JAVS Spring 2022

DP: Returning now to your professional progress, we have taken you from your positions as Concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony and section violist with the Baltimore Symphony (having amazingly won the latter on an instrument that you didn’t play and with a clef you didn’t read!). What other professional positions did you hold on the road to Cincinnati? CC: I went straight from Baltimore to Cincinnati. I had won Assistant Principal with Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra – but I declined the position. I also made it to the super finals on other orchestras. I also won an audition with Baltimore to move up from the section to Assistant Principal. DP: Let’s talk about how you got to Cincinnati. Review for me please the circumstances that brought the position to your attention and how you got there. CC: To be honest, I felt a disturbance in the air with the management of the Baltimore Symphony (tenure 1994 2010). I had felt it for a while, but it was getting worse with time and I thought it was time to go. By chance, the Principal job in Cincinnati had opened up. Actually, there were three auditions scheduled. I had Cincinnati and Minnesota in the books and a friend of mine said I should also try for L.A. The L.A. one was in a week from the advice, so I called to see if they had room and they did. I hopped in a plane and went to audition. I made it to the finals. This gave me the practice and jump I needed to then go take Cincinnati. A week later I took Cincinnati and that was it. I called Minnesota to cancel. DP: It would be wonderful if musicians were immune to physical injury, but such obviously is not the case, and the treatment of our maladies has become more than a cottage industry in recent years. I have a vested interest in this topic because my wife suffered a near fatal subdural hematoma four years ago from a fall, but I am most pleased to report that she recovered fully. Tell us please the circumstances that led up to your subdural hematoma. CC: I don’t know what caused it and neither do the doctors. All I know is that I am extremely lucky to be here and okay. It is my understanding that an extremely low percentage of people survive them and furthermore survive them without any physical damage. However, I will say this about playing based injuries: they are

very preventable. People don’t listen to their bodies or question authority (teachers). I have a very thought-out way and system of doing things, and so far, no playing based injuries have occurred. DP: When you relate that you don’t know what caused it, I presume you have no recollection of head injury—a fall being most likely—which could have contributed to it? CC: No recollection AT ALL. A funny story though: when I was able to speak and the doctor finally came in the room followed by about ten students behind him, he asked me three questions (keep in mind I am not all there at this point). He asked: have you been screaming, doing strenuous exercise, or having frequent intense sex? Without missing a beat, I said – all three. The students all gave out this communal burst of shock, and the doctor, also without missing a beat, said to me “Well, Mr. Colberg, I guess you are doing it for all of us.” CC: Not at all. Left to my own devices, I don’t move much, and I barely break a sweat . Unfortunately, you get conductors who make it all about what it looks like – in that case, when they ask for something, I just play it the same way but move a little more. Nine-point-nine times out of ten, they think it sounded much better. But no, the viola did nothing to me. DP: I would like to move now to your compositions. Let’s begin with these questions: at what point in your life did you become interested in composition? college. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a composer, I just like to do things, rather than to read about them or be told what I should feel about things. I taught myself – once again, by just doing it. Rather than wait until you have information, I just do it and learn on the job. I know this kind of approach is not best for many things in life – but when no one is getting hurt, and all I have to endure is a little ding on my ego from time to time – that’s what I choose. CC: I wrote my first composition when I was about thirteen: but things didn’t crank up until I went to DP: Are we to conclude then that the subdural hematoma was not a result of physically playing the viola?

DP: Did you simply begin composing, or did you find time academically for specialized courses in composition?

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022