We Buffalonians love to revel in our riches. We boast that we’re the only town to have all three of the great American architects: Louis Sullivan, H. H. Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright. We proudly point visitors toward our world-class music hall, City Hall and art gallery.

And every December, we celebrate another treasure, something else unusual for a city our size: Holiday time is when our community orchestras and choruses all go into high gear. And there are many of them.

For a newcomer, it can be overwhelming. Doreen Rao, the new director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, marveled at the turnout recently when she held the first of the chorus’ Buffalo Sings! community-oriented concerts at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“St. Paul’s was completely filled,” she exults. “It was filled with collaborating friends and choruses. We performed with the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus and had as our guest the Buffalo Niagara Youth Chorus and St. Paul’s Cathedral Boys Choir. And the audience itself was a chorus.”

If the chorus community is crowded, the orchestra community is, too. New this year is the Buffalo State College Philharmonia, a community orchestra formed by the distin-

guished Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Paul Ferington. That makes six community orchestras in the greater Buffalo area.

John Landis, the music director of the Cheektowaga Symphony Orchestra, says the groups have had to learn to respect each other’s territory.

“We are to stick to a certain area of town,” says Landis, who has conducted the BPO and is a former program host for WNED-FM. “The Amherst Symphony covers the north. They sometimes play as far north as the Amherst Museum, up in Williamsville. Then there is the Orchard Park Symphony, which covers the Southtowns. We cover the East Side. We’re supposed to stick to Cheektowaga, Sloan, Lancaster, etc. However, every summer we do play one concert in Quaker Arts Pavilion in Orchard Park behind the middle school.”

Are there ever turf wars? Landis says no.

“We try to be collegial about it,” he says.

Tchaikovsky’s own scores

Three local orchestras owe their beginnings to Joseph Wincenc, longtime concertmaster for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He founded the Amherst Symphony Orchestra in 1946, and then went on to found the Orchard Park Symphony and the Clarence Summer Orchestra.

But the roots of Buffalo’s tradition of community ensembles go deeper.

“At one time, 50 years ago, this city was twice its size,” Landis says. “A lot of these things started before the decline. We still had our rail business, steel mills and immigrant culture.”

Landis theorizes that because of Buffalo’s working-class roots, people here have inherited the habit of valuing music to enhance their lives.

“We’re kind of blessed here in a way,” he says. “We don’t have an opera company, but we do have great ballet companies, and we have people doing interesting things. We have German bands, Polish bands. We have a lot going on here.”

Rao, of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus, has her own theories about Buffalo’s rich musical scene.

“Speaking about it from an international perspective, I would say, I’ve noticed that communities that face social and economic struggles around the world are often the communities that have thriving arts organizations. That is a cross-cultural thing,” she says.

It could be a matter of history repeating itself, says Greg White, who plays the organ at Orchard Park Presbyterian Church and leads the Community Advent Chorale.

“Oratorio organizations were kind of important when there were tough times in the Victorian period,” he says. “When you think of the music of Elgar, oratorio societies were great social event. We might be revisiting that. That would be a very good thing if we were doing that.”

This being Buffalo, though, there is bound to be a surprise reason why orchestras and choruses here tend to flourish. And Landis, as he reflects on his 20 years with the Cheektowaga Symphony, comes up with a good one: The music department of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

The library, he explains, inherited the collections of three distinguished conductors. One of them was the legendary Walter Damrosch, who headed the New York Symphony. Just to illustrate the riches of this collection, among Damrosch’s treasures are the very scores that Tchaikovsky used when, in 1891, he was the guest of honor at the grand opening of Carnegie Hall in New York City.

“Tchaikovsky brought the music with him from Russia and it ended up in Damrosch’s library,” Landis says. “The music is stamped by Damrosch. It’s falling apart, but we used it.”

The library’s rich resources help keep costs down. Landis says the Cheektowaga Symphony receives $12,000 annually from Cheektowaga’s arts fund. “It only costs about $5,000 a concert. We pass the plate,” he says.

