I really enjoy chamber music, because your part is crucial to the success of the whole performance. Orchestra playing also depends heavily on the highest level possible from each player, and individuals do make a huge difference--but you are supposed to sound like one giant instrument, not like an individual. In chamber music, however, you are really "out there" and can't hide as much in the texture. You have a great deal more artistic freedom, but you have a much more visible responsibility. A Brahms or Beethoven quartet is a fantastic experience for any string player.
do you have a pre-concert ritual?
No, unless you count listening to All Things Considered, or a CD of Caetano Veloso or Hindemith's Mathis der Maler during the drive down from Wellsboro.
what are some of your more memorable performance experiences?
While playing in an outdoor televised concert one sultry summer evening in Wilkes-Barre, the TV lights attracted even more bugs than were already on hand for the event. The players were going out of their minds. For all the swatting, you would think the orchestra had fifty conductors waving their arms around. By the end of the 1812 Overture, it was hard to tell which spots on the music score were notes and which were squashed insects! After the concert, I opened my case in the hotel room to let the instrument dry out in the air conditioning, and out flew a cloud of gnats.
What is the most exotic location you've ever played?
That would probably be the display window of a downtown Milwaukee department store. We had speakers piping us out to the street.
Whom do you admire (composers, players, non-musicians)?
Excellent musicians, fine educators, those who do something for others in almost any way, people who stick with something difficult instead of giving up, people who have job responsibilities but manage to keep their families first.
if you weren't a musician, what would you be?
My "day job" is being a professor of German and French at Mansfield University. I am happy and very fortunate to be able to work in the education profession, which I love, and to perform as a musician. I think I would do both again, if given a chance to start over.
What made you decide on the cello?
I was infatuated with a girl in the next grade who lugged a cello back and forth to school. So when I finally had the chance to start an instrument myself in fourth grade, cello is what I chose. The director needed violas and tried to convince me to play that, but the thought of Susan Meiling made me stick to my guns.
What is the nicest thing an orchestra has ever done for you?
To sit inside the texture of a group that is really on, listening and reacting to each other with sensitivity, and playing as one organic whole--that is a ravishing, exhilarating sensation that cannot be duplicated anywhere else.
how do you like to communicate with audiences?
Frankly, I don't think much about the audience when I am playing in the orchestra. The music receives all my attention. Then again, the audience responds viscerally to players who are totally zeroed in on what they are doing, so I suppose I am communicating in that way.
anything else we should know about you?
I am a language junkie and learn them one after the other in my "free time." Almost any dessert has potential for me, but I try to avoid them for reasons of vanity! If you have never tried a Brazilian caipirinha, give it a shot. Just make sure you don't have to drive anywhere afterward!!
