Category: Guest Artists

KCO: Where did your musical journey begin?

KCO: What led to your being a conductor?

KCO: When did you move to this area?

KCO: What do you want to say about the March program?

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KCO: Where did your musical journey begin?

Tigran Arakelyan: I was born in Armenia, and, started music in Armenia, when I was 9 years old. My parents both played music, not professionally, but they both played music. My grandmother was a music teacher.

My music started because I was experiencing a chronic breathing issue, and a lot of coughing. My parents didn’t really know what was going on. I guess asthma or whatever it might be. I went to many places, including Yevpatoria, which is in Crimea and Ukraine. There was a children’s clinic there that incorporated Western and Eastern medicine and tried to find alternative ways to help kids with all kinds of different health-related concerns.

I tried all kinds of things when we were back in Armenia. My parents were trying to get some other advice, and one of the homeopathic doctors suggested I should do some kind of wind instrument, because it’ll be helpful with lungs and breathing.

The person suggested Zurna, which is this double reed instrument. It’s a folk instrument. It’s very loud, and my parents said absolutely not. We do not want that in the house!

So, my parents picked the flute for me. That’s how I started. I played for a couple of years in Armenia, then moved to LA when I was 11. I continued playing in the 6th grade band. So yeah, that’s where the music journey started.

KCO: It was more like physiotherapy than music?

Tigran Arakelyan: Basically, yes.

KCO: Did you enjoy it?

Tigran Arakelyan: Yes, right away. If I didn’t feel motivated enough, my mom would just sit down and say, “play for me, I want to hear what your progress is, and what you’re learning.” She was consistent that way, so that was very helpful.

Before finding other community places to be a part of, we found this Armenian music school, which was open to anyone. It was run by Armenians and Lark Musical Society. I went there.

I started there when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. It was a year or so after we moved to the LA area. I learned a lot. It was very similar to my previous experience where you take very affordable private lessons. You have Chamber music on Saturdays. You have music theory and history classes. I met so many friends there, people that I really enjoyed being around. It was a great program.

KCO: What led to your being a conductor?

KCO: You had first to pursue a music education beyond the public school. Later, it must reach a point where you think, “I’m going be a conductor.”

Tigran Arakelyan: It was a lot of different things. First, I was mostly in the classical world, and studying music, primarily with people who had a classical music background. I really was fortunate to have a teacher, Laura Osborn, at this Armenian music school. She went to USC for classical flute, I think. She then went to New England Conservatory for some improvisation program. She was interested in all kinds of genres, not just classical music.

My parents always listened to all kinds of different music, so I was also interested in jazz and other genres. Studying with Laura, I would always go with questions. I found this jazz flute player, Herbie Mann, or Hubert Laws or other. I asked about Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull. I would find music, and she’d say “oh, it’s great you found this!”

I found Nestor Torres, this Latin jazz flute player. I would find these recordings and be fascinated by them. She was fantastic. I was able to work on projects that she wanted to work on, but she was also fantastic about what I would find. She would say, “oh, that’s great. You should listen and see if you could transcribe it. Or, listen and see if you can play it by ear.” She was encouraging and that led me to be interested in all kinds of different genres.

When I was finishing high school, I just didn’t know if I even wanted to be a flutist. I didn’t know if I wanted to have a career playing in an orchestra or even being a classical flutist. I really wanted to do all kinds of other genres, and so I did that for a bit.

I did 5 years in college for my undergrad. When I was 22, one of my friends suggested that I take a conducting class. He said something like, “You conduct, you learn a little bit, and you play. Everyone plays, and everyone conducts. It’s easy. You should take it.”

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know conducting. But I did take it, and it was really cool. I was actually fascinated by conducting, and that’s where it took off.

I started my first orchestra, and there’s still a Seattle Weekly review of our first concert. We played at a bar, and we played in other places. But it’s kind of funny, because it was my first concert ever, and I put this orchestra together. The concert was reviewed in the Seattle Weekly. The program was Beethoven’s First symphony, Paul Hindemith – Kammermusik Nr. 1, and this piece by Arshak Andriasov, an Armenian-American composer who lives in New York. The piece is called Torch 1. The concert was great. That’s where my conducting career took off.

KCO: Wow! That’s a very diverse program.

KCO: When did you move to this area?

Tigran Arakelyan: When I graduated high school, I came up here because I was interested in all kinds of different genres, and so I was looking for a program that fits that interest.

I went to Cornish for a year, and I just really didn’t like the program as much as I hoped. As open as it was, it’s not something I found interesting. I wanted some more structure than I was getting, and missing, in some ways, the orchestral playing, which I didn’t get at Cornish. I did that for a year in 2005.

Then I went back to LA and went to Cal State Long Beach, which has a good program for music, and it continues to be good. I got into that program when I was applying to colleges to study with Dr. John Barcellona. He was a really great teacher to have the opportunity to study with, so I did that for a few years. This is when I expanded to being 5 years in college, because I did a couple of years at Cal State Long Beach.

Then I went back to Cornish to finish things up and start conducting again. So, it was like, Long Beach with, Cornish on either side.

I went back to California after I was done and did my master’s. Then, in 2013, I was invited by Ludovic Morlot to do the doctoral program at the University of Washington. That’s when I came back to Washington.

My time in Seattle has been spread over three different times: One year, when I first started undergrad, the final year of undergrad, and then doctoral degree at UW in 2013. I’ve been here since 2013.

KCO: What do you want to say about the March program?

• Hebrides Overture – Mendelssohn
• Prelude from Hansel and Gretel – Humperdinck
• Afternoon of a Faun – Debussy
• Capriccio Espagnol – Rimsky-Korsakov
• Capriccio Italien – Tchaikovsky

Tigran Arakelyan: It’s entitled “Escapades,” so it’s like an adventure. I don’t always like to do themes, but I wanted to have a bit of a theme this time. I don’t have to dive too deep into history, but the Mendelssohn — The Hebrides Overture is the only piece I ever conducted from memory, which I did for my master’s. It’s about Fingal’s Cave, exploring Scotland.

Hansel and Gretel, that’s very interesting, because I play a lot of music for my kids at home. Sometimes, it is just kind of in the background, they might not pay attention, but sometimes they might make a remark, “wow, this is cool.” I played the whole Escapades program for them, and Hansel and Gretel is the one they connected with. And it’s not surprising, because I think Humperdinck does a great job. It is a fairy tale, it is meant for kids. So, in some ways, it’s kind of funny that they enjoyed listening to that, as opposed to any of the other pieces. Maybe it says a lot about the composer, of how he was able to turn this fairy tale into music that is interesting for kids.

KCO: The Capriccios are super fun, I think.

Tigran Arakelyan: Those are great. I’ve programmed those together at one point with a different orchestra. It’s like these Russian composers exploring music of Spain and Italy. It’s cool to do that. Also, the other thing I wanted to say about the program overall, is that it’s really like a concerto for orchestra if you look at the whole program. Many of the players get some important moments.

And then the Debussy, it’s the first piece I conducted when I started my doctoral degree at the University of Washington, so that’s an interesting connection for me. Also, it is just an interesting piece. When I was a junior in California, I played second flute for this piece, so I didn’t get a chance to play that flute solo, but it was great. I remember sitting next to the person that was playing, and I was like, wow, this is so awesome.

KCO: Wow, that so interesting because during our first read-through with you, Doug (Gallatin) was the second flute that night. It wasn’t his part. He steps up, plays it and he crushes it.

Tigran Arakelyan: Yeah, it was great. I was really impressed, and he was so humble. He came to me before the rehearsal, and he asked if he should play the first part even though he was the sub, and then, he just rocked it. I said, “you’re amazing. You sounded great”.

KCO: Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Thanks to Tigran for the interview on January 15, 2026.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

KCO: Where did your musical journey start?

KCO: What led you to extend your music education and eventually become a conductor?

KCO: What do you want to say about the November program?

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KCO: Where did your musical journey start?

Nickolas Carlson: I grew up on a farm outside of a small town in rural Kansas called Lindsborg, and that was also where my musical journey began. The town had a population of maybe 3,500. The community and the public schools all had wonderful support for the arts. The music programs in the schools were wonderful, and all my teachers growing up, specifically the music teachers, were so knowledgeable and so encouraging. They really gave me a good start to my musical career.

That community, back in the 1800s, started doing the Messiah every single year. It is the longest-running continuous annual performance of the Messiah in the United States. I was able to join that orchestra when I was in high school, and I played in the second violin section. I played all the way through graduate school in that ensemble with the Oratorio Society. They did the Messiah every Palm Sunday and every Easter, but they also did the St. Matthews Passion, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, every Good Friday. Once I got to college, I started playing in the orchestra for the St. Matthew Passion as well.

Having those experiences with this large group of people, all performing this music together, from all different walks of life, really solidified for me the idea that music helps us form community. It helps us live in a community together. I even completed my undergraduate degree in my hometown. I tried to go off to a state school, but I wasn’t quite ready to leave home yet. So, I went back to my hometown to do my undergraduate studies.

KCO: And what was the college?

Nickolas Carlson: The college was Bethany College.

KCO: What led you to extend your music education and eventually become a conductor?

Nickolas Carlson: I have always loved orchestra. I was never a great violin player. I was a decent clarinet player, but my heart really wasn’t in it. So, when I was studying organ performance in undergrad, I decided that I wanted to go on to study organ performance for graduate school and to become the keyboard player for a symphony orchestra.

The last year of my undergraduate degree, I got to study abroad in Sweden. I was ahead in my coursework enough to spend the entire semester only focusing on folk music. While my focus was on folk music, I still had a senior recital to prepare for when I returned. I was trying to practice the organ. The organ at this school had not been played in many years and was not in good repair. And so instead of practicing the organ, I often fell to studying scores.

They had a large music library with a lot of scores. I would grab a score, I would go to the house that I was living in, and I would just follow along with scores and listen to recordings. I had always had sort of an interest on the side in conducting. One of the older women who sang in the Messiah Chorus where I grew up used to joke with me about coming back and conducting that Oratorio Society when I grew up. I had told her when I was in middle school that that was going to be my career. I was going to be the director of that Oratorio Society when I grew up. I don’t remember that, but she reminds me of it every time she sees me.

I had always had this kind of interest on the side with conducting, and that time in Scandinavia, studying all these scores solidified that for me. I had taken all of the conducting classes I could in undergrad. I loved it. But the focus on score study solidified it for me when I was in Sweden.

I came back to finish my undergraduate degree, and I told my organ teacher, “I’ve changed my mind, and I don’t want to go to graduate school for organ. I want to go for conducting.” She was one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had in my life, and she said, okay, well, we’ve still got to do your senior recital, so we’re going to finish that up. But why don’t you prepare a conducting recital, too?

It was not part of my coursework, but I did all the work to prepare this conducting recital. I got a small group of musicians together, and we did a conducting recital. Then, I did a very last-minute audition for graduate school because I had decided late, and got into Wichita State University. It was not my first choice. It wasn’t even on my radar, but it was the school that was still open for applications, and it worked out really well.

I went to Wichita State the next fall. I did a dual track of study. I was getting a Bachelor of Music Education at the same time I was getting my Master of Music in conducting. At the time, everyone was telling me that if you really want to get into conducting, you either have to go the opera route and become an opera pianist that eventually becomes a conductor. Or you need to go the public-school route and teach orchestra in schools. That’s going to be how you break into the conducting world.

I had planned to spend 3 years in graduate school, because I was doing both degrees at the same time. I got to my third year, and my conducting teacher gave me the opera that semester. He had a trip when this performance was happening. He asked if I would like to conduct the production? And so I did, and I did all the coursework for the music ed degree, except student teaching. So, I did not get the Bachelor of Music Education, but the opportunity to conduct the opera production was too good to pass up.

KCO: How did that translate into conducting as a profession? You are not teaching at present, but you are conducting.

Nickolas Carlson: Yeah, I got lucky, I guess. After graduate school, I decided I wanted to move to a different part of the country, either the east or west coast, or down south.

I met a friend in graduate school who grew up here in Washington, who was moving back home after graduate school. I thought to myself that I really don’t think I’m going to like the East Coast. It’s just the population density is just a little bit too much for me. There’s a built-in support system moving with this friend back to the West Coast. Seattle sounds beautiful, so we moved out to Seattle.

I was living in West Seattle. She grew up in Lacey and went to St. Martin’s University down here in Lacey. She introduced me to her teacher from her undergraduate degree. I met him and started working at the college.

