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>

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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>

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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.

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Thanks to Eleanor for the interview on 4 May 2025.

by Francis X. Langlois – tuba player in the KCO