Personally and musically, it was on the whole a very good year. Almost an entirely very good one. But there is always the element of the bittersweet as one gets older, and one starts to get ever more particular about what may be defined as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. The mortality reflex starts to kick in at the age of 50. You don’t want to give too much importance to minor things when the time you have left might be less than the time you’ve already had. [Hm, that was way more dark than I was intending, but I’ll leave it because it’s true.]
People love lists (even when they say they don’t), so this will basically be what they call in the blog biz a ‘listicle’. It sounds like it should be a body part, but don’t fear – it’s just an amalgamation of ‘list’ and ‘article’. Enjoy! (or not, your choice.) And it’s in chronological order, sort of.
The (very) good list(icle).
- Performing Caroline Shaw‘s Limestone and Felt with cellist Marilyn DeOliveira.
- Playing music for string quartet and marimba with percussionist Colin Currie.
- Joshua Bell‘s Bernstein Serenade with the Oregon Symphony.
- Mahler 7 with the Oregon Symphony.
- Audra McDonald with the Oregon Symphony.
- Playing Philip Glass‘ Fifth Quartet, for the composer at Oregon Bach Festival.
- Coaching with and playing for composer Joan Tower, at the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival.
- Playing Kenji Bunch’s String Circles, with the composer, at the WVCMF.
- Recording Gabriel Kahane‘s emergency shelter intake form with the Oregon Symphony.
- Star Wars: A New Hope, live with the Oregon Symphony.
- Debuting the Pyxis Quartet with the last movement of Aaron Jay Kernis‘ Second Quartet.
- The Big Bang concert of the reborn 45th Parallel Universe.
- Having a gorgeous new bow made to order by master bow maker Darrell Hanks.
- Playing at the Portland Book Festival with OPB‘s April Baer and author Aja Gabel reading from her book The Ensemble*, and with cartoonist Lucy Bellwood at the festival’s Lit Crawl as she talked about artists and imposter syndrome via her book 100 Demon Dialogues.
*recorded for broadcast/streaming on OPB’s State of Wonder – coming January 2019
So, lots of different stuff happened in 2018, and it’s looking like 2019 might be just as interesting (in a good way) or better! I wish the same for you as well – thanks for making this blog a place to visit, and I hope to make it a little bit more populated with reading material in the coming year!
Playing with Colin Currie as part of his residency with the Oregon Symphony. 
Playing Kenji Bunch’s String Circles with the composer. 
With Philip Glass at Oregon Bach Festival. 
With Joan Tower at the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival. 
New bow by Darrell Hanks. 
Previewing 45th Parallel Universe at AllClassicalFM. 
45th Parallel Universe ‘Big Bang’ 
With OPB’s April Baer and author Aja Gabel at Portland Book Festival