I found out that the community orchestra down here, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, was also looking for a conductor, because their conductor was retiring, and applied for that job, and I got lucky. Right out of grad school, I moved here, and this orchestra is looking for a conductor, and it’s kind of the perfect inroad. It’s a community orchestra, and they just want somebody that’s going to help them continue into the future. At that time, they were not paying the conductor. It was an all-volunteer gig, and I did that for a few years. Then it was obvious that there was this desire to continue to build, and I said, at some point, I’m going to have to leave. And, you’re going to have be lucky enough to find another conductor just out of grad school who’s going to do it for free. So, we started the process, starting with a very low payment for the conductor, just to get them used to the idea. And now, I’ve been with them for 8 years now.

KCO: That’s awesome. It’s a great story of both parties being willing to take a chance.

KCO: What do you want to say about the November program?

• Overture to Der Freischütz – Weber
• Overture to Der Vampyr – Lindpaintner
• Ma Mere L’Oye (Mother Goose Suite) – Ravel
• Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld – Offenbach
• Symphonie Fantastique – Movements IV. and V. – Berlioz

Nickolas Carlson: I am so excited about this program. There’s are several pieces that I have been wanting to do for a while. The Weber, Overture to Der Freischütz, is absolutely one of my favorite pieces. It just has this perfect atmosphere, for this time of year. I went back and forth on how much I wanted to tie this program to the season. But the more I thought about it, the more I whittled down my repertoire list, then found something, and then expanded on that, I just realized that I really love this time of year. And I think there’s a lot of wonderfully descriptive music that’s written about this time of year–this autumnal changing of the seasons with Halloween-ish kind of vibes.

When I auditioned for the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, I had the repertoire that I chose. I decided a few years later that I was going to try to include one of the pieces from that program on every audition that I did for an orchestra in the future. So, for this concert, that ended up being the Ravel Mother Goose Suite. The other piece it could have been was Beethoven’s First Symphony, which is one of my absolute favorite pieces. For an orchestra that’s larger, like the Kirkland Civic Orchestra, I felt like something like the Ravel might be a better showcase for the group than something like the Beethoven, which is a bit smaller in its instrumentation. You take the idea of Mother Goose and all these fairy tales and stories, and then it leans right into the fantasy of the autumn season.

I have had such a great time working with the orchestra. I think that we’ve made a lot of progress together. You know that the Berlioz Symphony Fantastique is on a lot of people’s bucket lists. It was surely on mine, and someday I’ll do the whole thing. It is a tough piece, and particularly for a community orchestra to go on this journey with me, of learning this piece, and doing all of this hard work that it takes to get it done. I’m so thankful to the group for doing that work with me and being willing to go along with it.

The Lindpaintner overture is something that’s a bit strange, you know? The subject matter has that same feel. It’s based on the story of a vampire. It really isn’t that dark a piece, musically. It actually sounds pretty happy. If you had not told me what the title was, I would have never guessed it was called The Vampire.

One of my passions with orchestras and orchestral music is to find music that is just outside the periphery. It has a familiar sound. But it’s maybe not a specific piece that’s familiar to people. And so, the parts (for the players) are available online in a relatively easy-to-read edition, but the score was not. I put together the score a year ago for the orchestra down in Olympia. It took me all summer to put all of that together and make sure it was edited correctly, which, of course, there are still mistakes. I figured, if I’m going to do all of this work to put this score together and put these parts together, and it fits so well into this program, I might as well do it again.

KCO: I think it’s a good choice. Thank you for the interview.

Thanks to Nickolas for the interview on October 8, 2025.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

• Microsoft Orchestra
• Orchestra begins to change
• What does a conductor do?
• Influence of conducting on musicianship
• Notable moments
• Stepping down – Next phase

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Microsoft Orchestra

KCO: So, how do we get to the Microsoft Orchestra?

James: When we moved up here into Seattle, it was 1999. I sang for one season with the Tudor choir, but my voice had been failing me. I was not happy with what was going on. I was spending enough time at trade shows that I was blowing it out and not helping it. And so, I did sing up here, very briefly, and then I just started playing more recorder. I moved away from vocal performance into the recorder. I took some lessons with a local teacher who was a fabulous teacher. That was a couple of years.

Then Kathy (Jim’s spouse) was playing the violin in the Microsoft Orchestra. I would show up occasionally to play drums or whatever because I could do that. There was an opportunity where their current conductor could not make a concert. Kathy suggested to him that I could conduct that concert, and I did.

After that he just ran out of time, because it is a substantial commitment of time. I had the thought that I could build something again.

KCO: What was the state of the orchestra when you entered the picture? I heard stories about how it wasn’t a real orchestra, rather that it was a group of people who had instruments. It was a lot less formal.

James: Yes. The formality comes from what you can do. It was maybe a couple of dozen people. It was always difficult to find a full set of horns or a full set of winds, that sort of thing. There was a single bassist that would come in for the concerts.

KCO: How did Kathy get involved?

James: I’d been at Microsoft since 1999. I came to the Seattle area to be at Microsoft; I was working for a start-up in the Bay Area which was acquired by Microsoft. I came up here in the role of a software tester. Kathy was looking for somewhere to play. She’d been playing violin and so she got involved. That’s how that happened.

KCO: That’s some good luck for us.

James: Yes, it was fortuitous. It was fun. And, like I said, I would help out in percussion on occasion but not regularly. It was a Ballard Locks concert as I recall, where we where we were playing some marches and pop music. And so, I said, I’ll be glad to come and do this. Then he decided that he would not be able to continue.

KCO: Was he an employee as well?

James: At the very beginning. The very first season I start conducting. It must have been the fall of 2003. Something like that.

I’m bad with dates so I could be off.

From the very beginning because, from my perspective, I want to make music. If I need another bassoon player, I’m going to try to find another. I’m going to try to find all the parts that we need to do this piece of music. I prefer that to trying to struggle through and leaving a bunch of stuff out. Although, I can do that. And I have, but it’s not the best expression.

So, that’s the reason I started pushing the group to find more players, and to bring more people in and beef up the sound. To increase the size of all the sections and to make sure that we always had flutes and oboes and clarinets and bassoons and all the French horns to have all the parts. Then to start trying to attract as many string players as I possibly could.

Orchestra begins to change

KCO: By 2006, I joined the orchestra and have my own view of the changes. The orchestra grew a lot. The level of ability and what we could play substantially changed. By 2015, for me, the musical experience feels very different. We become the Kirkland Civic Orchestra. What drives the change from Microsoft affiliated orchestra to standalone Kirkland Civic Orchestra? While we were the Microsoft Orchestra, and we were progressing, but many of our concerts were in the cafeterias on the campus, not often in public spaces.

James: The main driver of all that was practicality. Microsoft changed a bunch of its interior spaces, essentially making them unavailable to the orchestra. Because of that, we couldn’t do what we did before. Up to that point, the orchestra wasn’t its own organization, but as soon as you need to go and find an external performance location or an external rehearsal location, you need to have insurance.

To have insurance, you need to be a corporation because an individual isn’t going to take on that burden. As soon as you need to be a corporation, that’s when you become more real. We were real before, but now you must have all of the things to support that.

Previously, I would buy a bunch of music and other people in the orchestra would buy pieces of music. We would prepare them and perform them in whatever site we had. But as soon as you need a place to rehearse outside of Microsoft, then you need to pay for that space. You need to pay for the insurance so you can get the space. It’s the same with the performance spaces. So, whenever you do that, you have to become real. Now you have to fund it.

KCO: This may be hearsay, I don’t know. You can clarify. I do remember when the spaces at Microsoft started changing. We just didn’t have the open space to use for rehearsing. I also remember doing a photo shoot outside of a cafeteria. Wasn’t this a recruiting tool for Microsoft? So those seemed to diminish at the same time: the amount of space and the role that the orchestra played for the company. Is that fair to say?

KCO: The orchestra was used for recruitment, right?

He’s a busy guy. Yes, he was very kind and, but I certainly didn’t want to exclude him. I kind of knew what the answer was going to be. It would have been a very surprising thing if he had been able to do that.

KCO: That would have been crazy.

James: It would have been. It would have been a big deal for sure.

KCO: Certainly, for a long time, you have joked at the Locks concert that a good portion of the group was Microsoft or Microsoft adjacent. And that has changed.

Microsoft can only provide whoever happens to work there. And also, it’s really hard for Microsoft employees to find time in their very busy schedules to be consistent. And yes, consistency is needed for improvement. So that’s the other reason why I didn’t want to limit the participation to Microsoft employees.

There were challenges, and change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s more important that we just continually raise the bar, just kind of constantly.

KCO: So, the orchestra changes 10 years ago, you turn it into the Kirkland Civic Orchestra.

James: Well, we did with the board. I mean, there’s a bunch of people that do that for sure.

What does a conductor do?

KCO: Now the orchestra is a standalone group, independent of Microsoft. I think there’s also been a steady progression of musicality.

What does a conductor or music director do?

James: It varies. In some ways, we are the traffic cop; we’re just kind of making sure everybody plays together. I think the thing that the conductor does most is that he has a vision of what the music could sound like. From my perspective, it’s how I want it to sound. I have to worry about all the individual parts and the balance of all those individual parts. And make sure that as I’m conducting, and as we are rehearsing, that I’m tracking all of the mechanics of sound production.

From my perspective, I want to try to do everything that I can with my gestures. So, whether it’s a strong thing or whether it’s a sharp thing or sharp as in pointed sound, rather than pitch, and then provide feedback to the orchestra in flight, about how things are going. I’m going to want less from one place or more from another, or I’ll point my point at my ear, where I’m hearing something that people need to be listening for. I’m hearing something. Do you hear something? It’s that sort of gesticulation and sometimes I’ll stop the orchestra and say, okay, we need to go back. Look at these following things and then try it again. It’s repetition that provides for that for that expression.

KCO: So that’s on the podium. What do you do off the podium?

First, I am choosing the pieces. Before I have even started looking at a score, I’ll be doing a lot of listening and listening to pieces that I’m not familiar with. Looking around for music which is topical no matter what the topic is. Looking for music that is about something. I’ll listen to that music if it is available, listen to multiple recordings of the same work. Listen to the same piece done with different interpretations done by different conductors.

By the time I get to program a year of concerts, the previous year was used in preparation. I’ll spend the year before figuring out what pieces I want to do. Where the challenge is going to be for the orchestra. How will the challenge express itself. Is it going to be rhythmic? Is it going to be melodic? Harmonic? Is it going to be technical? What kind of challenges am I generating for the players? Making sure that I’m clear. Some scores are complex, some scores have a lot of moving parts, some scores have a lot of stops and starts.

From a preparation perspective I need to know every one of those things and have a solid idea about what I want there. I’m not going to wait until I hear it, be perplexed, and then provide feedback. I want to avoid saying let’s try this and try that. That happens on occasion depending on how much time I’ve had to prepare. But, I’m generally well prepared ahead of time. That way, I can avoid wasting 65 people’s time. I’m figuring out what I want to do in advance.

I will do some a/b testing on occasion. I’ll have a couple ideas, try both of them and decide which one I want to do. I also include the feedback I get from the players. That feedback might make me adjust certain things in my conducting. It’s an immediate feedback loop. I’ll hear what’s going on in the orchestra and take immediate action about how I will either change my conducting style or even the grip of my baton. All of those things in the feedback loop, inform my choices.

Influence of conducting on musicianship

KCO: How has conducting, rehearsing, directing changed how you approach and prepare for being a musician in rehearsals, or has it?

James: It hasn’t for me. Normally, I put a conductor’s eye view on pretty much everything. I’m trying to do the same thing that I do as a conductor even though I’m in charge of one particular part. Normally, I’m going to be a percussionist. I’m going to make sure that I’m keeping the whole thing in my head while also keeping the specific part in my hand. I’m always listening to the whole thing and asking how do I fit into it? I try never being so insular that I don’t know what’s going on around me because I’m there to make music with other people.

KCO: You try to take as broad of view as a musician or player as you do as a conductor. Does it have any impact on how you enjoy music?

James: Yes, it certainly does because I will hear less accurate parts. I sometimes have trouble turning that part off. If it’s not well executed, I will sometimes have trouble looking at the whole picture because I will focus on that because that’s what I would do as a conductor. I would say, oh, that’s out of tune, I better pay attention to it. And try to get it back online. In a recording, you can’t really do that.

Notable moments

KCO: During your time as the conductor of the Kirkland orchestra, have there been any highs, lows, or memorable moments that you would want to share? I remember the bridge closure right before a concert. That was one for me.

James: I think that something I’m proud of, not necessarily for myself, but for the group, is the willingness to go out of their way to make music together.

The bridge incident that you’re talking about is one of those examples where people couldn’t get to the concert to perform, literally could not cross the bridge. We have people in Seattle and their distraught feelings because of missing the concert was very heartwarming for me. For that concert, there were individuals that sight-read a part because they could and because they very much wanted it to be a good thing. That makes me feel very proud of everybody who participates. It makes me feel really glad to be associated with all of the positive energy that is directed at the orchestra.

