South Florida violinist Gustavo Correa can't remember a time when he wasn't "gigging."
For over 40 years, he's divided his time between private lessons for youngsters and adult beginners (including this reporter) and playing with the region's top orchestras.
But if it wasn't for a busted bridge on the violin he was playing nearly 39 years ago, Correa's career — and life — might have taken a very different turn.
"I was taking my violin to the luthier to get a new bridge. And there was a letter there saying that there would be auditions for such and such an orchestra — and that they had a stipend. I was like, 'Ka-ching! Stipend!' "
It turns out that "such and such" was the inaugural class of the New World Symphony — co-founded by Michael Tilson Thomas in 1987. Miami Beach would be its home base from then on.
Correa says the promise of that stipend wasn't the only attraction.
"New World Symphony was specifically orchestral training — and that's what I'd always wanted to do. I'm a little bit strange, I think, that I never wanted to be a soloist."
Correa played Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 for his audition. Within a few weeks, he got a letter in the mail telling him that he got in.
In many ways, Correa's career since then is a perfect example of what Tilson Thomas set out to do with the creation of the New World Symphony.
In an interview with WLRN in 2019, the celebrated conductor — who died Wednesday at the age of 81 — told us about his original vision for the conservatory program.
"It was an amazing adventure, because I had had a dream for a very long time of there being a place where young musicians could do some of their most creative work," said Tilson Thomas.
Correa remembers the maestro's way of getting the symphony members, called Fellows, to that next step. And it involved a lot more than intensive study of music technique.
"Michael would read poetry to us, he would mention paintings, a lot of context about what we were playing. And boy! I loved that — because you learn about music history in school, but a lot of it is out of context. Here we're playing a piece, he would read Goethe to us, and stuff like that. It was just spectacular."
READ MORE: The Maestro in Miami Beach: How Michael Tilson Thomas changed South Florida's cultural scene
As a conductor, Correa says Tilson Thomas had what professional musicians call great "stick technique," a very encouraging and forgiving nature and also, apparently, a mischievous streak.
Like the time, during a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, that he prevailed upon the young musicians to play a trick on violinist Joshua Bell.
During the last movement, Tilson Thomas told the orchestra to hum the underlying melody, instead of playing it — leaving a bemused Bell to gamely play on, albeit with a raised eyebrow.
Since Correa last played with the New World Symphony, he's never been out of work. In addition to teaching private lessons, he's played with virtually every major orchestra in South Florida.
He keeps a folder full of mementoes from those early days: Playbills, newspaper articles about the symphony, ticket stubs from the inaugural performance; and, of course, that acceptance letter from 1987, so carefully preserved, it looks like it was typed just yesterday.
But what Michael Tilson Thomas gave him can't be found in any scrapbook.
"He changed the way that I work in an orchestra," says Correa.
"When I finished playing with New World Symphony, I felt so confident — that, yeah, I know how to do this. I get it."
