If you feel bored, there are probably musicians onstage who might be feeling bored, too - and that’s OK. And people who don’t love classical music should still go and allow themselves to feel the way they’re going to feel about it. You’re giving up two hours to go on a journey of sound and memory. So for people who love classical music, going to a concert is like an enforced meditation. Smartphones are terrific and amazing, but they also have downsides - and one of them is what happens to our attention span. Music is made up of cells, like a fractal, so when he finds these little cells and gets them just right, the whole piece takes on an aura. Then on the third night, he did an encore of Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, and it was the fastest, cleanest reading of it I’ve ever heard - it was unbelievable! We did Stravinsky’s Petrushka with Giancarlo Guerrero, and that was an amazing concert, because, among many other things, Giancarlo is so highly attuned to rhythm. Bronfman’s one of these giant pianists, and it was an electric three nights. The first that comes to mind is when Yefim Bronfman performed Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto. What are some personal highlights of your time performing at the Schermerhorn over the past decade? Like any other job, there are going to be easy days and hard days, but it’s a thrill to hear the music come alive. It’s hard work, but it gives you so much back if you are receptive. What is it like performing onstage with an orchestra? So it always had a really good string section, but now it’s a terrific orchestra. Even when the orchestra paid its musicians very poorly back in the ’60s and ’70s, string players would come to Nashville because they could earn extra money playing sessions on Music Row. Nashville is such a musical city, and it’s always been a better orchestra than it should have been. And the staff and the orchestra work really well together in a way I haven’t experienced in other orchestras.

There are still times when I walk onstage, hear the first note and think, wow, that really sounds amazing. You shouldn’t say it’s better than Carnegie Hall, but you can say it’s as good. The Schermerhorn is the best hall I’ve ever gotten to perform in regularly. What makes the Nashville Symphony unique among orchestras? And as the story is told, my mother bribed me with candy to keep me from fidgeting.Ĭould you have imagined that one day you’d be performing with the Nashville Symphony? I think it was a Nashville Symphony children’s concert. What’s the first concert you ever attended? When I auditioned for the English horn position in the Nashville Symphony, they kind of took a chance on me. I didn’t really intend to play English horn I thought of myself mostly as an oboist. Somehow that morphed into me pursuing oboe. Initially, I really wanted to play the bassoon, which were very expensive back in those days, or the French horn. When I was 10, I wanted to do something more social, so of course I chose an instrument that requires you to spend hours and hours alone making reeds. I started on piano when I was about 4 it’s my voice, it’s where I live. My parents met in high school orchestra when they were 14, and my older brother plays violin, so it was a natural thing for me. What led to you pursue music, and how did you wind up playing the English horn? Member of the Nashville Symphony since 2001

Aural training oboe vs english horn