Ensemble. Now there's a word we bandy about all the time in music. A French word, it means "together." In music, it has two shades of meaning. On the one hand, we often speak of good ensemble, or poor, when we refer to the precision of playing together. A musical group is itself called an ensemble: musicians who make music together. We usually think of an ensemble as a small group, but it also may refer to a symphony orchestra, concert band, mixed chorus or opera.

Even in large ensembles, a good conductor will aspire to create the refined expressive nuances that soloists playing in ensemble are capable of producing, that is, the sensitive ensemble of a chamber group. Confusing? Perhaps it will help to understand the artistic aspirations behind the names of two "ensembles" that performed here recently, the 37-member Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, a classical orchestra, and the 138-member Geidai Wind Ensemble, a concert band.

Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa: Nov. 16, Hiroyuki Iwaki conducting in Hamarikyu Asahi Hall -- Symphony No. 37 in G Major, K. 444, Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra in G Major, K. 216, featuring Yayoi Toda; Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn and Orchestra in E-flat Major, K. 297, featuring Gen Mizutani, Fumie Endo, Makoto Kanaboshi and Shinji Yanagiura (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-91).