CBA Ode to Joy

took over from there. Everyone will tell you that he is the glue that has kept this “crew” together all these years. The orchestra has experienced amazing growth. Every time two musicians left, three more joined. So, we are all part of the conspiracy.” Nowicki recalls approximately a dozen lawyers at the first orchestra rehearsal in 1986, where the fledgling group’s first practice featured Leroy Anderson’s classic, The Syncopated Clock . Within a short time, the CBASO progressed to performing the Karelia Suite by Jean Sibelius for the Chicago Bar Association’s Installation Dinner in 1987. “This was followed by countless more challenging symphonies and concertos, as well as every other type of music an orchestra can play,” says Nowicki. Although she retired from the bench in 2006 to pursue a private arbitration practice, Nowicki continues to play her cello. “It is impossible to describe the thrill and excitement I experience while playing with a group, whether it be a full-sized orchestra or a string quartet,” Nowicki explains. “Being inside a piece of music is magical.” “Now that the CBASO has been around for over 30 years, it is no big deal to open a courtroom door and hear the blast of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony . But when we first started rehearsing in my courtroom, the presence of a full sized orchestra anywhere in a courthouse was unprecedented. As you might know, the Daley Center is set up such that on every floor there are two corridors of courtrooms, each having ten courtrooms, five on each side of the hallway. So, on any given afternoon, as one walked down the corridor opening a door, one would find a breach of contract argument, a jury medical malpractice trial, a forfeiture matter, and so on. All with the attendant formalities. But once we started rehearsing, if you were looking for the papers you left at trial that afternoon, expecting a deserted courtroom, you were greeted with a Rossini Overture or trumpets and trombones blasting with Mahler’s First Symphony . What I loved was how Bob Hodge, one of the bass players, characterized it: ‘very Fellini-esque.’” “I also had an ulterior motive when we went to the CBA with the idea of starting an orchestra. My passion is chamber music. Well, as it turns out, one of the recent offshoots of the CBASO is the annual chamber music concert. So. A dream come true.” “Fondest memory? Too many. I have to say that every time we started a new piece, all of us sight reading the music, I experienced the same rush and seeming “miracle” that it actually sounded like music! But specifically, one time after we had been together a few years, we invited a grade school friend of mine, who was then the principal clarinetist with the Milwaukee Ballet, to solo in a Weber Clarinet Concerto . The last time I had heard her play, we were both in sixth grade. Now she was at the top of her field. And we were accompanying her! It was an overwhelmingly experience.” “The season we performed Trial by Jury at the Daley Center, I was pregnant. I always laughed that my child would come out singing a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. Well.....turns out he got his BFA in music from The New School in New York in 2013.” Another founding member, Blanche Manning, played bass clarinet in the CBASO as well as tenor saxophone in another CBA musical collaboration, the Barristers Big Band, until 2015. Manning was the 2004 recipient of the CBA’s Earl Burrus Dickerson Award. During her career as a Cook County judge, she became a supervising judge in the First Municipal District, supervising approximately 75 judges. She was elected to the appellate court in 1988 and in 1994 was nominated to the U.S. District Court to the seat vacated by Milton Shadur and served until she retired in 2012. Prior to becoming a judge, Manning was an assistant state’s attorney, a supervisory trial attorney for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a labor lawyer for United Airlines, and an assistant United States Attorney.

CBA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS 63