Home-grown virtuoso
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different sort of configurations of family dynamics. It was obvious that Clayton loved playing the violin.”
She began inviting him to her Chicago studio for occasional lessons, and Hornbacker would go with him and take notes. “I learned so much from observing those lessons and watching how she taught him, how she talked about playing, what she said about particular passages in each piece,” she says. But Hornbacker could sense that her stellar student was slipping away.
“It was bittersweet,” she says. “As soon as he’d had a couple of lessons with Rachel, I said OK, he’s going to be gone before I know it. She figured he was in too small a pool of peers, and he needed an opportunity to play in a better orchestra and be more challenged. She wanted him to study with her teachers. I kept saying, ‘Please don’t take him yet.’ But I didn’t want to be selfish about it.”
Clayton auditioned for Pine’s teachers, Roland and Almita Vamos, whose roster of former students have thriving solo careers and chairs in the world’s top orchestras. It took Almita 10 minutes to decide to accept Clayton. He auditioned for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and won a top chair (he has been concertmaster, and is currently principle 2nd violin), and passed a battery of musical tests to earn a place in the Music Institute of Chicago, a training academy for what Pine calls “pre-professional” young artists.
His parents realized that they had to move. They sold their five-bedroom west side Springfield home, and pared down their accumulated belongings to fit into a twobedroom Chicago condo.
“It was a very difficult decision, especially for me, because my life’s here, my family’s there,” says Whitmore, who still works eight days every month at the Jacksonville hospital. “But you adopt a child and they’ve got a special gift; you kind of feel like you’re his steward, you know? You’re obligated to give him the best. And here we’re given this child with a very special talent — I mean, how could you say no?”
Clayton says the move has motivated him. “I left all my friends, and my parents had to make big sacrifices too. I feel like since I moved, I might as well be working as hard as I can to achieve what I want to achieve.”
The decision has paid off. Last year, Clayton returned to the Sphinx competition and took first prize. He toured Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts with the Sphinx orchestra, including two performances in Carnegie Hall. In Detroit, he performed under the baton of renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin. He performed as a guest soloist with the New World Symphony, the Colorado Symphony and the Hartford Symphony.
Many of these orchestras have invited Clayton back, but he has turned them all down to spend this year concentrating on his school work, his violin lessons and preparing to audition for various music conservatories.
His goal is to join a major professional orchestra. Chicago Symphony Orchestra is his current top choice. Whitmore recently asked Clayton to consider a university with a conservatory component, so that he will have a degree in addition to music performance. Clayton didn’t like the idea. “He just looked at me and says, ‘Dad, I can’t even imagine myself doing anything but playing the violin.’ ”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at [email protected].
