Before I can talk about "How I started", I have to speak of how I almost
started or should have started but didn't.

I grew up in a working class home with a lot of exposure to union
politics but not much exposure to classical music, although more than some
of my peers.  My father had the Irish love of a good voice, could play the
fiddle, and I had an aunt from Holland who, lacking children of her own,
tried to expose me to "culture".  I also sang in a very good children's
choir and my voice netted me a scholarship to study voice at the local
conservatory.  At about the same time, the school music teacher, noting my
ability to sight read (from the choir work) sent me off to be tested by the
school board in hopes that I might get a scholarship to study an instrument
(we had no instrumental music program in the school).  I was very scared,
I was the youngest kid there for the testing, the tester terrified me and
I didn't understand the instructions half the time.  Verdict: "This child
is tone-deaf".  This idiotic verdict (in the face of much evidence to the
contrary) closed all doors for me at the time.  The expert had spoken.  Too
bad.  I believed it myself, as surely as I believed my eyes were blue.  I
was gently but firmly directed into other pursuits by the adults in my
life.  No music lessons for me.

In high school my interest in classical music was kept alive by a German
teacher who played oboe in the local orchestra and loaned me records.
Mostly my interest in folk music led me to the origins of folk.  I loved
madrigals and my first non-popular music purchase was Jannequin.

In university I was a drama student.  As such I crewed for the local
symphony who shared our theatre space.  I loved those services and was
always the first to sign up.  Also there was a need to provide incidental
music for some of our plays during set changes and so on.  Someone taught
me to play alto recorder and I was one of a bunch who could be pressed into
service as benches and trees were moved about.

But although this scant watering kept classical music alive in my life
through my teens and twenties with a spotty interest in classical music
and a small collection of recordings growing, THE MOMENT arrived only
when I became a violin mom.  My eldest son was enrolled in a program that
required moms and/or dads to learn with their very young children.  So
there playing "Twinkle, twinkle" the revelation came.  The teacher said,
"My you have a VERY good ear.  Did you play violin?" I was thunderstruck
and from somewhere deep inside the tears started to flow.  I realized in
that moment that I wasn't tone deaf, that any sane individual could never
have come to that conclusion but that I had shut myself off from the world
that really was my first love and interest for years because I believed
myself to be severely limited.

Nothing dramatic happened right then, but my interest in classical music
grew with three children who became competent musicians and I got involved
up to my eyebrows in arts activism.  Somewhere along the line I sort of
was involved in founding a community non-profit music school and one
time rounded out a mixed age string class.  I played the 'cello.  I
was thirty-one years old.  I fell in love with the 'cello.

It stuck.  I had to have a cello even if I only played cello in my living
room.  I took lessons and practiced like a maniac.  I wasn't disciplined,
I was obsessed.  I became a competent amateur and lucked into the best
of teachers.  Only as I tackled the basics and then began to play in an
amateur orchestra did I begin to want to really learn about classical music
in a more formal and organized way.  I also had a gut level appreciation
for how hard this stuff is and as an audience member I have the same sort
of appreciation for the orchestra as the sports fan who played amateur
sports does.

Serendipity, the alignment of the planets, or something, led me to
take a sharp career turn from my work (in the area of public relations &
administration in non-profits and politics), into working for the Buffalo
Philharmonic Orchestra as Administrative Assistant to the General Manager.
I draw up contracts and my life is. . . schedules. . . schedules . . .
and more schedules.  I absolutely love being a small cog in the wheel that
keeps things going.  My only complaint is . . . no time to play 'cello!
So that's how I got started.

We should put together a book of this thread.

"Linda Rogers" <[log in to unmask]>