ACO sweatshirts come in all kinds of colors. Members of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra wear them with black pants for school concerts. Colors from pink to green to blue brighten the fog this Thursday morning as members of the orchestra board the bus for their 2007 tour. Eielson AFB, Salcha, Delta, Tok, Northway and Dawson City are on the agenda for the four day road trip.

The Arctic Chamber Orchestra (ACO) is the touring arm of the Fairbanks Symphony. Founded in 1970 by Gordon Wright, the orchestra has toured throughout Alaska and also Europe, Spain and China.

"I'm so glad you're going on tour with us!" Candy Rydlinski reaches out from the bus seat she has claimed to give me a hug.

I'm glad too. I traveled with the orchestra during the 70's and 80's, as principal oboist and English horn player. Candy now fills those duties, whereas my job this time is to write about the orchestra. We are both excited, however, as the visiting guest soloist with the group is Joseph Robinson, former solo oboist with the New York Philharmonic. He will be playing the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the orchestra. Wildly beautiful and technically demanding, the concerto is one of the most important in today's oboe repertoire.

Our first stop is Crawford Elementary School at Eielson AFB. Students of music teacher Cynthia Sibitzky have readied chairs and stands for us and watch in anticipation from purple bleachers. I join them and soon the rest of the 325 students file in and the concert begins. I wonder how many have a parent in Iraq.

Concertmaster John Aspnes stands and the orchestra members tune to Candy Rydlinski's A - 440. Eduard Zilberkant strides out onto the gym floor. Zilberkant has a full-time career as a pianist and as a conductor and as I watch him lead the orchestra through introductions of the various instruments to Beethoven's Prometheus Overture, I realize his flowing energy and passion for the music must help balance the demands on his time.

After Beethoven come excerpts from the Strauss Oboe Concerto. Joseph Robinson compares the oboe to the more familiar clarinet, showing the difference in size and comparing the double reed the oboe uses with the single clarinet reed. He pulls out a soda straw.

"If you squeeze the end, you can get the straw to vibrate and make sound much as an oboe reed." Robinson gets the straw to speak. "What happens if I make the straw shorter?" With a pair of scissors, he clips the straw ever shorter while continuing to blow on it and the sound gets higher and shriller. The students laugh and giggle and I'm sure many will try the same experiment with variations at home.

With his beautiful tone and command of the musical phrase and the oboe, Robinson makes the virtuoso cadenzas and flowing songs of the concerto seem easy. The orchestra shines as well, both here and with Haydn's Symphony 104. I'm impressed. It's been years since I've been able to listen to the orchestra in this way. They have gotten so very good.

The highlight of the concert for the students comes at the end of the Haydn, when Zilberkant invites a student up front to conduct the orchestra. Loud applause follows and then it is time to pack up and head to Salcha for another school concert.

The evening concert is held at Rika's Roadhouse near Delta. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, tonight the roadhouse once again is a gathering place for travelers and locals alike. The orchestra performs to a festive, appreciative crowd in the dining hall of the lodge. People greet friends underneath wagon wheel chandeliers and moose and caribou trophies, getting caught up on the latest happenings.

I find the adults and students alike are open and friendly no matter where we go. The next day at the Walter Northway K-12 school, Moya James is my bleachers mate and she lets me know many Northway students have just returned from successful hunting trips. I get to meet Erika Hendren, a 13-year old student who has just shot her first moose. Later that night at the Tok K-12 School, I meet the Kemper family. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the Kempers were traveling when their RV broke down at Tok. While waiting the several weeks needed to order and install a new engine in the vehicle, the Kempers fell in love with the people and the area, and decided to stay and settle down there. Their two children are looking forward to the concert, since both play violin.

The concert is another good one. "What wonderful acoustics for a gymnasium!" enthuses Mary Kay Robinson, violinist and wife of our oboe soloist. Gymnasiums don't have a good reputation for quality acoustics, so this is high praise, indeed.

Not only does the school have a great gymnasium, but a wonderful music room in which many of the ACO members warmed up their instruments and got ready to perform. Yet the Tok School music program was cut three years ago amidst budget woes. The Tok Community, with their openness and generosity, can inspire the Kempers and others to make it their home, and the ACO players can inspire the audience with their music, but long-term funding will be needed to help the music find the permanent home it deserves here and elsewhere.

On Saturday morning, we file onto the bus once more, this time to drive the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Les DeWitt, our bus driver, is up for the journey. He has driven it many times along with the more difficult continuation of the Taylor Highway to Eagle, Alaska. Still, the switchbacks after Chicken, Alaska, and other parts of the road required careful maneuvering on his part.

The Top of the World highway has beautiful, sweeping views of miles and miles of wilderness. The road dips above and below the tree line, and though the strongest of the fall colors have faded, we still enjoy deep yellows, browns and rust from the bus windows, along with the first inch or two of snow.

A black bear blocks the way of the bus briefly as we head down from the hills. Then DeWitt squeezes the bus onto the Georgia Black ferry and we cross the Yukon to Dawson City.

The storefronts, wooden sidewalks, the packed-down dirt streets full of pot holes all give an air of authenticity to Dawson City. The town is half shuttered by the time of our arrival, the tourist season having ended, but soon the orchestra members are out and about, seeking out what stores remain open and walking on the paths bordering the Yukon River. River boats are pulled up casually in various formations along the bank.

Many of the remaining people have taken their children to Whitehorse to participate in a volleyball tournament, so orchestra members do a bit of their own recruiting. Flutist Dorli McWayne and Violinist Karen Toland climb the butte behind the city and invite four German hikers to the concert that evening.

The German hikers attend the concert along with a good-sized crowd and, as in Delta and Tok, the audience is in no hurry to leave, chatting with each other and the orchestra members afterwards. Many of us end up later at Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall for its closing dance and song show, the last one of the season.

Joseph Robinson shared, " When Mary Kay and I headed back to the hotel later that evening, we walked underneath a wide, brilliant stream of light that shimmered across the entire dome of the sky from west to east - the Northern Lights! "

He continued, "These concerts only came about because people of surprising skill and devotion love to perform enough to sustain their classical chamber orchestra without even receiving a penny for their labors. People in each audience were genuinely thrilled to experience the music. Magic happened!"

Yes, magic happened and may well be why the Arctic Chamber Orchestra continues to share its music. The sharing is not in one direction, however, but a mutual sharing of lives, perspectives, and yes, music.

The Fairbanks performance will be this Sunday, September 30th at 4:00 p.m. at the Charles Davis Concert Hall. For more information, contact the Fairbanks Symphony Association at 474-5733.