I’m taking this week off from teaching to spend some time gearing up for the month of July which is always a busy one. Willy Street Chamber Players will be returning to indoor concerts after two summers of playing outdoors. As an acoustic musician, this is welcome news since our instruments don’t achieve their full sound without the reverb an enclosed space can provide.

This year has been a lot about returning to some sense of normalcy in the concert hall. MSO started out this year with a strings only concert after the city passed an ordinance which unintentionally banned the use of wind instruments indoors. After some lobbying by various local groups, that restriction was lifted and we managed to put on our second concert with the full compliment of musicians, however do to the distancing requirements that our players’ committee and management had mutually agreed upon, we were unable use our risers for the winds and the orchestra was far more spread out than usual. Bit by bit, over the past year, the restrictions have been lessening and we have even gotten to a place now where vaccinated string players may, with proof of a negative PCR test, go unmasked in rehearsal and performance. I personally have not done so yet, but I look forward to some day removing my mask for performance.

As the vice-chair of our players committee, I have been a large part of the discussion surrounding how we can keep our membership safe and what is an appropriate amount of risk/reward when it comes to the question of covid safety protocols. It is my hope that our somewhat more stringent protocols helped us avoid transmissions within the orchestra and kept us working.

It has been very interesting to be not just a member of this orchestra but to also understand how the orchestra functions as a whole, from attending board meetings to preparing for collective bargaining, participating in search committees, to communicating with various members of the orchestra about their concerns. Being on the players’ committee has given me a broader commitment to the ensemble and while I do not get paid for being a member of the players committee, I am the recipient of valuable institutional knowledge. Furthermore, this position, maybe more than any job I have worked, has taught me about my own capacities as a human. I am grateful to have held this position for the past three years and look forward to continuing in this position.

At the end of July, I will be missing the final week of our WIlly Street Chamber Players season in order to attend the ROPA Conference (Regional Orchestra Players’ Association). Each ROPA member orchestra sends one delegate to the conference where we will…..confer. To be honest, I am not totally sure what to expect, though I understand this is a big professional development opportunity and will give me a chance to understand my orchestra in a national context.

Regional orchestra delegates from around the country converge and discuss the status of their orchestras, current issues, negotiating…etc. I will be arriving a little bit earlier than some in order to take part in the negotiating workshop which I’m particularly interested in. I would have missed the last negotiation which was set to take place in March of 2020 while we were in Taiwan visiting my cousin Luke. At that time I was unsure if I could be of any real help in the process, so I didn’t lament having to miss it. In fact, I felt scared that my presence may somehow irritate our management and therefore lead to a poor contractual outcome, which sounds very silly to me now.

Going into this summer, we have an exciting new executive director who I believe will be able to hear the dreams, desires, concerns and vision that we have to bring to the negotiations. Madison is in very good financial shape and what that means is that there is a lot of room to maneuver the ship. I think this orchestra can do more and can be more to this community and that is exciting to us.

At the end of August into September I will be playing the final season of Token Creek at John and Rose Mary Harbison’s Cabin just north of me off of Stoughton Road. I was lucky to play a concert there last summer which heavily featured cello and gave me an opportunity to play Vivaldi Double Concerto with my MSO stand partner and principal cello, Karl Lavine. Scott Morgan and I also spent a week there in 2019 playing the steinway and the wind chimes which we found dangling from various snow-covered trees. It’s a beautiful spot and it will be sad to see this festival go, but I’m honored to be returning this year.

In other news, I am approaching both my birthday and the six-month anniversary of the retrieval of my new cello from Boston. Both are June 26th, incidentally. The cello sounds wonderful and while Michele had offered to make me another if I was not satisfied, it is not going to come to that. Everyday I look at it and play it and think to myself how lucky I am to have found Michele and how lucky I am to be able to play on such a high quality cello. I also think finding this instrument is a testament to following ones gut. I only played this model for a short time in 2007 and yet my memory of it was so powerful that when it came time to find a new cello for myself, this was where my gut wanted to go. Many have commented that this was a risky commission perhaps not understanding that Michele let me know that if I was displeased she would make me another one. I think there were certainly times when this felt risky before I received the cello and there were some moments this winter when seams were open or when the sound post was off kilter that I felt disappointed in the sound and before I knew what was wrong, I doubted myself, but at this point after playing dozens of concerts with it, I feel vindicated in thinking that this cello was exactly what I remembered it was and that the connection I felt with it in 2007 was not a rosy memory, but in fact a profound experience that stayed with me for nearly fifteen years until I played this one for the first time on December 26th.