"There's a part of our brains that just needs that stimulation. That's how we'll be happy," said Weiss, who helped start the orchestra. "There are certain passages when I'm sitting there playing them, I'm like, 'Oh, yes.' It's almost like that movie, When Harry Met Sally. Music means a lot to me."
Although some of the musicians have little orchestral experience, their conductor said he treats them no differently from those who have been playing for years and know much of the repertoire that the Baltimore Philharmonia tackles.
"I just ask them to sit down and play in the orchestra," Faraco said. "I don't make them nervous. Because when a conductor stares at you, it gets everything too excited and too nervous, and lots of mistakes happen that way. You just fluster them up - it's no use. I just ignore them and let them sink or swim by themselves.
"Once in a while, you glance at them and you can see pretty much what they can do. Then, I urge them to do a little bit better and give suggestions, especially with the string players.
"I do know," he added, "a little bit about violin playing."
That is a rather humble understatement.
Faraco, whose parents moved to New York from Italy in 1920, the year before he was born, began playing the violin before his eighth birthday.
"My mother was leaning toward the cello for me. But then she decided, 'No, he's so small, he'd have a hard time carrying it around,' " Faraco recalled. An instructor came to the apartment where his family lived, and an uncle who played the mandolin supervised his practice sessions.
After high school, Faraco was accepted to Juilliard, where he studied violin and piano and earned a postgraduate diploma after three years in the Army during World War II.
He found his first job with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, traveling the country and living out of a suitcase for three seasons.
In 1950, he wrote to the conductor of the BSO, who invited Faraco to come see him during a visit to Steinway Hall in New York.
"I went. We talked. I played," he remembered of the meeting. And he was hired.
Faraco never married and never had any children. He lived with his mother until her death in 1998. And music is his life.
In addition to playing for the BSO, he also served as concert master for the Gettysburg Symphony - a community orchestra founded by William Sebastian Hart, who became known for his Concerts Under the Stars series. (Although the group started out in Gettysburg, Pa., it quickly moved to Baltimore County, where musicians rehearsed out of Hart's old barn in the Towson area for three decades.)
Faraco took over that orchestra when Hart died but left when his mother became ill. He rejoined many of the Gettysburg players when they founded the Baltimore Philharmonia, and he became its conductor. He seems to relish his involvement with the orchestra despite the fact that arthritis in his shoulder prevents him from being able to play the violin much these days.
"My fingers don't move so fast anymore. I wish I could still play," he said. "This keeps me busy. But at the same time, it keeps me moving."
if you go:
The Baltimore Philharmonia Orchestra performs its last concerts of the year at 3 p.m. tomorrow at Loch Raven High School, 1212 Cowpens Ave., and at 3 p.m. Dec. 7 at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, 4414 Frankford Ave. All concerts are free. The symphony resumes it concert schedule in March and April with a spring series. Information: www.bpoinfo.net
