I am excited to welcome as a guest blogger, Alecia Lawyer. She is the founder, Executive Director and Principal Oboe of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra in Houston and in my view a true pioneer, someone who’s mission is the Audience Connection. I wrote about ROCO in March and after doing so Alecia and I talked on the phone. Now she is here and has written a truly wonderful post…enjoy!
YES! People Business!
Improbably beginning my academic career as a Physics major, I have careened through twists and turns graduating from Juilliard with my Masters in oboe, living in Europe and now founding a new professional 40 member orchestra in Houston, TX. Life, to me, is about relationships with people, interest in their lives and care for their futures. Until my formation of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO), I was never able to reconcile this with performing a musical instrument. When I graduated from Juilliard, I followed the traditional route of auditioning for the ever-elusive orchestral position. Orchestral jobs are lifetime-tenured so in one year there may be only three openings in the entire US for an oboe player. Dissatisfied with waiting around for someone to retire, I constantly sought out opportunities in the music field from salon concerts and recordings in France and DJ-ing for a classical station in Houston, to a professorship at the University of Houston and involvement with three other start-up groups that formed and then languished. When the pieces of my mosaic past fell together three years ago, I founded ROCO to personalize the orchestral experience. We invite the audience into our world as musicians through interactive and innovative ways that do not change the beauty and powerful impact that is our language of classical music. I now have the emboldened personal mission of engendering respect for the individual contribution of each musician to the music, performance and community in which we live.
I have never been able to say “I love music.” This proclamation has always felt odd and disingenuous to me. Throughout my training to become a professional musician, I have never owned up to this thought, feeling a bit guilty about it and not able to explain my emotions. However, now I think I can finally give voice to what bothers me about it. Talking about Music as an entity and personifying it actually takes the person, the people, out of the music: the person that created it, the person that recreates it in performance and the person that hears it. Music is a language between these three people or groups of people forming a wonderful love triangle of sorts. I now know, through this ROCO experiment, that a concert should be approached by the musician and the audience as a blind date with the composer as the matchmaker. If the people on either side of the “fourth wall” (the invisible barrier between audience and stage) look at a performance as a discovery of each other, then there are no limits to the ties that can bind an arts group like ROCO to our Houston community. Instead of “I love music,” I can now say “I love performing for the audience member of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra with the musicians of ROCO!”
Dear Alecia, I’ve read your story. Having manifested a number of
ideas into successful realization I so admire people like you who have done the same thing. For some reason unknown to me I receive e-mails from your enterprise. Usually I delete such things as junk mail but this time I am glad I didn’t.
As a visual and performing artist myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as yourself and me actually can succeed. I give you a standing ovation. I will attend the Bayou
Bend production this Sunday and perhaps cross paths with you.
If not, perhaps some other time.
Bravo,
Danny Kamin
Dear Alecia, I’ve read your story. Having manifested a number of
ideas into successful realization I so admire people like you who have done the same thing. For some reason unknown to me I receive e-mails from your enterprise. Usually I delete such things as junk mail but this time I am glad I didn’t.
As a visual and performing artist myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as yourself and me actually can succeed. I give you a standing ovation. I will attend the Bayou
Bend production this Sunday and perhaps cross paths with you.
If not, perhaps some other time.
Bravo,
Danny Kamin
Dear Alecia, I’ve read your story. Having manifested a number of
ideas into successful realization I so admire people like you who have done the same thing. For some reason unknown to me I receive e-mails from your enterprise. Usually I delete such things as junk mail but this time I am glad I didn’t.
As a visual and performing artist myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as yourself and me actually can succeed. I give you a standing ovation. I will attend the Bayou
Bend production this Sunday and perhaps cross paths with you.
If not, perhaps some other time.
Bravo,
Danny Kamin
Dear Alecia, I’ve read your story. Having manifested a number of
ideas into successful realization I so admire people like you who have done the same thing. For some reason unknown to me I receive e-mails from your enterprise. Usually I delete such things as junk mail but this time I am glad I didn’t.
As a visual and performing artist myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as yourself and me actually can succeed. I give you a standing ovation. I will attend the Bayou
Bend production this Sunday and perhaps cross paths with you.
If not, perhaps some other time.
Bravo,
Danny Kamin
As a visual and performing artist myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as yourself and me actually can succeed. I give you a standing ovation. I will attend the Bayou
myself I have come to the conclusion that it is a curse to be born an artist and a struggle to overcome. But it appears from what you’ve written that with sheer will and relentless effort an artist such as