When Karen was in the 5th grade, she really wanted to play the cello or violin, but her parents said “no dying cats!”  So instead, she chose the clarinet.  

Her love of the violin and cello didn’t fade. 

Putting the “A” in Symphony

"When and why the oboe?" is usually the first question on these types of interviews. Often the answer is that the child was taken to a performance and heard a sound that he/she liked and it turned out to be the oboe. Sometimes there are musicians in the family and this direction is put forth as a possibility.

Jackie first started playing the French horn at age 11, was switched “against my will” to euphonium three years later and came back to the horn at the age of 18 because “I wanted to play an orchestral instrument, and the music of my favorite composers (Bruckner, Dvorak, Tschaikovsky, Kodaly) features the horn most prominently.”