If you had encountered Rodolfo Fernandez during his 1980s and ’90s heyday in Las Vegas, you would not have been surprised to learn he was a conductor. He looked the part: “He had the most magnificent head of hair. Legendary,” says French horn player Beth Lano. “With that hair and the mustache, he cut quite the figure in his concert attire.” His was a face destined to be framed by arms moving in fluid, precise musical notation.
In addition to being a talented cellist himself, Fernandez, who died in April, for decades conducted the Nevada Chamber Symphony — previously the Serenata Chamber Orchestra — which essentially served as the house ensemble of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District before branching out as a nonprofit. He was 94, a leading figure from a heady time in Las Vegas culture, when the valley was building stunning new libraries, KNPR was recently underway, the city had an arts council, and more.
Fernandez was, by all accounts — and in contrast to the popular stereotype of overbearing orchestra leaders in movies like Tár — distinctly nontyrannical. “He never raised his voice,” says Peggy Trasatti, a former library district programming official who first brought Fernandez and Serenata under the library’s rubric, then eventually became his life partner. Rather, she says, he led with respect. “He was a very kind person, with strong, musical convictions,” says oboist Stephen Caplan, who performed for Fernandez several times.
“Rodolfo was a brilliant musician,” Lano says. “He believed deeply in communication through music, and he was beloved by the musicians.” As Fernandez told an interviewer in 1989, “You cannot be above the music and the musicians. If you do not have communion, you cannot produce beautiful music.”
For him, the beautiful music started at age 4, in his native Chile, when he heard a recording of a work by Schubert that featured the distinctive warm thrum of a cello. He was captivated, though he didn’t begin learning to play one until college. He emigrated to the United States in 1961, taught college music around the South, performed for a couple of years with the Swiss Chamber Orchestra, and eventually arrived in Las Vegas to take advantage of the musical opportunities on the Strip. Other opportunities quickly presented themselves.
The Serenata Chamber Orchestra was born in 1985 when Trasatti hired him to put together an ensemble to perform at a special library function — and an enthusiastic local audience turned out for it. (Some of the orchestra’s early concerts were broadcast on Nevada Public Radio.)
As an orchestra director, Fernandez was no mere crowd-pleaser who lards shows with easy-button selections by Bach or Beethoven. He once spent seven months ferreting out a deep cut by composer Rodrigo Grigo that he’d seen mentioned in a book, finally locating a source in the old Yugoslavia who could provide it. He leaves behind an extensive musical library of such finds, many of which he arranged not only for his orchestras but also for the cello trio he led. (That library is going to UNLV.)
“He was even willing to premiere an obscure, contemporary oboe concerto, with me as soloist,” Caplan says.
But that didn’t break his connection to audiences. Caplan adds, “What (Fernandez) created at the Las Vegas Library District was pretty miraculous at the time: a regular concert series of classical music with enthusiastic audiences.”
