Bennie Cottone, Oboe/English Horn

When the Berkeley Symphony joined the Bolshoi Ballet for performances of Swan Lake at Zellerbach Hall, the company brought their own conductor—a rather inscrutable man who was respectful toward the orchestra yet left the musicians feeling a bit uneasy. When the players arrived for the final performance, a Sunday matinee, there was a Russian candy on each stand. It was taken as a small gesture of appreciation from the conductor. But during the first break, Bennie Cottone showed up with a bag of the same candies and asked if anyone wanted more. The candies, it turned out, were a gift from him to his fellow musicians.

Bennie has played oboe and English horn in the Berkeley Symphony for 25 years and has distinguished himself with spellbinding English horn solos in everything from Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony to John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons. The oboe and its lower-pitched cousin the English horn are two of the most demanding instruments in the orchestra. They are difficult under the best of circumstances, but consistency of playing depends on a continual supply of fresh reeds, which the musician must make from scratch. It’s not unusual, says Bennie, to spend 25 hours a week at the reed desk in order to ensure a reliable stream of fresh reeds. Oboe reeds, he adds, will last for only about a week of daily playing and have a “notorious sensitivity to, well, everything—humidity, temperature, altitude, dinner, traffic, bad jokes, you name it.”

A native of San Francisco, Bennie grew up in the Mt. Davidson area and attended Miraloma Elementary School, where he began studying the clarinet in the 5th grade. By the time he got to Lowell High, he had experimented with several instruments but was still a clarinet player. Then he heard that the Lowell Orchestra was going to Japan and needed an oboe player. “I practiced the oboe over the summer, got in the orchestra, and went to Japan,” he remembers. “And here I am still doing it.”

Asked how he began to specialize on the English horn, Bennie observes that “at some point every oboe player has his first encounter with the English horn. When I picked it up, people said, ‘Hey, you sound pretty good on that.’ So I kept working on it.” He credits San Francisco Symphony English horn player Julie Giacobassi with providing invaluable direction and advice in developing his approach to the instrument. His other teachers have included Ray and Ellie Duste, Marc Lifschey, and John deLancie.

Bennie is a card-carrying member of the “freeway philharmonic.” In addition to the Berkeley Symphony, he is a regular with the California and Monterey Symphonies, was a member of the Santa Rosa Symphony for many years, and frequently performed with the San Jose Symphony until its untimely demise. He has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, plays frequently with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and has played in the pit for the Joffrey, Bolshoi, ABT, and Stuttgart Ballets, as well as the Mark Morris Dance Group and Phantom of the Opera.

During the occasional times when his schedule clears out enough to do something other than rehearsing, performing, and making reeds, Bennie is an avid mushroom forager and active member of the Mycological Society of San Francisco. SF Ballet Orchestra bassoonist David Bartolotta is among his mushroom mentors. “I like to hike and I like to eat,” says Bennie. “I would bring a mushroom to ballet rehearsals and ask David what it was. If it was something good to eat, we’d cook it up for dinner.” Bennie also frequents Pac Bell Park during baseball season. “I like going to the ball park,” he remarks. “It’s a whole different thing entirely, and takes my mind away from the musical side, which is pretty intense for a double reed player.” But he says he doesn’t follow the Giants all that closely and admits that he sometimes loses track of who’s on the team. “In the back of my mind,” he concedes, “Willie Mays is still in center field.”