A weekly inside look at the unique faces and personalities that make up The College of Wooster community.
Sally Kershner
Features Editor
What did your path to your job at Wooster look like?
My professional career started off as a public school music teacher. I taught primarily middle school and high school and then decided that I wanted to go back for graduate level conducting. I ended up deciding to do a doctorate in conducting and then came straight from that to Wooster. I had done some adjunct teaching prior to that at the university level, but this was my first full-time college position.
You’ve taught a variety of age groups. How do you adjust your teaching style to those different age groups and what do you keep the same?
Actually, a lot of it is the same, which is surprising. I don’t think people are surprised when they see me work with older students, but they are surprised when they see me work with seventh graders, and a lot of my approach is really still the same. Obviously, some of the concepts need more explaining, and they’re obviously not as experienced in music, but the general teaching style actually stays pretty consistent.
How do you balance your work with Wooster and the Cleveland Orchestra? How do those two jobs inform each other?
The balance is tough, because I’m constantly learning new music and preparing for rehearsals, and they’re rehearsals in a completely different style. For example, Wooster does a lot of a cappella music, a lot of shorter works, and Cleveland does, of course, big symphonic repertoire. It’s a lot of preparation, and I’ve had to be even more careful this year just carefully organizing myself so I can keep myself from going crazy, so I can keep everything manageable and keep the schedule manageable.
I would say the two jobs really inform one another in a really profound way. My work with Cleveland — I mean, the musicians are at just such an incredibly high level, and I feel like I learn just so much from being in that environment on a regular basis. It makes me have an even higher standard which I, of course, then bring here. But what I take from Wooster is that there is this very special feeling of community and I would say the environment here is almost more — I don’t know if nurturing is the right word, but certainly a feeling of community that I now want to take everywhere. I certainly take that there.
In the Cleveland Orchestra, do you feel that your role is one of a teacher, or is it less so since you learn a lot from them?
Part of it is. Certainly in working with the orchestra chorus, since they’re all volunteers. So although there are some people in there who might be a high school director or elementary music teacher, most of the people have jobs that are not in music. So there is a pretty big element of teaching that goes into that. When I’m with the instrumentalists from the orchestra, there’s no teaching required whatsoever.
You’ve said that you need to balance your personal life as well, so how do you spend your free time?
I try to make time for myself every day because if I don’t, then I feel like I could just be consumed by work. I think I learned at a younger age that that’s just really unhealthy for me. Especially being in music, you’ve always got rehearsals and you’ve always got something else that needs to be done.
I try to make time for myself every morning, so I’ll wake up at least a couple of hours before I need to be somewhere — it sounds funny, but I’ll wake up and then relax. I’ll have coffee, and read the newspaper and just try to ease into the day that way, rather than hitting the ground running. I really like to read, I like to keep up with current events, whether it’s current musical events or political events, just what’s going on in the world. I have cats, so I like to relax with them.
Do you go to concerts that aren’t classical music concerts? Do you listen to other types of music as well?
I would say probably almost everything I see is classical now. I’m going actually maybe next weekend… there’s a group called Roomful of Teeth, I guess you would probably put them in the classical category, but they also do really modern, contemporary vocal literature with extended vocal techniques. I’m going to see them, and I go to see groups like that, but I’d say it’s mostly classical now.