Personally, I’m enjoying all of our concerts. They are taxing. They are debilitating afterwards, but I enjoy them a lot. I enjoy making music with all of these friends that we have.

I think that we’ve risen to a number of challenges a number of years ago. We did Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was such a challenge. People rose to the occasions so magnificently. It wasn’t our best performance. But it was a magnificent performance for the challenges that we were attempting. It makes me very happy that people are willing to try and feel good about the music that they do.

KCO: One of my favorites is the Rachmaninoff Isle of the Dead.

James: Yes! One of my approaches to programming is to program pieces of music that are generally not performed, that are not the top 10. I think that there is so much beautiful music and people get a little bit narrow in their focus. One of the things that I tried very hard to do every season is that I would try to break out of that. That’s the reason I program things like the Vaughan Williams, which is not commonly performed. The Magnard we’ve played is another of these outlying pieces that you generally wouldn’t hear in a concert hall. But you’ll hear them if you come to our concert. This season is my recap.

KCO: Yes, it’s like your Greatest Hits.

James: It’s some of the things that I absolutely love and some of the things that we’ve performed really, really well and can perform again. I think we could do that more often. We all grow as individuals and going back to a piece is a way that you can measure your growth. I think it’s important for people as individuals to understand that they’ve grown.

Stepping down – Next phase

KCO: Yes, 100% agree with you. Now the big question: Why are you stepping down? Why now?

James: There are multiple reasons. One, I’ve been doing this for 22 years and that is enough. Two, I think the next phase of growth for the orchestra needs to be from someone else with a different viewpoint, a different set of tools, and a different set of visions.

I think that organizations need new input. They need to be challenged in new ways. What we’re trying to do is to find another candidate who can do those things, who can challenge the group in new ways, and who can find new things in the group that the group didn’t know they had.

Leadership is very important. In my opinion leadership is important at two times. One time is at the beginning, when leadership lays out a vision, and say this is the path we want to take. And the second time where it’s super important is when that leader, a person, decides that they can’t make those changes anymore either because of habit or energy.

I have a certain set of skills that solve a certain set of problems. Somebody else has a different set of skills to solve different problems. I think that it’s important that the opportunity is given. I need to make sure that I don’t get in the way of that because I think that the next phase of the orchestra will be even better, but it can’t be me. It must be somebody with a new vision.

KCO: Because you were the pioneer and now you need the successor?

James: Well, I think I think it’s more like a pioneer and a new pioneer rather than a successor. It’s not a successor. It’s what vistas are now in front of us? Who’s the best person to find their way there? I have blind spots; everyone does. And I explored what I can explore.

There is an age aspect of it too. Right now, I am getting older, and it takes me longer to recover even from rehearsals and things like that. I need to make sure that there is new energy, new problem-solving skills, and a new vision. I need to make sure that the organization has opportunity. I don’t want to be in the way of that.

KCO: I am trying to figure out the way to say this. I don’t want you to think I’m saying that it’s time for you to go. That’s why I’m trying to carefully choose my words. I very much appreciate all the work you did to get us to this point. I think that the next person will inherit a hell of an opportunity.

James: Well, that’s my hope. That what I have built, what we built together, is something to be proud of. It expresses itself as a musical vision and has a point of view that’s unique and meaningful. And the next person, I want them to have an opportunity to work with what we’ve built and see where it can go.

KCO: I think I understand the vision that you’re laying out and I understand the curation that you’ve done to get it to here. Now, it’s handed off to somebody else to see what they can do with it. And that could be really cool.

James: Absolutely. There’s definitely a physical aspect of this role. That is starting to show on me. I know that, and I don’t want to be too long in this position where it’s just not good anymore. What you really want to do most the time is to go out at the top of the curve. This season has been pretty spectacular and feels pretty top of the curve to me.

I’m really pleased that we’ve built something so wonderful that the next person can take and grow.

KCO: Is there anything you want to say to the orchestra?

James: I’m so grateful that I’ve had this opportunity and so grateful that I’ve been able to grow with the orchestra because I’ve done a lot of growing, too. I’m grateful that I’ve had that opportunity, and it makes me very proud of the things that we’ve accomplished together. I couldn’t be happier about where we are today.

KCO: Perfect. Thank you, Jim.

Thanks to Jim for the interview on 22 April,  2025.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

 

• Musical start
• Becoming a music major
• After graduation
• Profession of music
• Early music
• <Intermission>

---

KCO: The KCO is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. At the same time, you decided that 2025 would be your last year as conductor and music director. Before we talk about that, let’s first step back and talk about your musical Journey.

Musical start

When did you get into music in your early life?

James: I started taking piano lessons in 1970. I would have been 13 or 14, but the lessons didn’t impact me significantly. It just was a good thing to do, a way to learn music. I wasn’t invested in it or interested in pursuing it seriously. Although I did enjoy it very much, and I kept taking lessons until I was a sophomore in high school. But I wasn’t doing any music. I didn’t really do very much music in high school until my senior year when my sister made me join the choir.

KCO: Where was all this happening?

James: My family moved to New Jersey in 1970. My first piano lessons were in New Jersey We moved back to Southern California, to a town called La Cañada, in 1971, I think. We moved to New Jersey in 1969 and then moved back to California in 1971 or thereabouts.

KCO: Not long in New Jersey?

James: It was just a two-year assignment for my father who was working for AT&T.

KCO: Your sister “made” you join the choir?

James: Yes. Basically, she said you’re going to go do this.

KCO: Is she your older sister?

James: No. She’s my younger sister.

I have three younger sisters. She insisted that I try to do this.

KCO: Why did she do that? What was the impetus for her?

James: Well, I could sing, and I did sing in the houseand stuff like that. I can carry a tune, and make a reasonable sound, and she thought I should go do that.

But I had other things I was doing. I was more interested in math and science. I was spending more time on that. And girls.

KCO: So, you join the choir and what happens?

James: I had some talent, and I was involved in musical theater as well. I had friends who were in band. So, the director, I think, suggested that I participate in The Music Man, which was the musical they were doing that year. I was one of the guys in the barbershop quartet. I have a high voice. It was fun! It was fun to have friends there and hang out.

When I graduated from high school, I was already interested in going to college. I wanted to be a high school physics teacher. I started taking all the science and math classes. I went to Pasadena City College and while I was there, I sang in the select ensemble called Chamber Singers that they had. But I was mostly studying the math and science path. I went into my third year, and I decided that this music thing is really interesting. I liked the music classes more than physics because I could have a solution for a piece of music. Then later, I could come back to that same piece of music, and because I had changed, I could express it differently.

That’s not something generally that you wind up doing very often in math and science. It’s possible can but it generally doesn’t work that way. If you solve something, then you find something new to solve. And I appreciated the fact that I could actually work on something and achieve a goal. And then, I could go back to that a year later and it was now a different thing. I enjoyed that aspect of making music.

The learning part and applying new tools that I’ve learned to the same problems. Or, my understanding of the music might have changed. Because I had more experience, I could bring a different expression to the work. I appreciated that more.

I also wound up being the assistant conductor in the chamber singing group. So that was another aspect of something that I enjoyed, which was inspiring other people to make music with me. And to help lead an artistic vision for a piece. That was probably 1978.

I decided I would change my major. I was preparing to transfer to a four-year university and so I took another year to catch up on all the music courses that I needed to take so that I could transfer in as a junior to the local four-year university.

KCO: That would be a lot of courses!

Becoming a music major

James: It was. And I took summer classes too. Normally, when I find something, I dive into it.

I enjoy the challenge of learning and that was one of the things that I enjoyed. So, I had a lot of course work and history to make up. I had music theory that I needed to catch up on. So, I did a whole bunch of extra stuff to examine.

KCO: About the only place I imagine you would have had an advantage was sight-singing.

James: Yes, and I was good at that too. It was something that I had a facility with that, and that made it easier for me to write music.

KCO: The first two years of music school are pretty much the same for everybody. You don’t even have a lot of flexibility in a conservatory-style place. So, yes, you would have to get through that same effort, which would not be easy.

KCO: In a music degree, there are a lot of requirements in the first two years for all students, regardless of major, like music history. You have to do them. You had a fair amount of ground to make up.

Most people I’m interviewing are instrumentalists because they are the guest soloists with orchestra. Many share a common experiences when, at some point, they have the thought, “I’m a little bit better at this than the other people around me.” Or someone says something like that to them. There is a moment of realization, and they think about going to the next level. What was that for you?

That was one of those pieces of evidence, where you think, oh, maybe there is something here. Maybe I need to explore it a little bit more deeply. By 1979 or 1980, I had started to audition and get positions and be hired to be a singer. Clearly, I had something to offer. I did studio work from 1982 to 1987 in Los Angeles. I was working, I did recordings for movies and some television. I s some records. I was a backup singer on a Michael Jackson album. I sang on a country music album. I did a lot of radio as featured soloist on the local radio station in Los Angeles. I had been auditioning for a lot of these things so I had some experiences that said, hey, I could really do this.

After Graduation

KCO: I know you end up with a music degree. Now how do you get from there to Orchestra conductor? Between that part of your life and joining the Microsoft Orchestra in 2004, what happens?

James: So, after two years in physics and one year and music at PCC, I transferred to Cal State Los Angeles. I wanted to be a good teacher that could teach more than just High School, I wanted to be sure that any position that I was in that I had a solid foundation in orchestral conducting.

As a musician, I noticed that there are good conductors and less good conductors. Ones you want to follow and others that you have difficulty in following. I wanted to be sure that I was clear. Because it reduces time. It accelerates learning. It does a whole lot of things that I think are important.

When I got into Cal State, I started taking all the orchestral conducting classes, and all the orchestral instrument classes. Because I wanted to have a good enough Foundation that I could conduct both a choir and an orchestra. If you don’t know the instruments, and if you don’t know the requirements that instrumentalists have, then you’re not going to be very effective.

Profession of music

KCO: And you were in you were out of school at this point and making a living?

James: Yeah, I was out of school by 1984. I was a teacher. I taught music at a private school in Los Angeles, starting in 1982 until 1987. And then in early 1987, I went to Orange County. There was a middle school that I started teaching at.

In late ’87, I was singing in a choir that I’d been hired to perform with. During one of the breaks, I was talking to another man in the choir. We were talking about what we did, and I said I was a music teacher. He said that he used to be a teacher, too.

The job was to take a floppy disk, stick it into a floppy disc reader, type a program that would tell you whether it was a good copy or not. And that was the gig! I said, “well, I can do that.”

One question that you always ask when you’re working as a musician is what does it pay? This new half-time job that paid as much as my teaching job.

In fact, it was a little tough getting the job. Even though the job was rudimentary, the HR manager didn’t want to hire me because I didn’t have any computer background.

I used computers as tools. I wrote my master’s thesis on a computer, and I kept my grades on computers and stuff like that. But I wasn’t in the high-tech business. For me then, a computer was a great hammer.

<laughter>

They hired me to do that job. It was not a difficult job and there was an opportunity to learn more broadly about what was going on. I was able to teach myself a bunch of stuff. They hired me full-time and, I kept being a working musician. I kept performing and I got through some good auditions.

At that point, it kind of boiled down to what do we want to do for our family? I had a three-year-old boy. If I’m going to be a musician, I’m going to be gone a lot. That’s not great. Maybe I should pivot a little bit and get into this high-tech business.

Since then, that’s been my career, but it wasn’t my vision initially. And internally, I still think of myself as a musician before I think of myself as a computer science person.

So, and because of that, that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been consistently busy as a musician, all through my high-tech career. When I moved into the Bay area, I started a chamber music trio because I also play a couple of different instruments. Because I had a high voice, a very high voice, I sang as it was called a countertenor which is essentially a male alto. And in the early 80s, there weren’t a lot which I think may have contributed to why I got as many jobs as I did.

Early music

I also learned to play the recorder, and I had some pretty good facility with it. And then later in life, in the late 80s and early 90s, I then had more income. So, I collected a number of instruments that I could actually beef up the things I was doing working in early music.

KCO: What kind of instruments?

James: I have 40 recorders. I have an entire family of crumhorns, and I have a family of cornamuse as well.

KCO: I don’t know what those are. Are these Baroque instruments?

James: Renaissance. I also have a set of gemshorn.

KCO: Again, I’m surprised, but I don’t know what they are.

James: They’re all early music, about the 1600s.

KCO: Are they reeds?

James: The crumhorn and the cornamuse are reed instruments and the gemshorn are fipple flutes. They are whistle types. The gemshorn term comes from the word “Gems,” which is an animal with a horn. You lop off the horn and then you can tune it and play it with holes like an ocarina.

