By Eileen Wingard
EL CAJON, California — Jazz violinist, pianist and composer, David Morales Boroff, was clearly the star of the Gala Fundraiser for the Music Department of Grossmont College. This attractive, talented 19-year-old, the recipient of a President’s Scholarship (four years of free tuition and housing) from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, demonstrated his admirable abilities on the violin as a performer and improviser.
Boroff who pronounces his first name Dah-vid with the accent on the second syllable as is common in Hebrew and Spanish, was the lead in a trio with bassist Chris Duvall and drummer-pianist Anthony Sanchez. They played as background music to the din of dinner table conversation and the MC reminding the audience to continue bidding on silent auction items.
His violin projected a warm, vibrant sound, albeit, somewhat distorted by amplification. The trio’s jazz improvisations were pleasant as they stitched syncopated embroidery on old familiar tunes such as “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and “Besame Mucho.”
Later, as part of the formal program with the audience paying attention, Boroff created an improvised piece for unaccompanied violin. It began with eery harmonics, segueing into fiddle-like double stops, then four string arpeggios, a cadenza-like sequence, and, finally, returning to the eery harmonics with which it began. It concluded with a climactic flourish.
This work confirmed Boroff’s well-grounded training by one of the city’s best violin teachers, the late Nick Stamon, and it illustrated the young man’s skill as a composer and improviser.
His creativity was showcased again on Thursday evening, May 15, at the Cuyamaca College Recital Hall when Grossmont College’s Afro-Cuban Ensemble premiered one of his compositions.
An only child, Boroff comes from a very musical family. His mother, ballerina Sylvia Morales, a Juilliard graduate, teaches ballet at Grossmont College. She is also a professional flamenco dancer and performed with the San Diego Symphony. His father, Phillip Boroff, plays classical, jazz and flamenco guitar and teaches privately.
In addition, the elder Boroff was an accomplished opera singer, once performing the role of Falstaff under the baton of Jan Popper, the noted opera conductor and professor at Stanford and UCLA. His voice teacher was a student of Hugo Strelitzer, the imposing German immigrant choral conductor at Los Angeles City College.
Another highlight of the program was when Boroff played Celtic fiddle music with the talented fiddler, Sharon Schwatka, and his father accompanied the two on banjo. Sharon was the other featured artist on the program and she delighted the audience with additional music from her Irish background.
The conductor of the Grossmont Orchestra, Dr. Randall Tweed, spoke about the goals of the department and the extensive outreach done by its quartet-in-residence. I have known Tweed since he was in high school, where he played trumpet in the Patrick Henry High School Orchestra and in the Civic Youth Orchestra under Dr. Bud Emile, the late concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and a former professor at Grossmont College.
While guests were arriving and viewing the silent auction items, the Grossmont String Quartet performed background music, mostly from the classical repertoire. Their members were Michael Dvoskin, first violin, Elizabeth Valdez, second violin, Francesca Savage, viola (substituting for the regular violist, Annabelle Terbetski) and Gordon Grubbs, cello.
These professional musicians are the principal players of the Grossmont Orchestra and act as coaches for their sections. One of the fundraiser’s aims was to underwrite their chairs.
According to Lisa Obendorfer, chair of the Friends of Music at Grossmont College, 140 were in attendance and the goals of the fundraiser to raise money for the Grossmont Symphony Orchestra and Master Chorale were met.
Robert McLeod, accompanist for the Master Chorale, played piano as background music during the dinner. He is also organist and choir conductor for Congregation Beth Israel.
Some musical guests were attorney David Kroll, who serves as cantor for Congregation Beth Israel’s Saturday morning minyan service, his wife, sculptress and art therapist, Sandra Berlin, and Jeanne and Henry Schenkman. Jeanne plays violin in TICO, the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra under the direction of David Amos and Henry, retired from the Probation Department, does volunteer work in a science museum. All the attendees with whom I spoke agreed that the evening was a musical, social and financial success, held in an attractive facility on the beautiful Cuyamaca College campus.
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Wingard is a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony and a freelance writer. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com