Benjimen Neal feels the weight of musical history as Civic librarian

As a high school clarinetist, Benjimen Neal already had a distinct career path in mind: he wanted to be an orchestra librarian. Helping his band director organize the ensemble’s library first sparked his interest, and he learned more about the field while interviewing for the National Youth Orchestra’s library fellowship, for which he was a runner-up his senior year.

“I am of the YouTube generation,” says Neal, “and so I remember when I was going through these interview processes in high school, I was just looking up online anything and everything I could find about orchestra librarians — any articles, any videos that an orchestra put out for National Library Day, anything I could get my hands on.”

This level of dedication gave him a head start when he started college at Middle Tennessee State University, where he earned a bachelor’s of music and music industry. As a freshman, he sought out mentorship from the school’s orchestra director, and the next summer, he was offered a library internship at Interlochen Center for the Arts. After his internship was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he worked at Interlochen for three summers from 2021 to 2023.

Neal was just starting his last semester of college when he applied for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s Library Fellowship in the fall of 2023, but it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “I grew up listening to the Chicago Symphony, and I just loved the city of Chicago itself, so I thought that it would be an amazing next step,” he says.

When Neal was offered the position, his undergraduate faculty, the Civic Orchestra’s administration and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s librarians all supported his decision to begin the fellowship while finishing up his degree. His first concert with the Civic Orchestra was October 23, 2023, and he graduated that December.

As the Civic Library Fellow, Neal benefits from the mentorship of CSO librarians Justin Vibbard, Carole Keller and Mark Swanson, and the role comes with the full responsibility of an orchestral librarian. Among other duties, an orchestra librarian researches publishers and editions, purchases or rents scores as needed, communicates with conductors and soloists, checks parts for publishing errors, hand-marks bowings for string players, makes sure that each player’s part is organized in the same way, distributes the music, marks any changes made during rehearsals and sets the conductor’s scores onstage during concerts.

“I am the sole person responsible for Civic’s music, so it’s either sink or swim for me,” says Neal. “But [the CSO librarians] have an open-door policy, and they’re always here to help me. They really care about the Civic librarians and really want us to succeed.”

Neal’s first day on the job was the same day as Civic’s first mainstage concert of the 2023/24 Season. “I was introduced to the orchestra during their sound check, and then I was taken on a whirlwind tour of the building,” he recalls. “I met the conductor [James Gaffigan] and then I had to do concert duty.”

“Going out onto the Chicago Symphony stage to set the scores for the very first time was just a crazy feeling,” he says, and “feeling the weight of all of the people who have been on that stage before me, both in the Civic Orchestra and in the Chicago Symphony.”

Another favorite memory of his first season is a concert cycle that Civic performed with conductor Lina González-Granados and local sextet Eighth Blackbird. In this program, he made his Civic stage debut in Einojuhani Rautavaara’s piece Cantus Arcticus, which uses recordings of bird calls that must be synced with the orchestra in real time — a job that Neal stepped in to do. “That was a really special moment, to be sitting in the back of the stage with my colleagues and be in view of the audience,” he says.

After the 2023/24 Season, Neal spent the summer at Aspen Music Festival. As head librarian, he managed a staff of six other librarians and was in charge of all the music being performed by the festival’s three orchestras, contemporary ensemble, opera program and chamber series. Before applying for the position, he wasn’t sure he was ready for this level of responsibility, but the CSO librarians encouraged him to go for it — “push the baby bird out of the nest, metaphorically,” he jokes.

As of fall 2024, Neal is back in Chicago preparing for a second season with Civic. “The fellowship is only a three-year program, maximum, renewable year by year, so I am very aware that my time in Civic is transient,” he says. “But there’s beauty to that, too.”

“As I advance in my career, I will always think of the skills my mentors have passed on to me, of how to be a librarian and how to do the work at the highest level,” he says. “I really owe the Chicago Symphony librarians for their mentorship, and the connections made through Civic are really amazing. … I feel like so many opportunities have been afforded to me because of Civic.”