JAVS Spring 2020

feeling that I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. After taking my Teaching Artist skills and using them to teach networking and entrepreneurship workshops for musicians, I started to take a hard look at myself and the life I was leading.

Were you creative in high school?

I was lucky to be brought up in a great public school system on Long Island, New York. I had a jazz bass player as my orchestra teacher in high school who made us improvise all the time. We would play Turtle Island String Quartet arrangements in concerts and when he pointed at one of us, we would have to stand up and take a solo on the spot. Another teacher in the district studied music theory at Juilliard with Vincent Persichetti, who thought all performers should be writing in order to become a fully educated musician. As a part of a theory class in high school, we had a lab that had us all composing with computers. The only award I had won until recently was a Long Island Composers Alliance award for a concerto I wrote for viola and computer in 12th grade. I was always thinking practically however, so after high school I decided to follow the path that I thought led to being a professional violist: to study at Juilliard followed by winning an orchestra job. I studied with William Lincer, who was really great at giving me a method for which to practice excerpts and a strong mental approach to the viola. However, I needed someone to help me with the tension issues and the mind/body connection when practicing and performing. When I met Heidi Castleman at Aspen, I knew her nurturing approach of singing and playing was exactly what I needed to reconnect me to my instrument and to build better technique. Even though I was not accessing my creative side, I was introduced to new worlds of sound by playing with the New Juilliard Ensemble in school, which gave me the opportunity to have a more prominent voice than in orchestra. When I got out of school in 1998, I helped form the ensemble counter)induction with a few friends and worked as a Teaching Artist for Lincoln Center throughout the public schools while taking orchestra auditions. After making the finals for a few orchestras but never getting the gig, I acknowledged that perhaps this was not the right path for me as a player. So I spent time building my new music group and my wedding gig business, and I worked with more arts organizations as a Teaching Artist. Over the years, I still had a nagging What did you do after Juilliard? How did your musicianship develop at Juilliard?

What led you to performing solo with loops?

During the recession of 2009, the economy in New York fell apart and many of my regular gigs dried up. I entered a kind of mid-life crisis and asked myself who I was as a musician. I knew I wanted to do more solo repertoire in general, but also knew I wanted to start making my own music somehow. Then I saw Reggie Watts (beatboxer/ comedian/singer) perform in Brooklyn and I bought a looper the next day. I picked up the looper and wrote a piece in 2010, performed it in 2011 at a New York Viola Society showcase, but did not write again for another 2 years. Even though I had an idea for another piece rolling around in my head, I was afraid of what I just awakened in myself and kept putting it off. I finally wrote another looping piece in 2013 and the floodgates were opened: by May of 2014, I had an entire 45-min set at the Tribeca New Music Festival, and by the following November I released an album of those pieces, Sounds of Being . Originally, I wanted to put myself out there as a soloist playing works by living composers, with my looper pieces being just one facet of the show, but then I noticed how much more virtuosic I was when I performed my own works. Every time I wrote a new looping piece I would make sure to perform it somewhere, and the feedback from the audience was really positive and kept me writing. The venues I played in were not typical classical concerts at all—they were part of different new music concert series in galleries, bars, living rooms, storefronts, and sometimes universities. I needed every opportunity to perform as much as possible, so I played in schools for assemblies, during workshops I was leading, as well as concerts. I also made sure the shows were well documented since I knew I needed great recordings and video to establish myself. I grew my solo/compositional career like I was a start-up business. There are many sound qualities and techniques in your looping music; how do they inform your compositional process?

When performing in counter)induction, the pieces I played asked for a wide palette of sounds beyond

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2020