Sideline Skill

One of the violinists is a Sears, Roebuck shoe salesman, another is president of the company that makes Golden Glint Hair Rinses. The tympanist is an investment banker. For 25 years the 109-piece Chicago Business Men's Orchestra has been entertaining their friends, their families—but mostly themselves—with their music.

Not long ago they heard of another amateur musician who had just written a bit of music: Actor Lionel Barrymore. They asked for permission to premiere his newest work in Chicago. It turned out to be a piano concerto—which was a little disconcerting. Explained First Violinist Lester Baker, a railway freight statistician: "As a rule accompaniments are so uninteresting to play, but the melodies of the Barrymore concerto lay so well on the various instruments that our members felt impelled to rise to the occasion." Barrymore made just one stipulation: that he be allowed to choose the soloist. He chose a 13-year-old Chicago high-school freshman with braces on her teeth, whom he had heard play Tschaikovsky and Beethoven in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel.

Last week June Kovachs, who has already played four times with the Chicago Symphony, introduced Barrymore's First Piano Concerto. It proved to have a, Tschaikovsky-like lyricism. As music it was like Bing Crosby's golf—not of championship caliber, but pretty durn good for an amateur.