“We do get generous support from our donors. But we’re just hanging in there, going from year to year. We’re hoping this will go on, but of course nobody knows.”

Magic vibrations

What draws people together to sing and play? Rao says it fills a basic human need.

“First of all there is an acoustic, physical experience. When people are singing, you get frequencies and vibrations that are really creating a psychological, spiritual impact –the kind of impact that cannot be expressed in words,” she says. “That resonance can really change the way people feel about themselves.”

Music, Rao suggests, has the power to lift people’s spirits. “People are drawn to this experience in ways they cannot verbalize. They come in tired and dragged out. And then they sing, and they leave feeling as if they are on top of the world.”

An orchestra or chorus means a big commitment. Weekly rehearsals are typical. The happiness factor, the singers and musicians say, is what keeps them coming back.

“It’s a challenge, but that’s a good thing,” says Maryann Reicher, who sings in the Orchard Park Chorale. “I always feel I’m learning something.”

She says the group’s director, Tim Kennedy, inspires them to greatness. “He has a really good relationship with us. He’s able to joke with us. He has a great sense of humor. But at the same time he directs us and pushes us to try things,” she says. “He definitely has faith that we’ll learn the piece by the time we’re performing it.”

“Freudig” is German for “joyful,” and the Freudig Singers, led by Roland Martin, live up to their name.

“My life has certainly branched out, as music is not my primary means of employment,” says Freudig singer Elizabeth Bailey- Sands. “I love being joyful. I’m hoping to be Freudig for another 20, 30 years.”

Bailey-Sands is passing her love of singing onto the next generation. Her daughter is in the Buffalo Seminary Glee Club. Saturday, at the Freudigs’ Christmas concert, they sang together. Bailey-Sands exults: “Since she was born, I had been hoping for this opportunity.”

What Handel intended

Their members like to joke, but the quality of Buffalo’s community orchestras and choruses is generally high. Last spring, the Orchard Park Symphony played host to internationally renowned fiddler Mark O’- Connor. The Amherst Symphony featured violinist Adele Anthony, who recently played in the Buffalo Phiharmonic’s opening gala. In 1978, the violinist Elmar Oliveira won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, earning him overnight stardom. His first post-victory appearance, just a week later, was with the Clarence Summer Orchestra.

Community orchestras have helped launch noteworthy careers. The Amherst Symphony has featured Amy Schroeder, considered in the forefront among emerging violinists. The Cheektowaga Symphony Orchestra’s first soloist, years ago, was the distinguished pianist Claudia Hoca, then only 11.

The leader of a community orchestra or chorus faces the challenge of choosing repertoire that won’t be impossible to tackle, but will be challenging enough to make the group reach and learn.

“On every concert, there’s always something that’s challenging,” Landis says. “We’ve done a couple of Mendelssohn symphonies, Schumann symphonies. We haven’t tackled Brahms. But we did a Russian program. We had a fabulous pianist from New York City, Christopher Johnson, he did the Tchaikovsky First Concerto. Then we did this Borodin. It was a reach, but we made it. There are things like that that I am proud of.”

White, at the Community Advent Chorale, found himself on a road of no return when he arranged for a performance of “Messiah” with an orchestra of professional musicians. The singers, he said, rose to the occasion, boosting their quality to match the ensemble.

The next Christmas, they faced a quandary. “We had to ask, what do we do, perform it again with orchestra? The decision was yes,” he says. “Now we can’t ever go back to doing this with organ. That’s not how Handel intended this.”

“We’re not an auditioned group,” he adds. “But I think people inherently know whether they can take on this challengee. We get people from the audience, they go to a performance, and they say, ‘You know what, I want to be a part of that. I think I can cut it.’

“And our audiences have responded very well to us in terms of standing room only. The community is who really supports us to do this. We call it a gift to the community. And in terms of patronage and sponsorship, the community really does support us.”