Congratulations Roger Fratena

This month, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra celebrates Roger Fratena, our Associate Principal Bass, as he retires after 54 remarkable years of performances with the DSO. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Roger for his decades of dedication to musical excellence and the lasting legacy he leaves behind. Throughout his incredible tenure, Roger has been a part of much of the orchestra’s rich history.

Spotlight

“In high school I was playing bass drum in marching band and bass clarinet in concert band. When I wanted to switch to saxophone to march, my band director agreed, but only if I switched to double bass for concert band,” said Roger Fratena, the DSO’s Associate Principal Bass. “He said I would thank him some day, and I thanked him right after I won the job here in Dallas.”

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Fratena began his bass lessons that senior year in high school and went on to Oberlin Conservatory. He graduated in 1971 with three degrees – a Bachelor of Music Education, a Master of Music Education and a Bachelor of Music in Bass Performance. Though he was offered the position to head the string department for the Sandusky Public Schools, he decided instead to pursue performance.

“I took my audition for DSO at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia with then-Music Director Anshel Brusilow and then-Personnel Manager and Principal Bassoon Wil Roberts. I got the job and drove down from Cleveland in a 1950 Ford. Once I made it to Dallas, I walked right into my first rehearsal at McFarlin Auditorium,” he said.

Since joining the DSO, Fratena has worked with seven music directors. “Each music director put his own stamp on the orchestra,” he said. “Some leaders were very technical and rhythmic. Others imparted their more lyrical styles, but we grew as an ensemble in new ways as the artistic leadership changed.”

He has performed all across North Texas, opened the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center with the orchestra and traveled the world on the DSO’s tours. Some of his favorite halls outside of Dallas include the Musikverein in Vienna, Philharmonie in Berlin and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Here in Dallas, he remembers performing as the Dallas Opera orchestra with Marilyn Horne in Carmen, a 1995 performance with Pavarotti at Reunion Arena and welcoming star pops performers Tony Bennett, Victor Borge, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Henry Mancini, Willie Nelson, Sonny & Cher and The Temptations. Roger also fondly remembers performing with classical artists Van Cliburn, Alicia de Larrocha, Itzak Perlman, Leontyne Price, Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolph Serkin and Andre Watts. As a composer, the DSO performed four of his ragtime pieces. “I wrote them in the mid-1990s, and we will perform one of them this coming November.”

Beyond the stage, Fratena is crazy about antique cars. He was once the editor of the newsletter of the Dallas Chapter of the Antique Car Club of America and many of his vehicles have been in films. “My 1933 Chrysler Imperial was featured in a made for TV movie about Bonnie and Clyde. They had to dirty it up, though,” he said. “Oliver Stone used one of my cars in the film JFK. My 1933 Chrysler was also in a TV movie called Pancho Barnes which starred Valerie Bertinelli, and three cares were in the NBC movie, Celebration.

Fratena is also proud of his years of teaching and guiding young bass players as a private teacher, an instructor in the Dallas Symphony’s Young Strings program and at Dallas College. “I want to impart to my students that they should strive to be a better person as well as a better bass player,” he said. “They don’t need to have a career in music to learn the skills that music provides, and hopefully they will develop a love of music that will make them audiences in the future.”

Next season, someone will sit on Fratena’s bass stool. What advice does he have for that person? “Take ownership and pride in this organization and enjoy your fellow musicians.”