Sue Leonardi’s trumpet lay dormant in its case for 14 years until one day in 1997, when one of her neighbors came by to welcome her to her new neighborhood in Oakland. He had heard she was a trumpet player and wanted her to join his band. To her own surprise, she said yes.
The neighbor’s gig turned out to be a mariachi band, a style of music Leonardi had never played before. But it got her to pick up her horn again and helped erase her regret of having ever set it down in the first place. Leonardi moved on from mariachi to playing with the San Francisco Pride Band, where, at a rehearsal in 2000, a colleague told her there was a women’s orchestra in dire need of a trumpet player. She went to one of their rehearsals, and the rest was history: Twenty-five years later, Leonardi is still playing with that all-women’s group — the Community Women’s Orchestra in Oakland.
“I feel like a women’s orchestra is such an underdog,” said Leonardi. “And I’m a really big fan of underdogs.”
The orchestra, founded in 1985, was originally created to be a supplementary group to the professional, San Francisco-based Women’s Philharmonic. The two coexisted until 2004, when the Philharmonic shuttered, but the Community Women’s Orchestra carried on. Now, the CWO is one of just a handful of all-women’s orchestras left in the country. “There’s only three that I’m aware of,” says the orchestra’s conductor, Samantha Burgess.
This year, the CWO is celebrating its 40th anniversary and gearing up for two concerts to commemorate the season. The first of the two is happening Sunday, March 2, ahead of International Women’s Day, and will feature women composers like Louise Farrenc.