Hi there, and welcome to Notes from the Stage,
a show from the musicians of the Calgary Philharmonic.
We're the people playing our hearts out every
week of the orchestra season. I'm Adam Zinatelli.
Usually I play first trumpet in the Calgary Phil,
but today I'm your host, and I'm here with Jen
Micheletti, violinist in the CPO and co -artistic
director of Calgary's own Kensington Sinfonia.
Hi, Jen! Hi, Adam. I'm so happy to be here. I'm
glad you're here with me. Thanks for sitting
down with me. Boy, we're fresh off of the holiday
season. We sure are. Enjoying our return to real
life in January. How was your break? It was great.
We went to go see some family in upstate New
York and I played all of the Nutcrackers except
one. And we did Salute to Vienna, which for me
is always a very fun show, actually. The music
is great. It's charming, delightful music. That's
for sure. Oh, yeah. I like to pretend that I'm
in one of the pickup orchestras in Vienna. You
know, kind of time travel that way. Yeah, really.
So when you say you played all the nutcrackers
but one we've got this what it was twelve shows
or something like that on the on the docket this
year and ten of those this year were part of
the cpo contract. But two of them were outside
of the CPO contract, right? So yes, we get offered
that as a freelance gig But sometimes we say
yes, sometimes we say no we all have that choice
So those ones are technically quote musicians
of the Calgary Philharmonic unquote rather than
the Calgary Philharmonic proper Yes, well, it's
probably musicians of the Calgary Philharmonic
who want bigger presents for their kids Yeah,
I never hurts but that nutcracker run for me
I usually don't play the optionals just for Rest
for my chops because oh, absolutely. It's brutal
that nutcracker run really stacks up in terms
of fatigue I mean, it's an incredible piece and
I think I've been playing a nutcracker every
year since 2011 Oh, yeah, and every time there's
still passages that are tricky. I feel like there's
still new things that I hear I mean what an incredible
piece if we have to repeat a piece every year
that one, you know, it's worth it Yeah, for sure.
I absolutely agree I'm close to 150 performances
now. I think I did the math on that. Oh, my God.
Yeah. You're not too far behind me, I'm sure.
Oh, well, we'll see. We just had Jocelyn in our
clarinet section play her last Nutcracker of
ever. And I think she said she was over 300.
Wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I believe that. Yeah, we'll
have Jocelyn on later this season. I'm hoping
to have all of the retiring members of the Calgary
Philharmonic on this podcast before the end of
this season. Great idea. So Jen, in addition
to your duties at the CPO, you're also one of
the people in charge of Kensington Symphonia.
Yeah, it's an organization that is older than
I am. So I feel really privileged to have been
given the reins along with Andrea Case. Great.
Who was that? Who started Kensington Symphonia?
That was our assistant concertmaster, John Lowry,
all the way back in 1988. I'm going to get in
trouble. I think it's 88. Oh, I was alive in
1950. Making me feel old, Jen. Oh, I don't mean
to. It's a super cool organization. It's so impressive
to have a organization that lasts that long.
I mean, Calgary Phil is not that much older,
I think. I think 1954. But when did it go professional,
though? Wasn't that in the 70s? Because when
I got here, yeah. There was the Alberta Philharmonic
and the Calgary Symphony. And they merged in
1955, I think, to become the Calgary Philharmonic
Orchestra. But then it was not a professional
ensemble for a while. Yeah, it became professional
in the 70s because there was one violinist left
when I joined in 2017. That was left from that
vintage of violence. Was that Richard Vengegier?
Oh, it sure was. All right. Long time violinist
in the CPO, a stalwart of the orchestra for decades.
Yeah. So Kensington was interesting because it
was started as a way for the principles in CPO
to get a chamber concert outside of CPO's purview.
It's evolved a lot since then. And with Andrea
and I, what we really focus on is commissioning
works by specifically composers who are Canadian
and from Alberta, but also female composers and
composers of color and gender diverse composers
in any way that we can. It's been so much fun
working with almost exclusively living composers.
Yeah. Yeah, that's something really interesting.