It’s more of an ocarina sound. The cornamuse and the crumhorns are buzzy, buzzy. They are a capped double-reed instrument. You don’t actually put your lips on the on the reed, like you do with an oboe or a bassoon because the reed is capped. It has a much different buzzy sort of sound.

KCO: That’s really interesting, I can’t imagine you having a ton of gigs with these instruments.

James: No, no, I was far busier as a singer. But I did have gigs with the Gemshorns. We did do things with the with the reed instruments. I played a lot of recorder, too. They are not well known unless you are into early music.

<Jim shows me a picture on his phone>

KCO: Okay, I see I see the similarity in the mouthpiece to the to the recorder.

James: Yes, that the double reed. That’s the cap of the double reed.

This was popular in courts throughout Europe in the 16th century, the Renaissance, and was made fashionable in the English Court by King Henry. The word crumb horn means bent.

<Jim plays me some music on his phone.>

KCO: It sounds like sort of like traditional music, folkloric music.

James: As I was studying music, I fell in love with this Medieval music and Renaissance music. I absolutely love the independence of the parts, the independence of the individual in it. You generally don’t have a crumhorn consort of 20 or 30, you’ve got one on a part. That is another thing that appealed to me because you are responsible for your thing. And if you don’t play your thing, that part is not going to be heard.

KCO: I know what you mean. In certain settings, you must have enough confidence and autonomy that you’ll be able to play your part on your own. Some people don’t have that much interest in it. Maybe there’s nervousness, anxiety, whatever. To me that’s another marker of people who understand where they fit in.

James: It’s the difference in my mind in an orchestra between a violin section and a flute player. The violin section, the strength in the sound that you’re looking for is that big section of strings that can play together. But the flute is an individual and has a highly individualistic role in the orchestra. It has usually highly individualistic music. Where were the pitches are going to be found.

I’ve always been more interested in the individual. What does an individual contribute? How does that work? It’s one of the reasons why I’m not generally a big fan of huge choirs because of the homogeneity of the sound. The homogeneous nature of the sound doesn’t provide for the individuality that I’d like to hear.

When I switched to music, I was listening to music, and as I was catching up on all the listening that I needed to do, I found these recordings of early music that just lit me on fire. I thought that the music was so beautiful. The music is so intricate, and each person has their job, and each player has to do their job.

From my perspective, that’s what I loved and enjoyed expressing, I had some skill in it, and I could get the gigs that helped me do those sorts of things. So as a singer, I really, really enjoyed it. The things that I enjoyed were those one or two on a part, but mostly it’s that solo approach and the colors and the intricacy, the facility, how fast, and how flexible that group is.

<Intermission>

---

Thanks to Jim for the interview on 22 April,  2025.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

1. When did you start playing the violin?
2. Do you play anything else?
3. What studio were you in?
4. When did you think to pursue music as a profession or go to music school?
5. Did you have an experience that made you feel special or showed you that your playing was unusual?
6. How did you become the guest soloist?
7. What do you like about the Florence Price concerto?
8. What are you looking forward to doing this summer?

KCO: Hi I see you are in a practice cube somewhere. Where are you? Eleanor: I am in a practice room at Oberlin where I go to school. KCO: What year are you in at Oberlin? Eleanor: I’m just finishing up my second year. KCO: Great. Let’s get started.

KCO: When did you start playing the violin?

Eleanor: I started playing the violin. That was my very first instrument. I started playing when I was about four years old, when I was really little. I come from a very musical family. So, it was just almost a given that I would pick up an instrument.

My grandparents on my dad’s side were both piano teachers, and all of my dad’s brothers are professional musicians now. My sister, who is six years older than me, was playing the violin. That was my “in” to the world, and I’ve just been at it since I was four.

KCO: That’s primarily from your dad’s side of the family?

Eleanor: Primarily, from my dad’s side, but my mom has been a very incredible support and a practice buddy. She drove me to all my lessons and such, so it comes from both sides.

KCO: Do you play anything else?

Eleanor: Not currently, I played the flute for four years. Three years in middle school, and started in fifth grade, just to mix it up a little bit. I was in band in school for those years as well. My uncle is a pianist, but he also plays flute. I was able to use one of his flutes and have some fun with something else for a couple of years.

KCO: Did somebody make you play in band? What was the appeal of playing in the band?

Eleanor: I grew up in Bellevue, so the school district has all the 5th graders learn new instruments.

Instead of just going in with the violin, which I already knew how to play, I decided I wanted to play something different. I chose the flute, and then I stuck with it through middle school. And then, in high school, I decided I had enough. And I committed to play the violin.

KCO: What studio were you in?

Eleanor: I started violin when I was back from North Carolina, but once I moved to Seattle, I was about six. I studied with Lucy Shaw. She’s a violin teacher in the area. I studied from about second first grade through Middle School. She was great. I went through all the Suzuki books with her.

After that, when I was going to high school, I transitioned to the Coleman studio. I studied with Jan Coleman for a couple of months just to refine someof my technique, some left hand issues I had. Then I started to study with Simon James for the rest of my high school time. He helped me through the audition process for college, too.

KCO: When did you think to pursue music as a profession or to go to music school?

Eleanor: I was trying to think about this question. I could never really pinpoint a specific moment, but I think from about Middle School onward that it was just a gradual feeling that I just didn’t see myself in college, without continuing to play the violin. And so, it just seems like a logical choice to go into music and study it in college as well, which is what I ended up doing.

KCO: Did you have an experience that made you feel special or showed you that your playing was unusual?

Eleanor: I think one of the things that I really enjoyed, and it guided me towards the path of music was playing in youth orchestra, not even a specific moment. There were a couple times I remember vividly putting something together and I was just a section violin in the orchestra. It’s the thrill of hearing all of the voices and instruments play together. Something that I never heard live or had the opportunity to play. Hearing that for the first time it was really exhilarating and just made me want more of that.

I’ve also had some cool summer experiences. I think I was going into 9th grade, so it was summer after middle school. I went to the Indiana University Summer String Academy at the Jacobs School of Music. That was really the first time where I was just surrounded by people who also wanted to play the violin, the cello, or the viola in the same way, and I didn’t have to worry about school. All I could do was just practice. We had chamber music and we had orchestra, and it was just a fun and supportive environment to play the violin. I think that was really formative and good for me.

Now I get to do it full time as a student as I did in the summer, which is really nice.

KCO: Do you remember what the piece that inspired you in youth orchestra?

Eleanor: One that I remember vividly was when I was playing with Seatle Youth Symphony Orchestra. We were playing was John Adams’s The Chairman Dances.

It’s pretty tricky to put together but it was fun the first rehearsal. It opens and it’s very rhythmic. But it’s very soft and atmospheric. Hearing that for the first time, and I was in the middle of the second violin section, so I was quite literally in the middle of the orchestra. To hear everything around me was really cool. That was actually one of maybe my favorite concerts I’ve ever played. The program was The Chairman Dances by John Adams, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, and Danzon No. 2 by Arturo Marquez. It was altogether a really fun performance and rehearsal cycle.

KCO: How did you become the guest soloist?

Eleanor: The biggest connection I have to the Kirkland Civic Orchestra is that my dad plays in the orchestra and has been for almost as long as we’ve been in the Seattle area. That’s about 10 years or so now I believe.

I remember going to these concerts in middle school and probably even earlier. There’s one in September and it goes through May. I also remember the Ballard Locks concerts. They were always super fun outside. I grew up going to these concerts. And then, as I got older and into college, my dad would encourage me to come to the rehearsals whenever I was in town because it would just be good practice to play with an orchestra and have the opportunity to play new repertoire.

I think last year you guys were doing an all Sibelius program and my dad really wanted me to come. It’s tricky and he wanted me to have the experience of playing that. So gradually I started to have more experiences with the orchestra.

Then at the end of last year, I believe the conductor announced the programming for the next year. And he mentioned that for the last concert of the year you will be playing the Florence Price Violin Concerto No 2, and there was no soloist yet. I think quite literally that night, my dad called me or texted me to say, “you have to find this piece of music and you have to start learning it now.” For a young musician, having the opportunity to play with an orchestra just doesn’t come about that often. It wasn’t a given that I would be able to play with the orchestra. But my dad thought, and I thought that if I could learn it, and play it for Jim, I might have a slim chance of being able to play with you all.

I learned the concerto throughout the summer and then last August, I reached out Jim Truher, the conductor, and asked if I could maybe play some of the Price for him to see if it might be possible for me to play with the orchestra.

And it worked out. So here I am, and it’s been fun to keep working on it.

KCO: That’s awesome. That’s a good story. You were just a young person playing in the section at some point?

Eleanor: Yes. I never played a concert, but I had been at rehearsals maybe five or six times, I think.

KCO: Your dad’s experience both as a violinist, but also with the Kirkland Civic Orchestra, is a great learning experience that might not seem like learning.

Eleanor: Yes. He doesn’t do violin as a career. But he always practices his music and he’s always very supportive, and it’s just fun to go play with him at rehearsals. We normally try to be stand partners, so that’s always great fun.

KCO: What do you like about this concerto?

Eleanor: I think this might be one of the few pieces I’ve played that not many people other than me have played. I know obviously people have but it’s not quite in the string cannon the way that some other pieces and concertos are. It was certainly new for me; it was new for my teachers. In a sense, we were both learning together this year. Because it’s not played very often that my even my college library didn’t even have the music and Oberlin has a very, very good Library. I’m actually in the process of getting them to buy the music.

It’s been fun to discover the music. I think when you’re playing a piece that’s just not performed that often, there’s sort of a different sense of responsibility that’s placed on your shoulders as the soloist. With some other pieces, you can rely on the fact that the audience really knows the piece. With this one, I really feel like I have to do a good job of introducing it to the audience, beyond just doing a good job playing it. And drawing them in with my playing. That’s something I’ve talked a lot about with my teacher, and it has been fun to explore.

It’s just a charming piece. When I tell people about it, I tell them that there’s really a bit of everything in violin playing that you can show off. It has some beautiful lyrical sections. It has dance-like sections. It has some fiery, virtuosic passages that are tricky, that are also fun to play. It’s short and compact. It’s almost more like a fantasy for violin and not a concerto, so it’s just a lot of fun to play and has been to fun to learn it this year.

KCO: You did a great job of fleshing that out for us here. Now, I will listen to piece with what you’re saying in mind. I think it will be great for our audience to hear. Now that you have the Price under your fingers, are you able to use it for a jury? Does it end up being useful at school?

Eleanor: It has been. Because I travelled back to Seattle to rehearse with the orchestra, I had to take my jury early. Juries were scheduled on days when I’d be home rehearsing with you guys, so that wasn’t going to happen. I took my jury early in April, and I played the Price because it just seemed like a natural and obvious choice to play for my jury. I’d been working on it for a while.

KCO: What are you looking forward to this summer when you get back home?

Eleanor: The semester wraps up in one week. So, I have that to look forward to. But before I come home, I have two more performances, so I’m excited for those. I’m playing in the contemporary music ensemble, so I have a concert with that ensemble.

One of the things I enjoyed working on at Oberlin is they have a fabulous early music program. I started taking secondary Baroque violin lessons, which have been fun. We have a studio recital coming up, which will be my first time ever playing a Baroque violin for an audience. That is exciting.

But beyond that, I have a couple of music festivals this summer lined up that I am going to. It’s always nice because I don’t have to worry about schoolwork when I’m there. I just get to do some good practicing and dive into some new repertoire that I need to learn.

I’m going to be spending quite a bit of time at home this summer, which doesn’t always happen. I really love Seattle. And there’s so much stuff to do in the summer. I’m excited to be able to explore that. There’s so much nature around and hiking and camping to do.

There’s always good shows and concerts and things to go to in the city in the summer as well. The Seattle Chamber Music Society is a big one that I should be able to go to and I’m excited to go hear. Then before I know it, I’ll be back here, starting my third year.

KCO: Well, it’s been great chatting with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.

---

Thanks to Eleanor for the interview on 4 May 2025.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

1. How did you start playing music? When did you start playing the violin?
2. At what point did you decide maybe it was time to be a little bit more serious than a kid going through the woodwind section in band?
3. What is the experience like for you playing with the orchestra or in a rock band?
4. How would you explain the Symphonie espagnole, by Édouard Lalo. What do you like about it?
5. Why did you choose this piece?
6. How’d you come to know the orchestra?
7. What are your other interests outside of playing music.

---

KCO: Let’s start with your origin story. How did you start playing music? When did you start playing the violin?

Luis Alcantara-Nenninger: Well, I started music when I was in maybe fourth grade. My aunt Marianne would come over and play our piano, and I thought that was amazing. “I need to learn something like that.” Shortly after, I began playing the clarinet. I played all the woodwinds and worked my way through the band. I didn’t like any of them.

