MuckFlash

Scranton, PA -13 March 2009- Staff. Leslie Fogel was an ordinary Pennsylvania farmer with an extraordinary dream. For as long as he can remember, he’s wanted to bring together the world’s largest (and perhaps only) slide whistle orchestra. After two long years of preparation, Fogel’s dream has come true.

“It’s really too much for words,” an overwrought Fogel stammered over the phone. “I have been working nonstop for months to put this together, and it’s too gorgeous to describe.” Fogel, formerly the proprietor of a commercial wheat farm, has now made the slide whistle orchestra his full time occupation. “I do everything, from scoring and arrangements to costume and set design,” he boasted.

Fogel, a longtime slide whistle enthusiast, began putting on one man jazz and dixieland slide whistle concerts in and around Scranton over 5 years ago, but he always longed to hear the range of the slide whistle magnified to the scale of a full symphony orchestra. As the slide whistle is mainly a small accompaniment piece in most musical ensembles, however, he faced a shortage on all fronts: musicians, instruments and compositions.

Not to be deterred, Fogel sold all of his assets and devoted himself exclusively to re-arranging existing symphony pieces for the slide whistle and constructing new varieties of the slide whistle: everything from a bass slide whistle to a pico-slide whistle. He also spent several thousand dollars recruiting new musicians over the Internet.

After several months of work, Fogel will, in two weeks, finally conduct a full, 100 person slide whistle orchestra, replete with analogous string, brass, woodwind and percussion sections, for a 90 minute baroque concert. The performance, which Fogel has billed as “Slides of the Seasons,” has already sold out in Scranton and may soon move to larger venues in other cities. “It’s a real dream come true,” said Fogel. “I never knew I had such boundless creative energy.”

If all goes well with the Scranton series of “Slides of the Seasons,” later this year, with the cooperation of the Scranton Ballet, Fogel hopes to produce and direct the world’s first slide whistle production of The Magic Flute. “It will be divine,” he gushed.