please do not jump on the viola!
by stephen brookes | photos by becky skavdal
Hollin Hills violist Jerome Gordon has toured with Celine Dion, coached movie stars, performed for the Pope — and endured countless viola jokes.
We can all agree, can’t we, that being a professional classical musician may be one of the coolest things you can do in life? But when you play the viola — that outsized, deep-throated, earnest-but-gawky big brother of the violin — you don’t always get a lot of love. Mocked by other musicians as never in tune and usually lost, what violists get, in fact, is … jokes. Lots and lots of jokes.
“A friend of mine sent me one the other day,” says Jerome Gordon, sitting on the deck of his Rebecca Drive home on a warm October afternoon.
“‘What’s the difference between a viola and a trampoline? You take your shoes off when you jump on a trampoline.’” He laughs, rolling his eyes. “There’s so many of them. You have to have a thick skin.”
But as a professional violist for the past 12 years, Jerome has led a life that would make even the snootiest musician jealous. He’s performed with major orchestras and chamber groups, toured the world with Celine Dion, played with Usher and Stevie Wonder, and even performed for Pope Francis.
He’s worked on Hollywood films, done a stint as an LA studio musician, and if it weren’t for the coronavirus shutting everything down, he’d be onstage in some exotic locale with Celine Dion right now, basking in applause and cheerfully having the last laugh.
So how did such a jet-setting, Pope-serenading, generally glamorous guy end up in Hollin Hills? Well – love, actually. Jerome met his husband, Kevin Roberts, when they were both living in California, and when Kevin moved east for his career, Jerome packed up his viola and joined him.
Gigs came quickly – the DC area has a vibrant classical music scene – and soon he found himself with love, a thriving career, and a house in Hollin Hills. The trifecta, basically.
“I only practiced because my teachers told me to”
But let’s back up to Miami in the 1980’s, where Jerome grew up. He was first drawn to the piano, and took lessons in elementary school. But in 6th grade, his school assigned him to a strings class, and asked him to choose an instrument. Fate was about to pounce. “The girls were picking the violin, so I was ‘nah, I’m not going to play the violin,’” he says. “Then I looked at the cello, which you play between your legs, and we made fun of those guys. The bass, no way I’m taking that thing to school. So what was left? The viola!”
Initially ambivalent – “I only practiced because my teachers told me to,” he says – the rich, mezzo voice of the viola began to grow on him, and by the time he was in high school his talent was impossible to ignore. Teachers reached out to his parents, telling them that the young musician had a gift and should consider a career as a performer. So he took his university degree at Northwestern, where he could get first-class training as a classical violist – while hedging his bets with a minor in business.
“As a musician, you never think you’re good enough to make a living,” he says. “And I came late to performing; my first recital in college was rough. So I was considering going into entertainment law, or arts management.”
Jerome with husband
Kevin Roberts
Fortunately for the world, Jerome took the less-sensible path. He went to USC in Los Angeles for a graduate degree, played for a few years with the New World Symphony in Miami, and returned to LA in 2008, where he launched the eclectic career of a working musician – playing everything from Mozart with the LA Philharmonic to the sound track for Finding Dory. He coached actress Catherine Keener for her violist role in the film “A Late Quartet,” played with chamber groups, and worked with stars from Carrie Underwood to Jennifer Hudson to Josh Groban.
Like any ambitious young performer, he was open to anything. Which is how he ended up touring the world with Celine Dion.
“In the beginning, I didn’t know much about her,” he admits, of one of the most famous singers on the planet. “For the audition I had to play some of her songs, and I didn’t know how they went! It was kind of funny.”
He made the cut anyway, and in 2011 he joined Dion’s Las Vegas show and eventually began touring with her, playing before a crowd of 60,000 in London’s Hyde Park. The intensity of it, he says, changed how he thought about music.
“It was different from anything I’d ever done in my life,” he says. “It’s so visceral. You look into the audience, and people are just bawling their eyes out. Fans send us notes saying Celine’s music has saved their lives, or helped them get through cancer or through a big breakup. Her music just means so much to them.”
But as a highly-trained classical musician, wasn’t it a step down to play … a mere pop show?
“As a classical musician, you have this preconceived notion about pop artists,” Jerome says. “It’s not the same kind of training, and a lot of them don’t even read music. I thought that many of them didn’t have the same kind of respect for music that we do. But she completely changed my mind. She’s a consummate professional. And she’s a sweetheart!”
Jerome’s career put him in front of another deeply emotional audience in September of 2015, when he played before some 25,000 people during Pope Francis’ appearance at Catholic University.
“You could feel the energy – people wanted to be in the Pope’s spiritual presence,” he says. And having been raised Catholic himself, he says, he was “flooded with emotions” during the performance.
“You could argue that all music is spiritual,” he says, “and I can’t play Bach without feeling some spiritual element. But spiritual is different from religious, and with the Pope there was a religious component, too.”
With Celine Dion
So how do you follow both Celine Dion and the Pope? With the coronavirus shutting down so much musical life in 2020, it hasn’t been easy; Jerome was supposed to have gone on tour with Dion, until the quarantine forced her to cancel. But he’s finding new ways to perform, including playing with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra in innovative settings, and working with chamber music groups. Hollin Hillers, in fact, got a chance to hear Jerome play this summer in two open-air concerts in Voigt Park, playing with fellow resident Gino Madrid and members of the education-oriented Sound Impact ensemble.
And even in these challenging times, he says, being a musician is still a very good life.
“People sometimes say, ‘oh, you get to play for a living,’” he says. “And you’re like, well – it’s work too! You have to give so much of yourself, and there are so many elements to it. But I am lucky to be able to do this. It makes me appreciate the hours of frustrated practice – and wanting to bang my viola against the wall!”
— Stephen Brookes, November 2020