Then we moved to a new school in sixth grade that had an orchestra. They had strings. I saw people walking out with violin cases instead. I told my mother that I want to try that. She said, “it’s your last instrument. Go for it,” and it stuck. I fell in love with the violin.

KCO: Where was this?

Luis: This was in Burnt Hills, New York, the capital region of New York, but we moved shortly after sixth grade.

My neighbor was a violin teacher, Dr. Solner, my first teacher. I went to him for many years until I moved from that school district. Then my mother found a new teacher through him who was recommended highly. I auditioned for his studio and got in. He helped shape me into the person and the musician that I am now. I stayed with him up through college. He was Josh Rodriguez at the Juilliard school.

We took a more serious approach. He recognized that I had a very good ear and picked up the violin very quickly compared to other people. I don’t know why exactly, but perhaps because of my training in band and on the piano, I progressed. I knew that you put your fingers down and the sounds get higher. That made more sense to me.

I was his student from around 15 to 21. I just fell more in love with the violin and how expressive it was, and how you can make cool sound effects. I just took to it really well, I guess, and I found that it was a way to express myself even more than just playing the piano, which was nice. The violin was just like “whoa, this is amazing. I can’t put it down.” I would sleep holding it sometimes just because I loved it so much.

KCO: Did you go to college and study music there? 

Luis: I studied at the Manhattan School of Music. 

KCO: When did you end up in Western Washington?

Luis: I ended up here about six years ago. I heard the music scene was awesome, and I decided to try it out. I’ve actually fell in love with the weather. So, I never left.

KCO: At what point did you decide maybe it was time to be a little bit more serious than a kid going through the woodwind section in band?

Luis: That’s a good question. I think probably when I started taking lessons with Josh Rodriguez at the Juilliard school. He pushed me, pushed me, pushed me, pushed me to play the violin more, to get into it.

Plus, I enjoyed just watching all the musicians coming in and out. I realized, oh, this is what I want to do. It’s just such an expressive form of communication. It’s nonverbal. It’s great. It transcends languages. That’s pretty cool, too. I just fell in love with music, and I knew that it was something really special, and something that I was probably meant to do.

I also feel like you’ve never really made it. You’re always just working for your next gig, your next job. Experience in music, it leads us different places. I started out playing Broadway shows. Then I realized I didn’t really like playing the same thing every single night, the same exact way. It was creatively stifling so I branched out and played in rock bands, jazz clubs, and classical orchestras, which are so fun. And ballets!

Every step gets me to the next place I’m supposed to be. There’s never an arrival point for me, really. It’s always the next experience you’re having with this instrument. You learn something about yourself during that, and then more about the instrument as well.

I realized I could make all kinds of sounds with this thing. I played a gig when they said play this like a cow would moo. I never thought I could actually do those kind of sounds, you know? For me, when I realized I wanted to do music, I was not set on just one path. I was set on a desire to experience as much of it as possible and as many different avenues of music as I can. 

It certainly does take sacrifice to your family and your social life because when everyone else is free from work, you’re performing because that’s the entertainment they go to see.

Then, during the day, you’re practicing alone. A lot of the time, you’re more alone. I feel like the concerts are the glamor part, and it is maybe 10% of music. And the rest of it is just practicing a little thing, and whatever else, like driving in the car.

KCO: Are your parents musicians at all? 

Luis: No, they are not. They are both attorneys. I’m so lucky because they have been incredible supporters of the arts and music in general. Every concert I ever played, they were in the front row recording me with a video recorder. They were so proud of my music, and what I was doing with it. I’ve been so fortunate to come from a family that supports me 100% with music while having no understanding of it. I’ll be talking about music to them, “I missed a crescendo. I missed a couple accents.” And they say I don’t know what that is, but it sounded great.

KCO: You mentioned playing in rock bands, what is the experience like for you playing with the orchestra or in a rock band?

Luis: It feels like everything aligns for a second, nothing else matters in the world except for that music. The orchestra is such a big group of people coming together, all breathing together, all moving together. It’s really something special there. That doesn’t happen in every day in life.

I feel that sometimes, especially if you come from playing with bands rock bands and stuff, everyone’s kind of in their own little bubble a little bit. 

It’s nice to translate what we learn classically over to other forms of music too. Playing sweetly and dolce, maybe expressive with a little solo lick, and then also playing like the aggressive rock player. It is fun and it scratches a different itch, I guess you could say. 

KCO: When you’re playing in a rock band, are you playing the violin?

Luis: I play the viola in a couple rock bands, and I also play violin in one as well. In the rock band, I feel like the bass guitar is what we rely on almost all the time for our rhythms, our intonation, because everything squeezes in towards the lower end. We definitely have that in our in-ear monitors. We crank the bass. We crank the drums sometimes not as much vocals, but definitely guitar and bass are our rocks in the rock band setting, for me personally. That’s what I like to hear. 

KCO: You’re going to be playing the Symphonie espagnole, by Édouard Lalo. How would you explain the Symphonie espagnole? What do you like about it?

Luis: What do I like about it? Oh gosh, this is a deep question.

The piece comes right at you. You’re just blown right out of a gun. There’s no long introduction like in other concertos where it’s a long orchestra introduction, flowing and meandering around. Or, one where the soloist just seamlessly melts in. In the Lalo, the soloist makes us feel, “I am here. We are ready to have some fun.” 

I love the expressive nature of it all and the excitement it has right from the get-go. It’s such an exciting piece, but it’s also really emotional music because Lalo was Spanish, even though he was born in France. He was Spanish.

He has passion in his music, a lot of it. And this is one of his most played works too, so I’m really excited to kind of dip my toe in the legacy of it.

I would say people who don’t know music might consider it more like a story. It starts out with the Allegro. It’s really quick and fast. Then we slow down in the Scherzando movement, which is a little bit dance-y. Then, the Intermezzo comes in. That’s kind of like a singer, like if you went to a concert that night and saw a singer. The Andante movement is almost a funeral march. It’s very sad. It’s almost the end of the piece. It slows down a lot. It’s like you’re tired after going out dancing or whatever. Then you have that Rondo movement, which is like the next day where you wake up, and you’re remembering all the fun you had. It’s kind of like a story in that way.

I try to think of it in terms of portraying different events. I know it was written with folk music and themes of Iberia in mind. That’s part of it as well. I was born in Chile, South America. I feel the Latin flare. I play it more closely to how it is played in Latin America, then how it is played in American orchestras. There are things that I do that people wouldn’t do perhaps, or choices I’ve made that other people don’t do. But I’m excited, and for me, it makes it more of a story. 

This piece kind of gave birth to all these French composers writing Spanish music like Bizet. It’s just really interesting. It might have influenced Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, believe it or not. I think it was in a letter or some obscure writing of Tchaikovsky, where he mentioned that Lalo had influenced his concerto, the violin concerto, particularly the last one.

KCO: Why did you choose this piece? 

Luis: I just felt like it has so much to say, and it’s such an adventure from start to finish. I’ve dreamed of playing this piece with an orchestra. When I got the opportunity and the chance to play it, I said yes immediately. I cleared my schedule just to play it. For me, I’ve always wanted to play it, so it’s a dream come true.

Also, I feel it is a little bit in my blood because Chile was colonized by Spain. So, part of me has Spanish in there somewhere. I feel a connection to this piece and especially the flare of it, the theatrical element of just sinking into the really delicious slow stuff and just letting my fingers fly on the fast stuff. I feel like it’s almost coming from me in a way.

The way I interpret it is different from other people’s interpretations, and I love that. It’s such a special piece to me personally. Growing up, I would listen to this on repeat. Every version I could find just repeat, repeat, repeat. So, it’s been in my blood for a while and I’m really just excited to get a chance to play it. 

KCO: How’d you come to know the orchestra? 

Luis: I play in a string quartet called the Emerald City string quartet with Libby Landy, the principal viola of the KCO. We’re really good friends. I adore her, and she got me this opportunity. She suggested me for it.

KCO: What are your other interests outside of playing music.

Luis: I would consider the rock gigs fun for me right now. I play in a string quartet for King Youngblood. He’s an up-and-coming artist. He’s a fantastic singer songwriter genius extraordinaire and everything. He has pulled us in as part of his string section. I play the viola so I’m loving that.

But in my spare time, I really like to spend time with my family because they are so important to me. I have a twin brother. I have a little sister with two kids and my parents are all back in New York still. When I can I love to spend time with them.

I am still very close to my aunt Marianne. I consider her like a second mother to me. She’s been there for a lot of musical things for me. If I have any musical question, should I play something this way or that way, she’ll help me figure out what sounds best. 

I also like to longboard. It’s like a skateboard but longer for going down hills. I like to do that in my spare time as well when it’s nice outside. 

KCO: Whoa, you definitely have to wear those special gloves with the pucks on them for protection.

Luis: Oh, I wear all the pads. I wear the helmet. I “suit up” as they say in the sports. It’s all about protection. 

I think about my hands more than most people probably would. Sometimes I think I can’t do something because I might hurt my fingers, or I don’t want to lift something up today because I need to save my energy for practicing. My brother calls me ninja fingers because as musicians, we train those little muscles in ways other people don’t, so we can open jars no problem. Our fingers are so strong. My glove size is like a half size bigger on this (fingering) hand than on this (bow) hand because of the violin. 

But I really do love music. It’s such a gift. I feel like we’re so lucky to play it in any capacity. People have asked what’s it like playing a Broadway show? Exactly the same way it felt to go on stage for a community orchestra performance of anything. You have that same excitement. You’re playing your heart out on stage. No matter what level you’re at. It’s all the same. There’s no difference from the bottom to the top. It’s all excitement. It’s all just that energy and that emotional connection and connection to other people as well, in a way that normally you probably wouldn’t connect with other people. 

KCO: That’s great Luis. I really appreciate you time and energy.

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Thanks to Luis for the interview on 12 May 2024.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

Our third and final interview with one of the virtual concert creators is with David Spangler. In addition to the KCO, David plays with Puget Brass and Woodinville Community Band. David has also helped those groups with their video projects.

1. Who are you and what do you play in the KCO?
2. When did you start playing an instrument and describe your musical journey?
3. How did you connect with the orchestra?
4. How did you get started on the virtual projects?
5. How many hours does it take to put together the video?
6. What about this project is surprising to you?

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KCO: Who are you? And what do you play in the orchestra? 

David: My name is David Spangler. I play the trumpet, and I’ve played in the orchestra since 2003. It’s been quite a long run. I think all of that’s been with Jim (Truher) as the director/conductor. 

KCO: Was there somebody before, Jim? I started in 2006. 

David: There was somebody, I don’t remember the name of the person, but Jim was not the first director. Jim started around that time as well, as I understand. But somebody else actually started it. 

KCO: When did you start playing an instrument and describe your musical journey?

David: When I was in fifth grade, I joined the Honolulu Boy Choir as a charter member and started singing. My mom had strongly suggested piano lessons, so I took piano lessons for two or three years when I was about eight or nine. That really wasn’t my thing. When I was in fifth grade, I picked up the trumpet. I liked it and kept going.

In intermediate school in seventh grade, the band teacher was a trumpet player. I started taking lessons with him. He was a great, great teacher and very, very calm. The kids loved him. It was really a family-type environment. Instead of eating lunch, I would go and practice. I played a lot. I really got started there.

I had a choice to attend ninth grade in the intermediate school or go to the high school. I stayed there in ninth grade and played, and we had a fantastic band. We played some hard pieces that were challenging. They made (vinyl) records of it! It was just a very positive experience. Mr. Matsumoto was the guy who made it a great experience.

Then, I went to Kalani High School for three years. I was first chair, pretty much through high school. We did marching band where I was the assistant drum major. The director told me he wanted me to be the assistant so I could play the trumpet solos for some of the pieces, which was fine with me.

I loved being in band and doing that. That was really it for me.

I went to college at the University of Hawaii and played my first year. I was in engineering school. I did a mechanical engineering undergraduate. The first year, I did the marching band and went to the football games. I was spending 25 or 30 hours a week in the marching band. We did a new show almost every week.

After the first semester, I realized that I can’t do this. I’ve got a lot of other classes to study for, and I just can’t spend this much time on band, even though it was a lot of fun. I pretty much gave it up.

After I got through college, I went to Stanford to get my Master’s. Then I came up here to work at Boeing and so I really didn’t play through those years. A few years later, I did play in the Boeing concert band for four or five years. I met a good friend of mine who lives right down the street from me. And that’s important, for reasons I’ll tell you in a second.

In the mid- or early 90s, Boeing and the industry went through a downturn. Morale was bad. I left there to do some consulting and so didn’t play for a while. In 2001 or so, I was doing some consulting at Microsoft and that turned into a full-time gig at Microsoft. That’s around when I start playing with the orchestra.

