Freeway Philharmonic
Freeway Philharmonic follows seven San Francisco Bay Area freelance classical musicians as they perform with regional orchestras across Northern California and struggle to acquire a permanent position with a major symphony. The film depicts their efforts to balance a love of music with a road warrior lifestyle that often requires traveling hundreds of miles a day to rehearse, teach and perform.†These individuals have an unrelenting desire to perform for a living, sometimes at the expense of their family and their own well-being. The goal of the film is to show the dedication, perseverance and rigorous life of the musicians, while they grapple with their desire to succeed in a hard-driving career and come to terms with the limitations in their quest for artistic accomplishment.
While profiling the individual yet often interconnected stories of the seven musicians, the documentary also illustrates the state of music and the arts in local communities across California. Most regional orchestras don't have enough funding to hire full-time musicians. Instead, they fill their chairs with freelance musicians who must piece together a living from multiple sources. Thousands of conservatory-trained musicians play in these orchestras, serving the cultural needs of communities of all sizes across the country. Without these individuals, smaller regional orchestras would simply not exist.
In addition, many of the freelance Freeway Philharmonic musicians have come up through public school music programs. As such, they are ambassadors for the promotion of funding music education. With music programs disappearing from schools everywhere due to insufficient funding and a shift in educational priorities, players often contribute by teaching and performing for students. In many ways they are filling the gap left by limited public music programs and are role models for the next generation of musicians, providing an example of one way to fulfill one's dream of playing music for a living.
Trailer
Credits
Director/Producer: Tal Skloot
Co-Producer: Steven Baigel
Cinematographers/Editors: Tal Skloot, Steven Baigel
Total Running Time: 55 min.
Website: www.freewayphil.com
About The Filmmaker
TAL SKLOOT has worked on numerous feature films and Emmy-winning documentaries as a producer and editor. His credits include work with Orion Pictures, LucasFilm Ltd., Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, PBS, KQED, Frontline, Pulse Films, Zala Films, DLB Films and The National Endowment for the Arts. Skloot received his bachelor of arts in classical music performance from University of California at Santa Cruz and is a graduate of the American Film Institute. He is an adjunct faculty at the Diablo Valley College film department.