Below are photos I took in 1986 when my father conducted the Greenville Symphony in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. If memory serves, I’m pretty sure this was a dress rehearsal the afternoon before the performance. This is when the GSO’s home venue was McAlister Auditorium on the Furman University Campus.
Conductor Peter Rickett at the podium. The podium seems to be precariously mounted between the stage and the first row of seats. I can only assume this was done to accommodate the “Choral.”
The Greenville Symphony rehearsing Beethoven’s 9th. A crowded stage…
Sorry I can’t identify the guest soloists, but I do recognize our longtime family friend, Richard Magg, sitting first cello.
Naturally, I took a separate shot of the bass section. That’s my late brother, Steve Rickett, in the back row guesting from Savannah, GA for this performance. Also, I think that’s Tim Easter (2nd bassist from the right), the current principal bass player for the GSO.
Since I almost never sat in the audience, this is the view I remember my father best as he led the orchestra.
Photo notes: The picture quality is not what I would hope for but it was the technology available to me at the time which was a Pentax 35 mm SLR (handed down from my father) with 5294 Kodak motion picture film processed by RGB Photo Lab in Hollywood, CA. I was able to dig out the negatives recently and scanned them with an inexpensive 5.1 megapixel scanner I bought on Amazon.com. Sorry about the hairs, I don’t have a suitable place to handle the negatives.
My Father - Peter Rickett 