A little earlier, I started playing with Puget Brass, too. All of a sudden, I’m playing again. Anita (clarinet player in the KCO and David’s spouse) was in a choir. She heard this brass band rehearsing next door to where the choir was rehearsing. The guy I mentioned, who had played in the Boeing concert band, was playing in Puget Brass. That person is Chuck Fleming.

I called him up and he said we have an opening right now because one of the cornet players is out on maternity leave. I subbed in the band, but I didn’t have a cornet at the time. I bought one from Matt Stoecker (KCO trombone). They put me in the solo cornet row, that’s the front row of a brass band. I asked if any of these other people want to move to the solo cornet row (like first trumpet)? And he said, “no, they are good where they are.” That was my introduction to Puget Brass, which is a British-style brass band. 

Chuck is a great player. He’s also a very social guy and so he likes to talk “a little” to people. I started playing and I’ve been with them ever since. It’s been 13 or 14 years of fun.

I’ve played everything from flugelhorn to solo, 2nd and 3rd cornet. I just play wherever they need me. That’s been a great experience. I grew up in wind band tradition. Playing with the orchestra was a different modality. I hadn’t really played with strings before. We had an orchestra in the schools, but we never played with them. So playing with the then Microsoft orchestra was interesting because it’s a different use of the trumpet.

The reason I’m still in the three groups — KCO, Puget Brass, and Woodinville Community Band — is because they’re all very different. I also subbed in a little bit in some jazz bands over the years. Right now, I’m subbing in a jazz band. The Solid Gold Hits group as the lead trumpet, but I don’t consider myself a lead trumpet player which is interesting. Most trumpet players have that really type A personality. 

KCO: When I first met the trumpets in the orchestra, I thought these guys aren’t like the other trumpet players I know. They’re actually a little bit humble. What’s going on? But I adjusted.

David: Exactly. I get it. I understand the stereotype and that’s just not me. I’m more of a kind of a support. I’m just not a Type A person. 

The Puget Brass band is how I got started on the videos. I’ve made six videos now with Puget Brass and Chuck participated in several those. It’s been hard to get people to engage. Some people are not interested in the virtual thing and recording themselves. I know several people like that. Or their living situation doesn’t really allow it.

I’m on the board for  two of the groups, and both boards are asking how do we keep people engaged and prevent members from leaving?

One of my biggest fears was that if we didn’t play for a while, and it has been over a year, that people would say I’m done. Then, hang it up. We’d be back to square one and not able to play some of the more challenging, more fun pieces.

KCO: How did you connect with the orchestra?

David: I was working at Microsoft and the orchestra was rehearsing on campus. I just heard about it through some news groups at Microsoft. They had clubs back then and “hey, they have a music club? Great!” 

I went to audition but they said, just come and play. It’s been a great experience, a big learning experience. Now I have a “C” trumpet. I got one because I was playing an orchestra. There were a lot of pieces where the first trumpet is in C D and even F.

I got to play a bass trumpet, which is kind of cool. We did a Vaughan Willams piece, and that was very interesting. You were there when I played the thing. Matt Stoecker brought it in. It had a bigger mouthpiece. I said, “wow, this feels like playing a tuba mouthpiece” and you said, “What’s wrong with that?” (laughter) That was awesome.

KCO: How did you get started on the virtual projects?

KCO: I can’t imagine you were just like making video projects before. 

David: No, I had not done anything. When COVID hit, we were in the process of preparing for concerts for multiple groups. On the board, we decided we just can’t meet anymore because of COVID. That was a bummer.

I have an “adopted” sister, JoAnn, who is from New Jersey. JoAnn would go to Hawaii because she won the second trumpet position in the Hawaii Symphony during the orchestra season. In Hawaii, she was staying with one of the cellists in the community orchestra that my mom plays in. My mom plays cello. Something happened with her living situation so my mom said to JoAnn, “hey, I’ve got a room” so she was staying with my mom. 

KCO: So, how did you meet her? 

David: I was talking to mom who said we have a trumpet player staying here.

JoAnn is big-time and she’s become a really good friend. I mention that because we were chatting at one point and she said, “hey David, you want to play a duet?” Naturally, I said yes to this professional trumpet player. She had used this app called Acapella. She played her track and sent it to me. I played mine and it worked out well for a duet. I thought that was kind of cool.

During the pandemic, the board for Puget Brass started talking about what are we going to do? I told them about Acapella app. We decided to try it. We picked a piece called Deep Harmony, a tonal thing, that’s very, very slow. We use it for warm-ups. I figured we could use that because there’s not a lot of notes and it’s a good start.

We tried it but there were several limitations. You can only have nine tracks total. The coordination was complicated, and if you have one person that was delayed at all, everything just stopped. It took us three or four weeks to get that first recording. That was a very simple piece so I said, we could only have nine people and the end result was decent.

The other limitation is you only get one shot at it. If it didn’t work, you could record it again and again. But, you had to record it all in one take. For a short piece like this, each part is a about a minute and a half. For a more complex pieces, that was a non-starter.

That was our first attempt, and it was frustrating. It took a long time. There was minimal editing you could do. I had seen what some of these professional orchestras from Europe were doing, and they had 20 or 30 tracks. That’s obviously cool, but I also knew that it’s a lot of work. Having been in software pretty much my whole career, I knew there’s some effort there. Little did I know.

I decided I’m going to learn this and figure it out, so I did some research. I found a program called DaVinci Resolve. We created a click track and sent it out. Then I came up with the rules about how we’re going to do this. I just got started doing it. That was in March of 2020.

DaVinci Resolve had a free version. I didn’t really have to invest anything to get started. I found out it was a really powerful piece of software that motion picture studios use. If that’s if it’s good enough for them, it has everything that I would need, right?

I figured it out, and started putting the videos in. The first video we did in the Puget Brass, the result was really good. I obviously put in some time because I had a learning curve, but it turned out well. The lead cornet player, Matt Dalton, commented after we released the video, “that was way better than I thought we could do.” He knew how much work it would be to get everybody to sound good and be together. A lot of our members are not used to the studio musician mentality of playing with the click track or sync-ing with other people remotely, in a studio setting. This was the first time most people had done that. And it’s so different musically.

Plus, you’re recording yourself and you’re listening back to yourself thinking that sounds bad. That experience was foreign a lot of people in my groups. We’re not used to it. On the other hand, many high level musicians know it’s very important if you really want to improve.

The good news is that we’ve had enough engagement that we’ve been able to keep things going. So that part has been great.

When we did Sleigh Ride, I had 53 tracks in that video. That was the most I’ve had to had to deal with and that’s a lot of data. But it’s a big data set to learn from.

I learned a couple interesting things. One is that a lot of the players had a difficult time with the metronome and the time especially offbeats. It was difficult to line things up. I developed a process for how I would do this. One of the things I look for in a music video is: does the video sync with what you’re hearing? It’s a pet peeve of mine when it doesn’t sync up. My process is to lineup everything in the time-space. I’ll line everything up, including the video and audio, keeping them together to do all the cuts together. Then I’ll combine it into a single track in that time space. Then I’ll work on the video aspect of it.

Really, I do the audio part first so it’s clean and then I’ll do some post-processing on the audio as well, doing some mastering. As my friend Ron Cole says, “adding the talent” right to the audio to make it really sound good.

I took some sound engineering classes in the last eight months and that has helped a lot. I can understand some of the effects and more the art of how you actually make it sound good. How you cut out some of the unnecessary audio effects and make it sound better, better stereo bandwidth, etc. It’s been a total learning space. Every video I’ve done, I’ve learned something, .

KCO: You were just motivated to basically teach yourself this?

David: Yes. When we were talking to the Puget Brass board early on, we wanted to continue doing something and playing in some fashion, virtually, but how do we do it? I volunteered. You know what? I think this is important for us to do. I want to do it. I’m going to invest the time, and now I had the time because I had retired. I had the time and motivation to figure this out and learn it. And it’s come in handy.

KCO: Come in handy?!?! That’s an understatement, Dave. It’s fantastic!

David: Jim, our director, and the board are not going to compromise or put people in a position where they like feel like they have to come to rehearsal and then have somebody get sick. Jim and really everyone would feel so bad. So, they’re really playing it super safe.

KCO: How many hours does it take to put together the video?

KCO: Let’s use Sleigh Ride as an example. It’s about four minutes of music approximately. I know you sent some of the audio to Ken, and some of the parts Doug helped create. So just talk about your part of the process.

David: That’s a good question. In practice, this is what happens. The tracks come in over a period of time. I set up the template for the project, and then I bring in the tracks as they come in. So there is the calendar time of weeks. It’s much more than the working time. It can take probably three weeks in the calendar time from the time I start getting the project setup and track start coming in to completion.

There’s a period that gets intense. Not everyone is organized and gets tracks to me on time. So there is some wrangling to do. Once I get the tracks, then I can usually work like maybe four to five hours at a time before I need to take a break. I would say, all up, it’s between 30 to 40 hours, of time for a four-minute piece.

Early on, the first videos I did, the video took maybe two thirds of the time because that was the hard part. Some of the video controls were not there. About six to seven months ago, DaVinci Resolve had an update to version 17. In that version, they had a new control that’s called ‘collage,’ which is what I was doing. This control made it MUCH simpler to do. It really simplified because I didn’t have to do a lot of the masking and whole bunch of layering that took a lot of time.

With the new collage control, I could just set it up—boom, boom, boom—then resize each of the individual videos. Before, I had to figure out all the masking and background effects. It was a lot harder.

Now, it’s probably 50/50, maybe even 40/60 for the video. And it was 60% for the audio because I really want to spend time on the audio and get it just right. That takes a lot of time, making sure people are lined up vertically, in pitch, and horizontally, in time.

KCO: One of the things you said to me, you said, “these things last a long time. They are going to be out there a long time.”

David: They do, exactly right. When you’re performing it live, it goes out, the audience hears it and they generally remember the last note that you play in this or the first, but if you make a mistake, it goes out and it’s gone, unless of course, you’re recording it. Then that will persist for quite some time after the performance.

It seemed important, when we did Fanfare for the Common Man, getting that opening section solid when three trumpets are playing in unison for 15-16 bars. It has to be together or else, it’s bad. I would spend some time in those cases making it sound better.

A person submitted recording and said, “measure 52, I played the wrong note. You want me to record the whole thing again?” No that’s fine. I found that note, I cut that note and adjusted the pitch. It was off by a third. I just moved that note down a third, and it blended right in. 

KCO: But that’s more work on you. 

David: That’s a little bit more work, but if it could save somebody else having to re-record the whole thing and potentially make other challenges. Those types of things are not a problem, and I’ve learned the tool well now. That’s something super easy to do.

I had someone submit a track and I put it together with mine. I listened and thought, wow, that just doesn’t sound good. The track was flat but it was flat the whole way through, so I just adjusted him up like 25 cents and then it was fine. I asked the person about it later.  “Oh. Right. I forgot to tune when I recorded.” Oh well, that would explain it! 

KCO: What about this project is surprising to you?

David: I have a new-found respect for the people that do the audio engineering and recording. And the professional videographers.

To be clear, I knew it was going to be a bunch of work and now I know it’s a lot of work. But I also know it’s doable. Before, I had no idea. When you don’t know, it could be it’s like ten or ten thousand, right? I now know it’s a lot of work but it is manageable.

You have to learn and understand the tool. I’m there now instead of having to research and figure out how to do everything. Just getting familiar with the tool and coming up with a process I could consistently reproduce. I then knew, in my own head, where we are in the project. I could understand about how much more time I have left.

I did get a set of studio level speakers and that made a big difference when I was mixing the audio part because the speakers that I had initially were just the run-of-the-mill computer speakers. They really missed a lot. With the monitor speakers, I was able to hear what was actually there. I could then do the adjustment and fix for it. That was probably the biggest thing that made a difference.

Creating the click tracks was something I had to figure out. I wanted to create something that had the music because I heard a couple click tracks that were just the click. It’s hard if meter changes. It’s easy to get lost.

I got feedback that the click track was a little too soft relative to the sound that I’m hearing. I made the clicks much louder and that helped a lot, but adding MIDI music helped not only where we are in the piece but also with intonation. You need the music to adjust while you’re playing. You need to hear it or you’re not playing to anything except the click.

KCO: Go figure, the musicians around you matter.

David: Exactly. That’s the biggest piece: what’s missing is you don’t really have other people. It was surprising to learn how much you rely on those other cues and the other the people playing around you to play. Which also leads people to play too loud, I think.

But the whole nature of this music is a give and take, playing with a group, and how do I respond to them? And we’re all going to go through this thing together. That’s really kind of a missing element in here.

KCO: I agree. Dave, this was great. Thank you.

