Bravo Performance Earns Teenager Seat With Symphony

The bass maestro cometh.

He’s young, hardly a virtuoso yet. But the signs are all there. The Spokane Symphony’s auditioning panel recognized them last September when it chose 18-year-old Scott Dixon of Hayden Lake to fill a vacancy in the symphony’s bass section.

“‘Rare’ doesn’t even define what’s happened to Scott,” gushes violinist Cathyanne Lavins. “I know a fellow who auditioned 54 times with the Houston Symphony before he got the chair. For someone to win on his first audition, well, it’s unheard of.”

The honor hasn’t inflated Scott’s ego.

“My teacher came back after the audition and said to me and his other student, ‘You were pretty bad and you were pretty bad,”’ Scott says, mimicking his bass teacher’s thick Russian accent. “‘But you were less bad, so you got it.’ I was less bad.”

He laughs as self-consciously as a teenager because he is one, complete with gangly legs and comfortably unruly hair.

On a stage full of seasoned adults, Scott beams with the excitement of someone beginning a journey.

“His whole musical career has been exciting to us,” says Mike Dixon, Scott’s dad. “He picked things up so easily.”

It began with piano in first grade, then guitar, then cello in the Coeur d’Alene School District’s fifth-grade strings program. His older sister played violin, studied with Lavins and interested him in the bass.

“She said all the cool guys play bass,” Scott says.

So he started bass in the sixth grade. But guitar was his burning interest. He plucked bass strings in music class and whaled on the guitar with his friends after school. A garage band, Crumtree, emerged, then came invitations to play.

Scott’s parents approved.

“That’s how we met,” says his mother, Polli, reminiscing about the days before she married Mike. “We both played guitar in a folk-singing trio in high school.”

Crumtree won the Battle of the Bands at Spokane’s Pig Out in the Park in 1994. Their prize was 12 hours of recording studio time in which to play their Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains-type music.

“We thought we were going to be famous,” Scott says.

Instead, Crumtree folded. Most of the band left for college that fall as Scott started his sophomore year at Coeur d’Alene High. He sold his electric guitar and amps and turned his interest to the string bass.

Lavins directed him to Roma Vayspipir for private lessons. She knew Vayspipir from the years she’d played with the symphony.

Vayspipir had left his position as principal bassist in the Leningrad Symphony for the same position with the New York Philharmonic in 1980.

He didn’t like New York. After 25 years of symphony work, he wanted a less demanding schedule that allowed him time to teach.

Spokane was his match. The symphony hired Vayspipir as its principal bassist and Eastern Washington University hired him to teach. He rejected Lavins’ suggestion that he teach 15-year-old Scott.

“I was a little suspicious about him because he was so young and he didn’t play at all,” Vayspipir says, dismissing Scott’s school lessons.

Lavins pleaded and Vayspipir relented.

“Scott is so incredibly polite and respectful of adults,” she says. “In music students, the ones who really succeed are like that. They aspire to be like someone else who’s professional.”

Lavins also had to talk Scott into private lessons.

“I went to one just out of curiosity,” he says. “After the first lesson, I realized I had no clue about the bass.”

Vayspipir started Scott as if he’d never touched a string bass. He warned him the lessons and practice would be hard, but worth it. He asked Scott if he really wanted lessons.

“I said yes impulsively,” Scott says. “And we began a Karate Kid/Mr. Miyagi relationship.”

Vayspipir remade Scott. For months, Scott practiced his new techniques at home, but reverted to his old style at school so he could keep up with the orchestra.

“We’ve never had to say, ‘Practice,”’ Polli says. “I’ve had to say, ‘Please don’t play. I’m trying to sleep.”’

Scott quickly grew on Vayspipir.

“Sometimes when he’s playing, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s what I dream to have in all my students,”’ the veteran bass master says. “He’s a wonderful worker.”

But he didn’t say as much to Scott.

“The biggest compliment from him is when he turns the page of music during a lesson and says nothing,” Scott says.

Vayspipir encouraged Scott and another student to audition for the symphony opening.

The audition music by Beethoven, Strauss and Shostakovich was “insanely difficult. There were things I never imagined. The weirdest thing was having to work that hard,” Scott says.

He was one of five applicants, and the youngest. One by one, they played about 20 minutes each on the stage at The Met. The judges sat behind a huge tarp draped from the rafters. Scott could hear them whispering.

He knew his competition well enough to know he had a chance if he played well. His intonation was weak, but rhythmically and musically he was sound.

The news that he’d won the job excited him as much as it worried him. Scott had enrolled full time at EWU that fall. He chose the school to study with Vayspipir.

“Where else could I study with one of the best in the world?” he says.

The opportunity was too good to pass up. Scott began rehearsing regularly with the symphony and made it work. Rehearsals are in the evenings, after class. He earns $71.60 for each night’s work.

“I look around and say, ‘Look who I’m playing with,”’ he says, with no effort to disguise his awe. “I get there at 7 and everyone is ready to play. It’s not like high school. It’s amazing.”

Mike and Polli attend every symphony performance now.

“We didn’t know Bach from Beethoven, until Scott,” Polli jokes.

For Vayspipir, Scott is a protege. The bass master was hired by his first symphony at 19. Scott is following in his footsteps.

“It’s a little unusual to get a job at his age,” Vayspipir says. “But he’s wonderful. He’s a wonderful person and wonderful player already. You never know what will happen to them when you take them on.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PERFORMANCE Scott Dixon will play with the symphony in today’s 2 p.m. performance of “The Nutcracker” at the Opera House.