By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Vallejo Symphony Orchestra expects to close out the 2012-13 season as spectacularly as it began with Sunday’s Spring Concert, and a special guest on flute will help them do it.

The concert will feature Schumann’s “Manfred” overture, Fauré’s “Fantasie for Flute and Orchestra,” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, and flutist Melanie Keller, VSO’s personnel manager, will perform in each of the latter two pieces.

Keller said last week she worked with the symphony’s conductor, David Ramadanoff, in putting together the solo she will perform during the Fauré piece.

“It’s a piece that David and I came up with together. He asked me if I would be interested in playing a short piece with the orchestra about this time last year,” she said.

Keller gave some ideas to the maestro, who was interested in the selection. “It’s kind of a nice, light, on-the-shorter-side piece, to kind of balance the second half of the program, which is going to be heavier,” she said. “It’s sort of having our dessert first.”

Fauré’s “Fantasie” was written in 1898, just a few years before he became head of the Paris Conservatory. In his new position the piece became well known to students of the conservatory, and to this day, it is a popular piece by which the flute is learned.

“This piece was used several times as the contest piece, as the graduation piece for the flutists graduating from the Paris Conservatory,” Keller said.

“I think I was in high school when I first started learning this piece,” she said.

Keller will also perform in the second half of the performance, during Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

“It’s a very meaty piece, definitely heavier,” she said. “The orchestra is bigger, and there are more brass and wind players involved in this piece, so it is going to sound a lot louder, and be a lot more intense,” Keller said.

“I’m looking forward to it. I’m delighted that David asked me to work on something like this. It will be a great experience.”

Keller, 37, is a Baltimore native who currently lives in Belmont with her husband, Blaise Keller, and their two sons, Owen, 5 1/2, and Jacob, 3 1/2.

Besides playing with the Vallejo Symphony and other groups in the Bay Area, Keller teaches flute, at music schools, private schools and in private lessons.

“I really enjoy teaching,” she said. “I try to put myself in my students’ shoes and see the music the way they are seeing it for the first time. It’s all brand new to them.”

Music has been a part of Keller’s world since she was a small child. Her parents are both of German descent, and they traveled to Germany to several times when she was very young.

“One of the times, we visited my mother’s former piano teacher in Berlin. My mom asked her what would be a good instrument to start a young child on — and I have three brothers also — and she told my mom either piano or recorder,” Keller said.

Keller started taking private recorder lessons in the first grade. By eighth or ninth grade, she said, she had moved to flute.

She went on to study the flute at Baltimore’s Towson University and Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory before studying for two years with Tim Day at the San Francisco Conservatory. Day is now the principal flute with San Francisco Symphony.

“I have been lucky to be able to study with all of these wonderful players and people,” Keller said.

Which is how she describes the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra, with which she’s played since 2004.

“I really enjoy working with David Ramadonoff. He’s a very knowledgeable musician, a scholar. It’s amazing what he knows about every aspect of, not only the music, but the history behind the music, the history behind the composers of the music we are playing,” Keller said.

“He’s just very respectful to all the musicians in the orchestra. It’s a pleasure working with him and all of the other musicians in the orchestra. I feel really lucky.

“The Vallejo Symphony is a wonderful experience, especially for anybody in the Vallejo community, to come out and hear their orchestra in their own community. We’re excited to be able to play in Vallejo.”

If You Go
The Vallejo Symphony Spring Concert is this Sunday at 3 p.m. at Touro University, 1310 Club Drive, Mare Island. Tickets are $15 to $35. For more information and to buy tickets, visit vallejosymphony.org.