San Francisco Classical Voice

November 10, 1998

What you see on the Davies Hall stage is a young, handsome artist in the limelight, rehearsing his solo role in the Dragonetti Concerto for Bass and Orchestra for a concert there at 2 p.m. Sunday. He was getting warm, enthusiastic applause from the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and its music director, Alasdair Neale.

What you understand, when you get to know Jon Keigwin, is the enormous, life-affirming, healing power of music and fellow musicians.

As the 19-year-old San Rafael double bass player is preparing for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra concert on Sunday, he is a picture of success: talented, self-confident, easy-going, a scholarship student at Philadelphia's famed Curtis Institute of Music. With an attractive, supportive girlfriend, friends and musical colleagues all around, Keigwin "has it made."

But just five years ago, in his own words, he was "lost." His San Diego family broke up when he was 3. He came to live in Marin with his mother and sister, was bounced from San Rafael to Tiburon (where his grandmother lives), and from school to school -- Reed, Bellaire, Coleman, San Pedro, Mill Valley, among others. He felt "trapped, scared, lonely, without any idea about the future."

And it was only five years ago that he got the idea to try the double bass, "under the influence" of Marin's Chandler musical dynasty. Through a school friendship with Cory Chandler, Keigwin found a haven in the home of Jeanie Chandler, Cory's mother and the Marin Symphony's principal flutist and personnel manager. Charles Chandler, Corey's older brother and a bassist with the San Francisco Symphony, started teaching the 14-year-old who had no musical background.

Unlike toddlers playing the violin, double bass players need a certain height before tackling the huge instrument, but usually they start another (smaller) instrument before. Not Keigwin -- he started from ground zero.

To his surprise, he found the bass and the routine of practice "really exciting, even though I'd practice only a half an hour then, not like the 6-7 hours today." Playing the instrument, showing talent, receiving acknowledgment and support first from the Chandlers, then from the Marin Youth Symphony, and eventually from the SFSYO (in both orchestras Keigwin ended up playing side by side with Cory) turned his life around.

"I learned," Keigwin says, that you have to find your own way to what you really like, to find what is exciting and enjoyable. Some people may find it hard to stick with practice and hard work, but to me it's a special time and it gives me peace of mind.

"Sure, it's not always easy to go to work, but I find amazing things when I practice. I am carried away by tonal values, harmonies, the sheer beauty of music. The concept of a major scale in your mind, when you translate it, bring it into the physical world -- there is nothing like it! You are actually constructing something out of sound, and every day, it strikes me as an incredible occurrence."

His musical family, the Chandlers, was mightily impressed with the young man's dedication and discipline. Although Keigwin talked about "30 minutes of practice" back then, Jeanie Chandler (who also coached him privately) recalls three-hour sessions after which Keigwin would ask her to listen to a piece again. "He was working so hard," she recalled, "under very difficult circumstances. He would take everything in and work and work on every problem that came up."

But even with the dramatic new discovery of focus and purpose, Keigwin was still amazed, "shocked" when only a year ago, Charles Chandler asked him what he wanted to do with his life.

"He suggested that I could make a living as a bassist, and I was stunned," the young musician recalls. Literally within days, he won the SFSYO Concerto Competition (which brings him to the Davies stage on Sunday), auditioned for admission at Juilliard and Curtis -- and was accepted at the latter, where all students receive full scholarship.

He lives in Philadelphia, misses friends and "the smell of the Bay," and he is almost speechless with the experience of living with and for music, well on the way to a big career and full, meaningful life. "He's got what it takes to make it," Jeanie Chandler says of him.

And one more thing: the Chandlers gave Keigwin all the credit for his success; he, in turn, kept stressing what they did. If this story did not play out before my eyes and ears, it would be entirely too good to be true.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group of Oakland and a reviewer for the Marin Independent-Journal)

©1998 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved