Callie Siverson Oberheu felt the presence of music in her life
long before she earned third chair as a french horn player in the
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, in Canada.
Gilroy – Callie Siverson Oberheu felt the presence of music in her life long before she earned third chair as a french horn player in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, in Canada.
It was there before she started singing in choirs and playing in bands in junior high and high school.
Siverson Oberheu recalls sitting next to her mother at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gilroy as a little girl when her mother sang in the choir.
“She would hold the hymnal down and point the notes out and I realized she wasn’t singing the same notes as everyone else,” Siverson Oberheu said. “That’s when I learned about harmony.”
Music filled the Gilroy home where she and her brother grew up.
Siverson Oberheu and her brother listened in on upbeat Dixieland music when her father hosted band practices at the home. He took them along to friends’ homes for rehearsals, letting them sing along to songs such as “Saints Go Marching On.” And when the extended family stopped by they would gather around the living room to sing and play all sorts of musical styles.
Music brought her parents Erik and Nancy Siverson together in the first place.
“My mom and dad both play the French horn and that’s how they met,” Siverson Oberheu said. “I was 10 when I started to play it. They had them in the house and I thought it was really cool.”
She played the piano and trumpet while also singing in any choir she could join during her tenure at South Valley Junior High and Gilroy High School.
“I was pretty much involved in every music group that was going on at some point,” she said. “A lot of times I had to take summer school to fit all the music classes I had into my schedule.”
Siverson Oberheu knocked herself out playing in the marching band, concert band and jazz band as well as singing in Chamber Choir under the direction of GHS music teacher Phil Robb.
Once she got to the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music, her advisors suggested she pick one musical instrument to study over the four years.
“You have to focus on one instrument and get really good so you can get a job,” she said. “And after you do that, you will have the leisure time to do that other stuff again.”
Siverson Oberheu chose the French horn because it was the instrument that brought her parents together.
“In fact, we all still play the French horn together,” she said. “But they let me play first [chair].”
While Siverson Oberheu and her husband Steve are visiting her parents and grandparents in Gilroy for the summer, the family has had a chance to play music together again. The family played at Fifth Street Live in downtown Gilroy as part of the Morgan Hill Wind Symphony.
Like her parents, music brought Siverson Oberheu and her husband together. She met the tuba player while in her final year at USC while they played in a brass quintet together.
He completed the final requirement for his Master’s degree in Morgan Hill, a Master’s recital held at Advent Lutheran Church this week.
The couple will return to Winnipeg, Canada in September so Siverson Oberheu can start her second year with the symphony orchestra, which also plays for the Opera and Ballet.
“We made an agreement before we got married that whoever had the best job, that would decide where we live,” she said, though she admitted the frozen, drab weather in Canada is hard to get used to. “There is snow on the ground six months of the year.”
For now, Siverson Oberheu has the best job since her husband is still auditioning for an orchestra position. She said a third-tier orchestra position “doesn’t make a lot” and compared it to a first-year teacher’s salary.
On one income in Winnipeg, the couple can afford to rent a house instead of an apartment.
“With a horn player and a tuba player, no one will want to live next to you,” Siverson Oberheu explained. “The cost of living there alone makes it worth freezing yourself for six months.”
And she knows she is fortunate to have a full-time gig as a musician after taking only two auditions.
“I was really lucky,” she said. “It happened that the music on the audition was stuff I was good at and I had a good playing day.”
