Living a Musician’s Life

I have been living a musician’s life in Boston, performing classical, folk, improvised and original music. Thread Ensemble is my trio with two violins and vibraphone, which creates improvised works inspired by (and sometimes co-created with) our audiences. We were a part of a theater production last month at the Boston Center for the Arts where we incorporated our audience’s responses to questions about belonging, migration, home, and early memories of play in their lives into the performances. We just received a grant through The Boston Foundation to develop a new concert-length work for late 2018. And on May 16th, we will be giving a concert created entirely of works co-created with the help of over 100 Kickstarter backers.

 

Cardamom Quartet, my string quartet, has been performing solely works composed by women in our 2017-18 concerts, and possibly much longer! We’re so glad to be part of the wave of change. Our next concerts will be on June 16th in Jamaica Plain and Cambridge.

 

I teach creative music-making in a variety of situations: this has meant workshops on learning to improvise, composing, song-writing, and yes, fiddle music, too. I’ve been doing this at musiConnects, Classroom Cantatas, the Continuing Ed school at New England Conservatory, and Community MusicWorks.

 

Two students, now teenagers, from Rhode Island Fiddle Project have refused to stop learning. They have continued to expand their repertoire of tunes by working with Michelle Kaminsky with the help of RISCA Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grants and a generous donor, and perform at the farmer’s market, and occasionally teach tunes to students in other programs, like Newport String Project.

 

In short, it’s a wonderful melding of work and I continue to benefit from the people, ideas, and experiences that I encountered as a fellow 10 years ago at CMW.