh worked side-by-side in the cello section for more than 40 years before retiring in November.
Across Grove Street at the San Francisco Opera, meanwhile, percussionist Rick Kvistad and bassist Steven D’Amico took bows after a recent performance of Puccini’s“Madame Butterfly”to honor their long tenures with the Opera Orchestra.
Music has been important to these artists, obviously. That’s what landed all of them in the field to begin with, and what prompted them to spend countless hours practicing, refining and honing their craft.
But talk to a retiring orchestra member, especially one who has spent a long career in the place, and you’re likely to hear a celebration of their musical colleagues, and of the daily collaboration that has shaped their work lives.
“The thing I will miss the most is what I call flying by the seat of my pants in rehearsals and concerts,” Roberts said. “When things are constantly shifting, and you have to adjust based on what’s going on around you — that’s the very essence of ensemble playing.”
Kvistad officially joined the Opera Orchestra in 1980 after four years as a substitute player. When asked about his career, though, he takes practically no time before swinging the conversation around to his fellow percussionist Patti Niemi, who’s been playing alongside him for 30 years and whom he refers to as his “work wife.”
“We have great respect for each other,” Kvistad told me by phone from Austin, Texas, where he moved to be closer to his children and grandchildren. “At first it was a little rough, because she’s a perfectionist and her greatest fear is screwing up, whereas my greatest fear is being bored.”
That’s a surprising admission for an orchestra musician whose working life is focused on the same relatively small number of pieces — operas by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and the rest — played over and over. But Kvistad couldn’t have been happier doing it, he said.
“To me, opera is actually the greatest art form in the musical world. I actually love those beautiful, very entertaining little bass drum parts.”
Kvistad, who will turn 80 in September, chose the Opera Orchestra deliberately. In 1980, the opening of Davies Symphony Hall allowed the Symphony to put on a full season in its new home, which in turn meant the creation of a new ensemble for the Opera. Musicians had to choose one or the other, and Kvistad never looked back.
“A year after I got the job, the Symphony called me and said, ‘We have an opening for principal percussion, and we don’t see your name on the audition list.’ And I told them, ‘To be honest, I love the job I’ve got,’ ” he said, with a laugh.
珍妮特Popesco Archibald, whose official retirement in 2021 was overshadowed by COVID-19, also took a bow at the Opera House following a performance of Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” to celebrate her 30 years of playing oboe and English horn with the company. Her first assignment was playing four complete iterations of Wagner’s“Ring” Cycleunder conductors Peter Schneider andDonald Runnicles, who would go on to be the Opera’s second music director.
“It was very emotional to have him back here for ‘Frau,’” she told me of Runnicles. “I think all of us old-timers felt that way because playing Wagner with him was just like nothing else.”
For all the happy memories orchestral musicians share — of favorite conductors, of colleagues and of rewarding musical repertoire — the march of time is relentless and implacable. Sooner or later, they all attest, the physical demands of playing a musical instrument get the better of you.
For Archibald, 64, it wasn’t only a matter of performing and practicing. The laborious and exacting task of making oboe reeds also took its toll, and she felt an ethical obligation to make room for a new generation.
“I decided towards the beginning of my career that if I was lucky enough to win a position that I was shooting for, I would leave around my early 60s. I think it’s really important for the orchestra’s well-being to have new younger players in,” she said. “I was determined not to overstay my welcome.”
Roberts, 68, the Symphony’s hornist, felt a similar effect of the aging process beginning in his late 50s.
“It’s a natural physiological thing,” he said. “Your muscles aren’t as supple and flexible as they used to be. Your skin is different, so making a buzz on the horn is different. For example, it’s a little more difficult for me to play something extremely soft in the low register, because my tissues don’t react the same way they used to.”
Even if retirement means an end to the daily routine of individual practicing, rehearsals and concerts, it’s rare for musicians to cut themselves off entirely from the art form that has given their life its meaning and structure.
Roberts plans to devote more of his increased free time toHorn Forensics, a business he runs that makes French horns according to his own innovative design. Kvistad has taken up songwriting, modeled on the jazz style of the Great American Songbook.
For Archibald, the combination of retirement provides an opportunity to give something back to the Bay Area community — something she says she didn’t have time for while working at the Opera. She and some other local instrumentalists have begun giving benefit concerts for a variety of charity organizations.
So even after retirement, does she plan to keep playing the oboe and English horn?
“Oh certainly,” she said. “Just not six hours a day!”
Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com;Twitter:@JoshuaKosman