Thanks to David for the interview on 19 May 2021.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

Our second interview with one of the virtual concert creators is with Ken Adamson. In addition to recording and playing in the KCO, you can hear his recording as Sonolux on Soundcloud.

1. KCO: Who are you what started you down your musical road?
2. KCO: How did you end up in the orchestra?
3. KCO: How did you get involved with the virtual projects broadly speaking?
4. KCO: How long does it take to mix and master the audio for a video and how long does it take to master a concert?
5. KCO: In a project like this, what is something that people just don’t expect?

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KCO: Who are you what started you down your musical road?

Ken: I’m Ken Adamson and I play French horn.  I play French horn now, but I didn’t always play French horn.

I started playing an instrument in the fourth grade. It would have been recorder or something like that, but they moved you off to another instrument pretty quickly. My dad was a clarinet player and was into the Dixieland Jazz-style clarinet. We grew up in Louisiana so it was a given and so that was what I played all the way through high school.

For my last two years in high school marching band, I played mellophone because who are we kidding, clarinets are useless in the marching band and I wanted to play something a little bit more flashy.

The band director said we need mellophones. Here’s a fingering chart and instrument. He had to show me some more. He was a trumpet player, so I got some private lessons from him.

I didn’t pick up the French horn until college. I thought that it would be pretty similar to mellophone or trumpet. Turns out, it’s much harder. Had I known, I might have picked a different instrument to switch to, but it was sort of opportunistic.

I went to college on a partial music scholarship for clarinet. The idea of switching instruments was a big deal. I would have needed to re-audition. But, the way that I came to playing French horn, it was a bit of a boondoggle.

KCO: What school was this? 

Ken: That’s at Northwestern State University, at Natchitoches Louisiana, Central Louisiana. It’s a pretty decent, but unheard of, music program. The music program is almost a quarter of the school. It’s well funded by athletics. We were at all the games and everything.

You have to audition for every ensemble. The only thing that was a near guarantee was marching band. Even then, the section leaders required you to play some scales and learn the fight song. Not a full audition, but they make sure that you can actually play. You don’t have to be good, just be able to play.

They didn’t have as many ensemble choices in the fall, so that they didn’t compete too heavily with marching band. I don’t know where you hail from, but in the South, marching band is a big deal. 

KCO: I went to school in New England and, you’re right, not as big a deal.

Ken:  I was playing mellophone in marching band. I was going to my private, mandated clarinet lesson because I was a music major at that point. My clarinet teacher gave me the audition materials for fall wind ensemble. Show up and you do your audition on clarinet.

I show up and there’s a hundred clarinet players. Wind ensemble is going to take 12. But I really want to play in this thing. I’m listening to these people practice and we’ve got upper classmen that are virtuosic. I realized that I’m so out-classed there’s no chance that I’m going to be in this group. One of my new friends told me that she, “was the only person auditioning on bass clarinet. They need two bass clarinet players. Have you ever played bass clarinet? “

I played bass clarinet in high school. Using her instrument and materials, I basically sight-read the audition. I was the only other person to audition so I got in.

That was in the morning. That same afternoon the mellophone section leader from the marching band comes to me and asks, “do you play a concert horn?” I said no, not really. He handed me his horn and asked for some scales. I got some scales out and he said, “okay, well, your fingerings are wrong, this is double horn.” He actually had to show me some fingerings, and I went and I auditioned. I think there were 10 people auditioning for fall wind ensemble. I didn’t make it on horn. But with only 10 people, it wasn’t as long a shot at getting in on B-flat clarinet. But I did, I did wind up getting in the next spring.

KCO: This is your freshman year? 

Ken: My freshman year, yes. I stuck with clarinet for another couple of months, so still going to my clarinet lesson, while playing in wind ensemble on bass clarinet, and marching band on mellophone. I dropped it entirely the next semester. I don’t know how they let me keep my scholarship. They should have made me re-audition on French horn, but maybe shoddy record-keeping?

The other interesting thing, at some point, I actually became a liberal arts major. I had a pretty shotgun set of focuses and among them was music. The other ones were actually engineering, math, and physics, which is the other half of my other major.

As time went on, that grew. My advisor asked if I knew anything about computers? I knew a lot about computers. She said that I really should think about computer science. That’s going to be a hot field and this in ‘93 or ‘94. 

KCO: That’s some good advice though. 

Ken: And it led me to Kirkland Civic Orchestra, by way of Microsoft Orchestra.

KCO: How did you end up in the orchestra?

Ken: It turns out that there’s a heavy overlap between tech and music. Every place I’ve worked, there’s been other people around me that play an instrument. When I was working for Microsoft, someone told me that Microsoft had an orchestra. That surprised me but I decided to check it out.

I went to Christmas concert in 2007 or 2008. I just watched. Hey, they’re not bad and they only have three French horns. But I chickened out. I could have joined and finished out the season but I waited close to a year and joined later in the season. I didn’t join early enough to play the first fall concert but in time to participate in the Christmas concert. I remember the first piece of music that I saw on a stand was Babes in Toyland. I just sat down where I thought the horns might be. The seating wasn’t that organized. I remember people start filtering in and it turns out that I just helped myself to the first horn part. Everybody in the horn section was like, that’s fine. I realized the error of my ways. By the second rehearsal, I said, “I’ll play another part.”

KCO: How did you get involved with the virtual projects broadly speaking? 

Ken: Flash forward a few years. I’ve left Microsoft and I’m working at Getty Images. I meet a guy who is similarly a musician and a software engineer. He has a side business/hobby as recording engineer: recording, mixing, mastering–basically audio engineering as a whole.

I had been doing a little bit of that essentially remastering projects from the orchestra and from another concert band that I’m in. I started asking him questions and he said you just need to come over to my house and see my studio.

He took me under his wing and taught me quite a bit. That was around 2012, 2013. During one summer, I worked with him for a good six months or so. In the fall, I made the proposition to Jim, to let me handle recording. Jim does so much and that is one thing I could take that off his plate.

The recording part wasn’t a stretch for me because I had done a lot of that in college. There was a nice recording studio there. Our recital hall was fully mic’d and so I did quite a bit of practice on my own because I had keys to that stuff. When I was a student, I had jobs all over the music department.

I’d go in late at night and make copies of the master tapes and practice mixing on tape copies. I was somewhat familiar with the process but all analog. It’s a totally different world, when you’re about digital recording. A lot of the metaphors are still the same. We still use the same software as the 90s. Pro Tools was starting to be the predominant software even then.

The mixer behind me? That’s basically the same mixer that I learned on in college. The Mackie, 32 channel mixer, and I still use it. There’s a lot to be said for working in the analog domain for sound and muscle memory.

KCO: Using a mouse and even a touch screen, it’s just not the same thing.

Ken: It’s not. There’s nothing like a real, physical piece of equipment to work with that responds and has its own character. It’s like an instrument. If you’re already a musician, working with a piece of analog gear is a lot like playing an instrument itself. 

Mixing and recording for the orchestra makes me the natural candidate for mixing audio in the virtual recordings, but I wasn’t originally tapped to do it. Dave was going to handle all of it. At the last minute, I was said why don’t you let me mix the audio. He was very appreciative, and I’ve had a had a great time doing it. 

KCO: They sound good to me.

Ken: I treat them like a studio recording. It’s a little different when you’re recording the orchestra live. You have, essentially, a pre-mixed sound that you’re trying to capture. We’re fortunate in that, where we perform, in the chapel at Northwest University, has great acoustics. Getting a good stereo live recording is not a problem.

By contrast, when you have each individual part being sent to you in a video, I can treat them like studio recording. I do as much technically as I can to help the sound and help out the player. There’s a fairly intense editing process that is the same as with any studio recording: getting everybody in time, in tune, and still trying to preserve our sound. I think I’ve been reasonably successful with that.

KCO: Your skill level has increased over time. If I go back and listen to some of older the recordings, the newer ones are better. 

Ken: Some of that is different techniques and better equipment, but I don’t want to deep dive and get too geeky about it. The KCO, we’ve just been getting better. I’ve been surprised at how much better that we’ve been getting over time. We’re also tackling harder and harder repertoire. Having a better sounding orchestra helps me move to techniques that you use for a better sounding orchestra. They go hand in hand. 

KCO: How long does it take to mix and master the audio for a video and how long does it take to master a concert? 

Ken: For the audio, 15 to 30 hours. Dave extracts the audio from the videos that are sent to him. I’m not exactly sure the extent of what the other guys do. I know that what I get has the first notes and the last notes lined up. All the stems (basic tracks) are the right length, and he just sends me a stack of files that are just 1 per instrument. They start at the same time and end at the same time. It takes 20-30 minutes per track just to place in the software on the grid. I mean that’s a few hours of work right there just to get everything lined up.

Fanfare for the Common Man was around 16 tracks and was fairly fast going. As a horn player, I’m already quite familiar with the piece. There’s not a lot of noodley fast moving parts going on. It’s mostly quarter notes, half notes whole notes stuff. It’s all about the texture. And the percussion is so critical in Fanfare.

With the click track, I then go about making very fine adjustments – in a non-destructive way – to individual notes to get everybody even more lined up and starting and stopping together.  I take care not to make it “perfect”.  The software I use could, in fact, make it absolutely flawless – but that sounds bad and artificial. 

Mixing takes about a half day, including timbre corrections and setting the group into a “real” virtual space together. 

For a concert, it is mostly a mastering job. I know we have a sound that I go for, and Jim trusts my ear and my aesthetic. I used to have to do a lot of back and forth. I would master track and then I would upload and share it with Jim, and he’d give me his feedback. As the years have gone on, he’s done less and less of that, where I just put it out.

KCO: I love that Jim has learned to trust people if for no other reason, then it’s just a way to divide the labor.

Ken: Mastering takes a lot of focus and absolute quiet in the house.  The entire process usually takes a day to three of focused work for a single song.  

Being part of the group, I want the music in as best a light as possible. My goal is for it to sound to other people the way I hear it in my heart. When we play something like Bruckner 4th Symphony or Shostakovich 12, I know those pieces. I know how I want them to sound. I know how I hear them at the concert, and my goal is to present a finished product to make other people feel the same way that I did. 

With these virtual recordings, you have a lot of control because you have a single person’s isolated recording and there is the temptation to go and fix everything. To make it as flawless as possible. That’s great and all, but at what point is it no longer the same group? You’re essentially remixed and remastered it to death. In a sense, it’s not really the KCO anymore.

I don’t want to turn our recordings into something that you can produce in software with an orchestral library. I do a lot of eyeballing whenever I line it up beats and things like that rather than using the exact start of the waveform because I know that I’m going to introduce a little bit of error. It stays a lot more organic sounding.

Like I said before, I look at it as difference between a live recording and a studio recording. There is a lot more that can be done with a live recording than people realize. There’s amazing software out there that is actually capable of subtracting a bad note out.

After a concert, I’ve had people come up to me and say, “so you heard me flub my entrance? Do you think you could fix it?” I will give it a shot. I’m taking care to preserve someone’s dignity and it helps the overall product without being too ham-handed with the mix.

With a studio recording, you either trust your studio engineer or you don’t. I had a conversation with David Spangler. We’re talking about how far do you go with production to make these videos look as good as possible and sound as good as possible? And I said that I’m treating it like a studio session, so I’m going to do everything that I can, short of making it sound like sampled, orchestral music. He said that was good because these videos are going to be permanently in the world now. We need to treat them as well as we can. Dave and I are in the same camp.

KCO: In a project like this, what is something that people just don’t expect?

Ken: I try to work in highest fidelity domain as possible. I mean that I actually have photos of the orchestra that I’ve taken. I have measurements provided to me, by Jim, of our footprint. And I’m able to reproduce, physically, a sound stage from that. I do it in hi-channel surround sound or what’s called Ambisonic format.

I’m working in sometimes seven, eight up to 13 channel virtual audio for some of these projects. That’s a high-end film technique, but I’m a big fan of film music. I love me some John Williams and Alan Silvestri. Ben Hur, that’s one of the best soundtracks ever and they were working with monaural sound (mono).

I’ve even started working in Virtual Reality (VR). I’ve got my Oculus Quest 2 (VR headset) here and I’ve got some software that actually allows me to grab an instrument and place somewhere: like cellos stage left, violins stage right, violas in a spot, brass in the back, and woodwinds in the middle.

That’s how I mixed Fanfare for the Common Man. I watched several YouTube videos on different brass sections of different, famous orchestras. I saw how they were laid out. The one that struck me as best sounding in terms of the depth was Berlin. We are laid out in Fanfare for the Common Man in the same relative positioning as a video that I found of the Berlin Philharmonic brass section playing Fanfare. 

KCO: Wow. that’s cool.

