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January 3, 2003/Tevet 29 5763, Vol. 55, No. 19
Cellist takes over, makes over Giuseppe's
RAEANNE MARSH
Special to Jewish News
Richard Bock is a cellist with the Phoenix Symphony.
Photo courtesy of Phoenix Symphony
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Italian restaurant owner and first cellist with the Phoenix Symphony - quite a stretch for a nice Jewish boy from New York.
"They're both performance," says Richard Bock casually, explaining the connection.
His self-effacing friendliness belies his accomplishments. In truth, Bock has a passion for both which he makes immediately apparent. But it all started with the music.
More specifically, it started with eight years in Florence, Italy, playing first cello with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Music was everywhere, he remembers, and he loved playing in cities like Florence and Prague with their rich arts heritage. But he was young, he says now, and didn't realize how special such a life was. Invited to be soloist on a United States State Department tour of the Soviet Union, he missed half of Florence's 1979/1980 season and so decided that was a good time to return to the States.
He brought with him an urge to recreate the trattoria experience he had left behind in Florence. His dream finally became reality seven months ago when he took over ownership of Giuseppe's, a long-established neighborhood post.
Keeping the staff, who have known many of the customers for years, Bock changed the d‚cor and menu.
"We knew places that were very similar to this in Florence, little places on side streets," he says.
Friendly and unpretentious, the 30-seat BYOB trattoria is decorated mostly in black and white, with splashes of color from red tablecloths and bright posters, and fresh flowers in Chianti bottles on every table. The recipes are Bock's from Florence, and he credits the cooks for embracing the new menu with such skill.
Three large chalkboards frame the order window, listing appetizers such as prosciutto with melon (a healthy plateful of thinly sliced prosciutto over wedges of ripe cantaloupe), a variety of salads and sandwiches, and pasta dishes including penne with a light Gorgonzola cream sauce. The can-noli, according to diners, is "the best." Bock makes the thick, orange-spiked cream filling himself.
One wonders how he finds time. He's at the restaurant early in the morning, checking on restaurant supplies, taking care of bills, deciding on the day's specials, and handling a myriad of other business details. He runs downtown to Symphony Hall by 9:45 a.m. for several hours of rehearsal. Then it's back to Giuseppe's, where he enjoys interacting with his customers. The restaurant is open from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and the only nights Bock is not there is when the Phoenix Symphony is performing a concert and, once a year, when he plays the Kol Nidre for Temple Beth Shalom in Sun City.
A history of Bock's musical achievements is displayed in a back hallway: clippings from his tours with Frank Sinatra, reviews from performances around the world, album covers of his recordings, and other memorabilia that attest to his musical accomplishments.
One of his earliest was earning first cellist position with the American Symphony in New York. A few days after his audition, Bock remembers his mother answering the phone and turning to him white-faced, saying, "Leopold Stokowski is on the phone!" He'd kept up his study of cello through college, but had not been enrolled in a formal music program. Until that moment, he says, he really had no idea whether he was any good or not.
Bock joined the Phoenix Symphony eight years ago, answering a national audition by then-conductor Theo Alcantara, who wanted to elevate the regional symphony to a higher level. Now very involved in Phoenix's music scene, he laments the fact that support for the arts is such a hard sell.
"There is an incredible level of talent here among students," he observes. "But once they graduate, there's no place for them to go."
Last year a lack of strong community support resulted in salary cuts that put the Phoenix Symphony at the bottom among metropolitan orchestras in terms of pay scale, a move that was the final impetus for Bock to open a restaurant after talking about it for so many years.
"I love the music," Bock declares, "but this gives me something I have control of."
Giuseppe's Italian Kitchen is located at 2824 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix.
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