So it sounds to me, it sounds like Kensington
Symphony was started as a way for the CPO musicians
who created it to pursue their passion projects.
Yes. And while those passion projects might look
a little bit different now than they did back
then, it's basically the same thing. It's things
that the people in charge, the people making
these decisions, that's you and Andrea Case right
now. feel passionate about and want to be spending
your free time working on this instead, right?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So it feels like the mission,
the point of the whole thing hasn't really changed.
No, that's a really good point. So for the lay
person, Kensington Sinfonia is a string orchestra.
Yes. So we call it a string nonet. So that means
it's four violins, two violas, two cellos and
a bass player. And what I love about that ensemble
is we can scale up to like a chamber orchestra
very easily, or we can scale down to a quartet
or a quintet super easily, which means we have
huge flexibility in our repertoire. Great. That's
a real asset, especially when you're dealing
with living composers who have who might have
a smaller catalog of music. It lets you choose
from a wider variety of works than, say, if you
had a super fixed sort of instrumentation by
having some flexibility. It opens up possibilities
that a more rigid ensemble might not be able
to really adapt to. Oh, yeah. And for example,
on our last concert, we featured Chris Size,
our new principal percussionist at CPO. I had
heard him play this amazing piece by Daniel Strange,
but it was just for percussion solo. And I said,
hey, Daniel, what if you wrote it as a percussion
concerto, but with string nonet? And he was super
excited and on a very tight time scale. I think
it was like a month. He produced the parts with
electronics, with click track, and it was it's
an incredible piece. It's really fun. It's called
Saturn Still Returning. Yeah. I think I heard
the solo the same solo performance of that that
you did at Sound Atlas last summer. Oh, yeah,
it was awesome. So here's here's something I
was thinking about as someone in charge of an
arts organization and programming and the artistic
side of things. In all your artistic activities
in town, you've sort of got to have, you probably
can't help but have that hat on of looking for
opportunities, looking for collaborations, looking
for threads to pull on to find great things to
happen for Kensington. Oh, yeah. I mean, I like
to think of ourselves as a workshop and a proving
ground. So in 2021, which was my and Andrea's
first season, we invited poet laureate Wakefield
Brewster to come and do Spoken Word with String
Orchestra. and it was super fun. We loved doing
it. Turns out that Wakefield was actually trained
as a percussionist at one point, so he has an
incredible sense of rhythm. And then to see him
on stage with Calgary Phil this past, was that
September that we did beat Beethoven? It sort
of felt full circle, right? Like it's this idea
and because we're so small and so flexible, we
can jump on it and really keep our ears open
for cool collaborations. And we've been doing
it now three years and now the collaborations
are starting to come to us and that feels really
special that people want to work with us. Yeah,
absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean,
there's a whole world with electronics and with
dancers and spoken word artists and visual artists
that we don't get to tap into as much at CPO.
that I find really fulfilling. And for our next
concert, we're actually, we commissioned a piece
from Zhou Lai, who's a composer up in Edmonton.
And it's for Chinese flute and string nonet.
And it's called Unsung Legacies. And it's sort
of his love letter to Canada as his adopted homeland.
We're also pairing that with Dvorak, his string
serenade, which I think every string student
plays at some point, right? It's just a beautiful,
fun piece. And then we have a piece by Ina Boyle,
who's an Irish composer who I think I feel a
particular affinity with right now because she
was incredibly promising and she had all of these
awards, including a Carnegie Award for her compositions.
And then she suddenly fell off the map when she
got married. There's so much time and resource
that goes into family obligations, raising children.
I have two small children right now. And she
studied a lot with von williams who was a big
proponent of hers and he in one letter he said
you know you're so very brave to keep composing
when no one is listening and i hope that we get
to prove him wrong and that we are listening
and we hear her echoes down the hallways of time.
Yeah yeah i think that'll be wonderful to hear
when is that concert february ninth three p .m
st steven's in the beltline wonderful. Wonderful.
Is that your regular venue where you play all
the time? Yeah. So we usually have three main
stage shows, we call them, and they're always
3 p .m. on a Sunday at St. Stephen's. Great.
But you do also other projects aside from those
main stage concerts, right? Like at the end of
last year, I did a recording project with Kensington
with Dan Pelton. Oh, yeah. Daniel Pelton has
been a huge collaborator. We did our residency
at the National Music Center for Violins of Hope
where we recorded some of his works. all on violins
that had gone through the concentration camps
and were really these lifelines for the prisoners.
I think it's great that not only is Kensington
a concert series, but it's also more than that,
and is doing other things throughout the year
and throughout the community. So that concert's
coming up in February, and there's one more later
this season as well? Yeah, and that's June 1st,
and this one... um, is super exciting. We have
Mark Lamaker, who often appears as a pianist
with us at CPO. The great Mark Lamaker. The great,
the one, the only is writing a piano concerto
for Nanette and, um, a pianist named Chloe Weston
out of Toronto. His compositions are so specific.
He's never done anything that we could play.
So I cannot wait to do this. And we're also highlighting
a new commission by Roydon Tse. He has an incredible
resume. His music is so beautiful, but he's worked
with Atlanta Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, and
he agreed to write us a piece for Nanette and
then solo Chinese flute again. Somehow this is
the season of Chinese flute. And is that Jiajia
Li playing? That's the incredible Jiajia Li,
and that'll be Andrea Ancello. So. Okay. Almost
a Sinfonia concertante, I suppose. Wonderful.
That's so wonderful. So. Let's just pause for
a second and talk about Marc Lamaker. Because
if you're listening to this podcast, you've almost
certainly heard Marc Lamaker play in Calgary,
but you may not have clocked exactly what a singular
musician he is. In fact, in the episode that
aired just before this, Jeremy Bauman went a
bit off book and highlighted Marc Lamaker as
one of the people he loves to hear perform on
stage at the Calgary Philharmonic. and I think
we would almost all agree with that. Oh my god.
I love hearing him play anything. We play some
of the Fever Candlelight shows in town and for
a while we had a Fleetwood Mac that was solo
violin and piano and it was Mark and I and he
let me do the opening of Ravel's Zagon in the
wrong key going into one of the Fleetwood Mac
songs, and it was epic. It was so fun. Make it
work for you, huh? Yeah. Boy, oh boy. But Mark
is at home in every genre. Yes. He's done a lot
of recording recently, and so he's done some
musical theater stuff, some jazz stuff. I'm hoping
we can record this classical piece. I think it
would be really worthwhile. Yeah, I would love
to hear. I'm looking forward to that concert
very much. If you ever see anything, or most
likely in Calgary, but could be anywhere, anything
branded quiet, slow, boring, that's a Mark Lamaker
initiative. Yeah, we put that up on our website
and someone actually reached out to Mark and
said, they stole your branding. And he had to
be like, no, no, no, no, I'm on that concert.
Yeah, that's my project. That's so funny. That's
so funny. He won't listen to me, but I really
desperately want him to put that on baby onesies.
Well, that's very aspirational, huh? Yeah. Very
calm children. Yes, as someone who had two colicky
babies. Yeah. That's very aspirational. Jen,
you mentioned Ina Boyle, that composer who was
studying with Von Williams and sort of dropped
off the map, quote unquote, heavy scare quotes,
when she got married and you were talking about
the realities of being a musician while also
having family responsibilities. Oh yeah, I think
I really admire her because she's born in the
1880s, but she was having premieres up through
the 50s and 60s. She composed every day. She
never gave it up. She never looked the other
way. And we're just now starting to appreciate
all the work that she did and what a beautiful
and original voice it was. And I think in the
past three years, I've discovered that there's...
Every working mother knows this. There's an incredible
amount of pressure in work that goes into balancing
your family and professional life. And for me,
I think it was really eye -opening from a very
basic level. You know, we go, like we're sitting
here in your practice studio right now, you have
a mirror on the wall, right? We use mirrors and
video to see how our bodies are interacting with
our instruments to play our best. When you're
pregnant, there's nine months where your body
is changing every day. And so making music, something
that has felt so natural that you've spent, you
know, 20 plus years developing a specific way
of doing is thrown into chaos. And it's not like
that stops at nine months. No, and it doesn't
stop at nine months. And Canada is one of the
best place to have kids, right? We have 12 to
18 months of paid maternity leave. And when you're
trying to play violin... and trying to breastfeed
at the same time. You literally have a part of
your body that is changing size every couple
of hours that you're trying to adjust to. And
I made, it's a constantly moving target. And
it's, you even notice like with the sleepless
nights, I noticed that my pitch center would
drop if I had a particularly bad night. Oh, that's
interesting. Right? So you're always, I mean,
there's the obvious exhaustion. The notes on
the page won't stay still. but there are all
these things that you just take for granted that
suddenly are shifting. And I know that's, you
know, part of your role, part of your life. But
no one at music school sits you down and says,
you know, for example, if you want to take auditions,
if you're breastfeeding when you're taking auditions,
that means either the kid comes with you. or
you're pumping all the time. And if you're pumping
all the time, then that means there's extra stress
on your wrists, on your hands, the things that,
you know, most people, if they're going to take
an audition, they won't even move something that's
remotely heavy for like the two weeks before
for fear of injury. But you don't have a choice,
right? You have to be carrying this 10 to 30
pound bundle. One of the unexpected things about
being pregnant was that my babies had their own
reactions to some of the music we played. Oh,
no, everyone's a critic. I know. Well, do you
remember the Steve Jobs opera we did? I do, yes.
There was that huge drop at the very beginning
where you just heard... And it scared the baby
every time. So I would be playing. I have to
play through this big drop and I just feel this
huge kick in my stomach every time. But it's
also sweet because if there was music that the
older one really liked... I mean, I don't think
it was dancing, but he would get really active.
And it was almost like vindicate, not vindication,
but confirmation that I was listening to really
good music. It's very sweet. Yeah. Wow. Boy,
everyone has everyone has their opinions, huh?
Yeah. Everyone's a critic. There was something
called resilience training when I was in school
and they would say, set your alarm to three a
.m. Wake up, pull out your violin, play an excerpt
with no warm up and then go back to sleep. That
was David Halen. He's the concertmaster of St.
Louis Symphony. That was his advice. And I think
that's essentially what you do when you have
a very small baby if you're trying to do an audition.
So I think there's a resilience and an understanding
of musicians as a whole person that comes from
that experience. I mean, you also have two not
so small anymore children, but how did you experience
that? No, I think, of course, the experience
for a father is really different than for a mother.
especially when they're really little. There's
not really a lot that dad can do, but you play
a support role, right? Oh, yeah. And you can
run yourself ragged, making sure that everyone
is fed and watered and bathed and everyone has
everything they need and the groceries are done
and people get to their places. So I think it's
a bit different. There's also that huge burden
that we put on our spouses. You know, we're gone
so many evenings. Oh, yeah. So I just want to
shout out my husband. He does such a lovely job,
weekends too. A lot of times we work on the weekends.
And so that's something that I think a lot of
people take for granted. You know, you and I
are both in situations where we're on really
different work schedules from our spouses. Yes.
But, you know, we have we have colleagues in
the orchestra who are married to someone in the
orchestra and some of them have kids. And when
you're working exactly the same work schedule,
like that puts a whole other flavor of stress
into your life. Yeah. Especially if you don't
have family around. Yep. It's interesting. These
are things that you have to navigate that I don't
know that you can get any advice from instructors.
In school but it's something that you never think
about right you're just so focused on winning
the job you don't think about what what is your
life look like holistically yeah when when you're
taking every audition that comes up because you
want to be able to eat in four years. Like the
time horizon for figuring out the nitty gritty
of your life isn't really so far ahead that you
can plan for things like this it's almost like
your personal life is on pause yeah i can't tell
you the number of musicians especially singers
that you know they miss. their best friend's
wedding, they miss their grandpa's funeral, they
have to miss all these life events because if
they don't get that opportunity to be the lead
in an opera or whatever, you know, their career
could suffer very extremely. Yeah. If you say
no to things, you know, without the luxury of
a contract like, like we have in the CPO, you
say no to things and that phone's going to stop
ringing. Oh yeah. This is starting to sound a
lot like my therapy sessions. I'm so sorry. I
don't know. I love it. Leave it in. Oh, boy.
Well, we've been talking a lot about sort of
where things are with your projects now, but
how did you get here, Jen? What's your story?
My villain origin story begins in California.
I was lucky enough to study with a very, very
old and retired teaching aid of Galamians who
had been with him like when Pearlman began. And
Glamian being, just for the layperson, Glamian
being a very famous... Oh, sorry, Glamian, a
hugely famous violin pedagogue. His scales and
his editions are everywhere. From there, I went
to Rice University in Texas, where I studied
with Kathleen Winkler. And I loved, we got to
play operas every semester. And I loved it. It
was so much fun. But it's a very orchestral -focused
program. So if you do anything else... Even if
you were to establish like a very successful
teaching studio, it was, um, I'd say it was mocked,
honestly. Or if you wanted to do new music or
do things that were outside that groove, it just
wasn't seen as a viable career. It's sort of
an audition factory kind of program. Exactly.
And you know what? They're great at it. Their
kids win, win, win, win, win. But I ended up
going to Michigan with, uh, Yohannatan Barrick.
And that was so eye -opening for me. We had people
who were learning how to record the sounds of
ice gates on the pond outside and then turning
that into music. And every year there was a John
Cage performance with a piano that was on the
ground and it was candlelit and it was at midnight
and just all these super interesting unusual
ways of creating. music and experiences that
were so beautiful and people didn't care, they
would just do it. It wasn't about, what is your
orchestral career going to look like? Where are
you going to be? And I found that so freeing.
After that, I went to San Francisco. I studied
a bit with the principal second there, Dan Carlson,
who has the best ears I've ever encountered.
He can hear everything. And I just feel so grateful
I had that time to study with him. And after
that, New World Symphony, where a lot of our
players come from, which is Michael Tilson Thomas's
orchestral development program in Miami. They
do a lot of the things that we talk about wanting
to do. So they have classes where they teach
the musicians, how do you speak from the stage?
What are people interested in? You know, develop
a small chamber program for donors. They bring
in an incredible sports therapist. that works
with you on nerves. They bring in young musicians
from Colombia to come and work with you on an
exchange basis. It's a really incredible program.
And after being there, I ended up here. And I
think it takes a while to get out of that audition
mindset, right? It's almost like you just want
to do whatever the next audition is. whatever
the next level is, that's what you want. And
then I took a step back and I said, you know
what, Calgary is one of the first cities I genuinely
love living in outside of the musical sphere.
There's a lot of opportunity and I really love
a lot of my colleagues. Like, why am I trying
to leave? Obviously the pandemic hit and that
changed so many things. And I think one of the
big things we saw was it pushed a lot of people
out of music. a lot of really talented people
just weren't as lucky as we were to be paid through
the pandemic, and they had to find other avenues
to survive, really. And now I think we're sort
of in a flowering period post -pandemic, where
all of these pent -up hopes and dreams are coming
to fruition, and it's a really beautiful time
to be making music. Yeah, I agree. I just want
to highlight... sort of in the earlier part of
your story, you were talking about Rice being
this audition factory and then Michigan being
this sort of haven for all sorts of, you know,
hopes and dreams musically, to use your phrase,
right? Like, I think neither is more correct
or more valid than the other. Oh, and to point
out, I mean, Timothy Steeves, who's the associate
concertmaster in Vancouver. Chris Size, our new
principal percussionist and I, we all came from
that same year at Michigan. Like there are incredible
players who obviously managed to get orchestra
jobs. Like that, it wasn't a problem to go that
route. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's such
value in having contrasting pedagogical experiences,
you know, having teachers who talk about things
differently, who have radically different ideas
about what you should be doing and how you should
be doing it. I think that that is such an important
diversity of ideas in music and probably in everything
else. I mean, music is my experience. But I just
think that the perspective of being able to see
different approaches is so great and so healthy.
Oh, yeah. Well, it develops you as a player,
right? Because it's so easy. Classical music
can be very traditional. And up until the age
of, let's say, all the way through undergrad,
I knew that what I would wear on stage had to
fall within certain parameters, and this was
not, you know, this wasn't just societal pressure
or whatever. Your teacher would say, you know,
make sure you have to wear makeup, you have to
wear heels, you have to wear either black bottom
and a colorful top or a colorful gown or all
black, right? Like it's very prescripted. What
you play on your recital has to be One sonata
by a classical composer one romantic work and
the third work you know is a show piece and I
always felt like I was a rebel because I would
do a piece by a living composer and somehow those
composers always ended up being Canadian and
so I think I had this early affinity with. What
I saw is a place that was really open to new
music and supportive of it. Oh interesting Can
you just give us a quick rundown or a handful
of those pieces? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely So Francois
Dompierre has a piece called um, oh my god I'm
married to a French teacher and I can't speak
French Les Diableries and it's a little short
suite for piano and violin and it's really fun
and beautiful and then the other one was the
Varley suite, so the Is it the school of six?
The group of seven? The group of seven! I'm sorry,
I moved here seven years ago. Be nice to me.
The group of seven, and Varley was one of those
painters, and Stephen Chapman, who I think was
a teacher at UBC, wrote a piece, a solo suite
for violin, and each of the pieces reflects what
he took away from a painting. Oh, wonderful.
Yeah, it's beautiful. And there's so much new
Canadian music out there. And I think, I don't
know, I don't think that Canadians take it for
granted. I just think that it's so the norm that
they don't. realize how good it is. Yeah. Yeah.
So aside from all your Kensington Sinfonia concerts
coming up, is there anything coming up at the
CPO that you're particularly excited about playing?
Oh, I'm thrilled for controlled burn. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So that's we're working with composer Chris
Dirksen. Kensington Sinfonia has played her piece
White Man's Cattle a couple of times, and it's
always so fun. I mean, I know that sounds terrible
for a piece, which is about. Whiteman's cattle
coming and inhabiting quote unquote virgin lands.
But it's really moving and also really fun to
play. I think we did it on the Indigidivas concert
a couple of years back, but we're playing a new
piece by Chris. I love everything Chris Dirksen
does. Awesome. This particular piece is about
fire as a cleansing ritual through the forests
of Canada and how pre -contact civilizations.
would do these controlled burns through the forest
to keep the big trees healthy and to weed out
some of the undergrowth. And if you've ever read
Charles Mann's 1491, 1491, I got the year. There's
a 1491, a 1492, and a 1493. Right. So which one
is it where he talks about the... temperature
of the earth and the european little ice age
may have resulted from the lack of controlled
burns i think that that's 1491 we're way off
piste yeah no no this is great i think because
he's talking about pre -contact yeah pre -contact
how there was fire season every year in the americas
and how how important that was as a ritual for
the health of this entire continent so i can't
wait to hear an orchestral interpretation of
that Yeah. Forest fires, wildfires, of course,
something that's on all of our minds a lot these
days and every year. Oh, yeah. Well, in my home
state, right, the Palisades just burnt to the
ground. And in California, fire has always been
a problem. I can remember driving by the big
San Diego fire when I was in high school. They
would do controlled burns. right outside my school,
actually. And those, they were kind of beautiful
days because everything turned so bright orange.
But I think everyone has experienced so many
summers like that now that we don't want to see
any more of it. Do you want to hear about the
goats they use instead? Yes. Oh, yes. Tell me
about the goats. So my high school was next to
a bunch of land that had been used for ordinance
training by the U .S. military. And so every
couple of years they would do controlled burns
to try to rid of any ordinance that might be
left behind. Sounds very safe. Right. So they
eventually found a safer way, which was to hire
a pack of goats to eat grass, to keep the grass
short so that there would be no wildfires, but
also to possibly trip any ordinance that required
weight. I was going to say, what does danger
pay look like for a goat? You know what? I don't
know. I don't have any stories of firsthand watching
goat explosions, but, um, you know, ingenuity
at its finest. Yeah, really. Oh, boy. Well, Jen,
you've been at the CPO for how long now? Lucky
number seven. Lucky numbers. Is it only seven
years? 2017. Wow. It feels like I've known you
for much longer than that, but I guess not. It's
the greatest compliment you can pay me or I'm
very boring. Well, in your time here, I want
to know. Who are the people on stage who you
love listening to? Who inspires you at work?
Ooh, that's hard. I mean, OK, the sounds. This
sounds like a gimme. But you know, there are
certain people in the orchestra that when a solo
comes up, you just I don't want to say you physically
relax, but you're like, oh, yeah, whatever is
going to happen is about to be special. Oh, thanks,
Jen. The people I love hearing anything Chris
size plays, obviously. I've said that a bunch.
Sorry, Chris. I'm fangirling. I love Antoine.
I love our new principal bassoon. He's awesome.
And when he played that concerto with us last
year. And the vapor. Oh, my God. I've never heard
so much personality and charm come out of a bassoon.
Charm's the word. I remember that performance.
It was so refined, so classy. It was. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. It was beautiful. And the bassoonist that
we had before Antoine, Chris Sayles. Yeah, he's
now principal bassoon in Cincinnati. Oh, yeah.
And every time he would play, it was the same
feeling. Like you didn't know what was going
to happen, but whatever happened, you were going
to enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. It's so wonderful. It's
so wonderful to have that spontaneity on stage.
I think I just have to say, like almost all of
my colleagues, you know, I love section players.
We don't really get to hear each other that much,
but I always feel like when I spend a week sitting
next to like Hojin Yu, I feel like my playing
becomes more refined. When I spend a week next
to Eric Auerbach, I feel like I'm hearing new
things across the orchestra. He's like this consummate
chamber player. It's just such a blessing. Sounds
so dumb. But like truly I feel like I have a
wealth of colleagues who have these incredible
skills and I get to go to work with 65 of my
best friends, as I say. Yeah. Awesome. Well,
Jen, thank you so much. I always love chatting
with you. It's fun to do it in front of microphones
for once. Was it? No, thank you so much, Adam.
I love this podcast and I'm so honored to be
on it. Thank you. Oh, a pleasure. Thanks, Jen.
Notes from the Stage is an independent production
of the Calgary Philharmonic Players Association.
The opinions expressed here are our own and do
not reflect those of the Calgary Philharmonic
Orchestra. Our thanks to Nathan Chandler for
his technical expertise. The music you heard
on this episode was Saturn, Still Returning,
by Brockson, performed by Kensington Sinfonia,
led by Jen Micheletti, and soloist Chris Sighs,
who's also the principal percussionist of the
Calgary Philharmonic. On our next episode in
two weeks, I'll be talking with violist and composer
Arthur Bachman. Talk to you soon! Jen I almost
forgot tell us about candy club. I love candy
club So we decided at some point that if we had
nothing to talk about but work We would die as
a section So we started each kind of taking turns
bringing in weird candies from our travels and
trying them and then rating them in a spreadsheet
and Then management heard about that. So they
asked me to do it with James Ennis, which was
Um, you know, an incredible way to interact with
a childhood hero in a way that has nothing to
do with anything. It was cool to see the little
snippets on social media, but then the whole
long form video dropped. Holy moly. He was great.
He stayed after and tried even more of the candies
because I had, you know, my candy lineup that
was matched with questions. But then I had some
like wild cards in case he was like, well, you
know, actually I don't want to put that in my
mouth at all. You know, just what a genuinely
nice guy, but, um. One lesson I think I keep
learning over and over in my career is that if
you try to separate you as a professional from
you as a person and keep that a hard divide,
you're actually taking away from both of those
spheres in your life. And I thought that was
the candy club was a great reminder that, you
know, we're all people and yes, there are some
things professionally that we wouldn't necessarily
do personally and vice versa. but at that intersection
is a really beautiful place that we should feel
free to explore.