Ken: And it all gets played into this virtual environment. And what I have is, peoples’ recordings from their living room, and their closets, and their bedrooms. You have to make it sound like something other than recording in a bedroom. I picked St. John’s Basilica as one of the reverbs that I used.

I took some measurements of the chapel at Northwestern University and the primary reverb is this chapel but with the tails turned way up, so it has a nice deep long, lush reverb to it. This isn’t just panning left and right, which is all the control you have with an analog board like that, but actually placing sounds in three-dimensional space. Not Just X and Z, but also on a rake.

If you think about it, if you’re in a balcony, looking down at an orchestra, by your perspective, they’re at an angle, right? And that all makes it sound differently, particularly top firing instruments like the tuba. With a steeper angle, you get the more of the high-frequency material. You hear the lip sounds and overtones and everything. It really helps you blend better with trombones and horns and everything.

I spent some time over the last couple of years, diving deep into modern film score mixing and mastering techniques. I’m starting to use that for rather more mundane projects than scoring a film, but no less rewarding. I think that it’s turned out to be a really cool approach and set of tools for realizing projects like this.

KCO: It’s awesome. Well, thank you very much. 

Thanks to Ken for the interview on 6 May 2021.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

Thanks to Doug for the interview on 11 May 2021.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO

Cori Belle will play the Mendelssohn #2 at our next performance. She is a musician and a mom. We discussed her playing, her upcoming performance, and some thoughts on her social media presence.

1. When did you start playing music and did you start with the piano?
2. When did you know you wanted to head towards a life of music?
3. What’s your connection to the Kirkland Orchestra?
4. Why did you choose Mendelssohn #2, or how did that happen?
5. What is the connection to Beethoven?
6. Could you talk a little about the role of social media for you as a performer?

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KCO: When did you start playing music and did you start with the piano?

Cori: I did start with the piano. My parents both play. My dad started studying with a professor at the university while in high school. He was then able to continue studying with the same person after he graduated from high school – kind of under the table. My dad got a very good music education in college without having to major in it. My mom was a church musician as well as a piano teacher. She was my first teacher and that lasted about maybe a year.

KCO: Was that around here?

Cori: No, we lived in Oregon at the time. As is common with moms and daughters, that didn’t last very long (laughter) and so she traded me off to her friend, another piano teacher. And her friend taught me, and my mom taught her friend’s kids piano. This was a great solution for both moms.

Cori:. My mom tells me I learned by ear first, and she taught me some chords to go with melodies.

KCO: And this is what age?

Cori: I don’t know. Before school, maybe 5. Then formal lessons around first grade. Those continued forever. I went through a variety of teachers.

We moved to Arizona when I was in fifth grade. In junior high, I had my music teacher from school teaching me. That wasn’t real challenging. I wasn’t practicing. I was sight reading through my lessons and then leaving it. My mom called Arizona State University and asked for a recommendation for a teacher and that led me to Barbara Stoutenburgh, who’s still teaching. She prepared me for college.

She created a program that is now part of the Arizona Music Teachers Association. It’s a standard piano curriculum with a theory background and performance opportunities. It was amazing. I never had a teacher like her. She really got me on track.

You asked me if I played other instruments. No, it was always piano. I wanted to specialize. I think it takes a lifetime to really learn an instrument, especially with piano.

KCO: If you end up playing the viola or the bassoon, it’s not usually where you start.

Cori: Sure. I had opportunities to dabble with harpsichord or even organ and those, they’re completely different instruments. They have the same keyboard, but a different technique and a different literature. There’s so much music for piano, that’s what I studied for.

KCO: When did you know you wanted to head towards a life of music? Would you call yourself a professional musician?

Cori: I have a hard time with that term (laughter).

KCO: I do too, actually, so let’s say when you decided to become more serious.

Cori: My sophomore year of high school I got involved in choir. It was actually because I liked a boy who was in the top chamber group, and he introduced me to the choir teacher and said, “you’ve got to go play for her,” so I went and played. She said, “you’re hired!” It happened during my prep period. I had it free, so I went and played for the top chamber group every day at school for a year and that morphed into the next three years of playing for as many choirs as I could at the school, and playing for all their school musicals, sitting in their pit orchestra.

Our district was really arts centric, and they offered a concerto competition at one point. I applied and won and got to play with members of the Phoenix symphony, a Mozart piano concerto.

Choir got me hooked. I just loved accompanying. I loved the challenge of it. I loved the repertoire we did. We did Rutter’s Gloria. We did major works.

KCO: One of the things you get when you’re an accompanist, which I think is also a little different from a piano soloist, is you get to play with other people. It’s a way to be social, but also a different musical setting. I’ve done some singing, and I’ve played solo literature with piano accompanist. It’s a different mentality to be an accompanist. When you’re in music school, finding your accompanist is a big deal, so that’s cool. I can see how that would hook you.

Cori: Yeah, so that’s when I decided, maybe junior year, I was talking to my piano teacher and found out, oh this could actually be a living. I could be an accompanist and get paid for it. And I did get paid for it in high school, so I guess you could say I’ve been professional since then (laughter), if that’s your definition.

KCO: Was it the success as an accompanist that gave you the of external validation? That insight you get when someone else says you are capable of doing this. Was that the moment?

Cori: I think I got that validation from my peers, too. All of a sudden, I had this group of people that loved me and loved music, you know? We loved that same thing. Getting paid was sort of a bonus. It wasn’t something I was looking for.

I majored in piano performance, not in accompanying. I thought I wanted to do accompanying, but the professor I ended up studying with suggested I study piano performance. You’ll get all the technique and you’ll learn the literature, and then you can still do accompanying on the side.

You can still learn the languages and play for singers and do all that, but it’s harder to go the other way, just studying the accompanying. You don’t always—and it might have changed, this was twenty years ago—but you don’t always get the best professor. You don’t always get the same focus on solo literature because you just don’t have time. When they know you have the skill that they need, you go to college and other students find out you’re an accompanist: every singer needs an accompanist. All the instrumentalists need an accompanist. The choirs need an accompanist. That can completely consume your time.

KCO: Right! Where was this?

Cori: I was at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. At the time it was a huge, great music department and it’s since changed. I don’t think it has as much of a classical focus now. It has more of a worship production focus.  The students will write, perform, and record their own CDs on campus and Christian worship music. There’s still a choir. They’re still doing some classical. I’ve noticed some of my professors coming back after hiatus, so I’m hopeful that it comes back. It was such a rich place for me to learn.

KCO: What’s your connection to the Kirkland Orchestra? How did you get involved with that?

Cori: I had played for Kirkland Choral Society for the last four years, and Kathy Truer is one of the singers. Jim comes to all the concerts and after one concert, about a year or two ago, he came up to me and asked if I would be interested in playing a concerto someday. I said sure.

Then life happened, and so a year or two later, we got back together, and he said, “do you want to do this this season? Are you ready? Let’s sit down and talk.” So we did!.

Kathy, she talks about the orchestra all the time, all the soloists and everything.

KCO: That is fantastic. Why did you choose Mendelssohn #2, or how did that happen?

Cori: Jim and I sat down, and I knew he wanted to do Beethoven focus this year, so we talked about the Beethoven fourth. We also talked about the Schumann A minor piano concerto, which I love. And then the Mendelssohn, and so time constraints were part of the conversation. What would fit well within a good program for the orchestra, and the connection to Beethoven. Jim wanted to make sure it was there, and the size of the orchestra, just making it fit.

KCO: What is the connection to Beethoven?

Cori: I don’t know what Jim would say (laughter). The one that I found is, they both use this three-note pattern, and Beethoven goes down a minor third for a symphony. Mendelssohn brings it up and it’s a completely lighthearted, different feel. But he plays with that same motif of notes.

KCO: With the Mendelssohn, my impression is that it is really technical, which surprised me. What are your impressions of the Mendelssohn? To me, even though it’s romantic, it has a lot of classical elements and a focus on scale play.

Cori: Mendelssohn in general, he did all the Songs without Words. He did a lot for voice and piano. His sister did a lot for voice and piano, so those soaring melodies are really what drew me first. This is a piece that I studied in college. I studied both the Mendelssohn concertos, 1 and 2. I like fast finger work. I like the challenge of that. It’s fun; it’s exciting.

KCO: Oh, one hundred percent! I think it’s a sort of trapeze act when I listen to it.

Cori: I read something this morning: Robert Schumann looked at the score, the Mendelssohn second, and didn’t think there was anything for virtuoso pianists to play. He thought this has all been done. It is not challenging. It is not impressive. Even Mendelssohn wasn’t really happy with what he did. I even had a fellow pianist comment to me, “oh that’s such a cute concerto,” and as I’ve been working with it even more, I think there is nothing cute about this, it’s really difficult (laughter).

KCO: What else appeals to you?

Cori: He trades the melody between hands so while you’re doing the sixteenth notes, continuously, you’re also supposed to bring out those quarter note melody that alternates between the hands. Creating the balance between those is another trick. In the end, it is a challenge to make it all sound easy, and effortless. It’s easy to play fast notes, but to play them and carry along the melody, and make it seem like it’s no effort at all, is really difficult.

I don’t know if you knew, he wrote it on his honeymoon. I feel like that’s  present in there, and that’s where I get the emotional cues. I think sometimes he’s in conversation with his wife. I think there’s a male voice sometimes and a female voice sometimes.

The whole second movement I feel like is a love story between the two of them, so tender. And then the last one, somebody called fireworks. I think it’s just part of the ecstasy of new love and you’re on your honeymoon and everything’s rosy and the future is bright. I don’t know, I guess I’m a hopeless romantic in that.

But you’re right, he stays with the classical form. It’s like a sonata allegro form. He doesn’t have the angst of Beethoven or of Schubert. In fact, he died when he was 38, I think. He had a young life, but it wasn’t fraught. He didn’t deal with deafness, or syphilis like Schubert, or death. Mendelssohn seems like sort of steady, not a lot of drama. Maybe that’s why some don’t think of him as one of the major players.

KCO: Could you talk a little about the role of social media for you as a performer?

KCO: I was on your website, and I love the aesthetic. What are you thinking about your IndieMusikhaus? How does that relate to what you might want to tell people about for in the future?

Cori: I guess first and foremost, which we haven’t even talked about, I’m a mom. I have my three girls and super involved with school and their gymnastics and dance. Everything else has to kind of be periphery so even though I don’t have a full-time job where I get paid, I’m a full-time mom. That needs to be my focus and so playing for the choir is a part of my life. Indie Musikhaus is the series of house concerts that I started seven-eight years ago as a way to bring music into our home and not impact the family too much negatively. So instead of going out and playing all these concerts, I wanted to bring my friends in, and also have a chance to play.

KCO: They are in your home?

Cori: Yes, in my home. My vision is bigger, eventually I’d like it to be a circuit where Indie Musikhaus is sort of the name and the programming, but then we perform in different places. Maybe it’s not just homes, maybe it’s also retirement centers or libraries or schools. But it was a way to sort of marry my priority as a homemaker and mom with my love of music.

It’s been phenomenal. I guess the website actually started out as a personal blog of being a mom for the first time. It has morphed. I don’t want to talk so much about my kids because I want to protect their privacy. It is really music focused now. It’s become a website, https://coribelle.com/.

A couple years ago my kids started in school full time and so I decided, hey, I want to make this classical CD that I’ve been dreaming about forever. So that was the focus of my first year without my kids at home during the day. A friend of mine helped me outfit my living room with a couple of microphones and I recorded at home when they were at school. When airplanes had passed and the garbage truck, you know, it was really interesting. Some of the social media stuff has happened because I want to promote my CD. That’s on the website. That was the impetus in creating a professional Facebook page. I don’t do much beyond that. I’m not on Instagram or Twitter, it’s too much, as it is, to manage what I’ve got.

KCO: Did you work with somebody who was knowledgeable in music to create the website?

Cori: No these are all template based, so my website is based on a template by BandZoogle. Their focus is more like Indie rock bands and country music. They have such cool templates. I thought, “Why don’t I just use it for classical music and see how it turns out.”

And they update it. The neat thing with them is your content always stays the same, but you can change your template and you have a whole new look. You don’t have to recreate any of your text or images, they’re all saved. And same with Indie Musikhaus, that’s a Wix site. It’s very basic. Yeah, I’m all self-taught, figuring it out as I go.

And so, the only thing I would add is I am hoping to do more chamber music in the future. I’ve started talking to another violinist in the area and she wants to do a concert. We’ll probably start out in the Indie Musikhaus. That’s one thing I haven’t delved into very deeply. I’m really familiar with choral works and with a lot of voice arias and art song. but chamber music is next. Let’s see what this has to offer.

KCO: Thanks for talking to us.

Thanks to Cori for the Interview on October 29, 2019.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO