The first concert of the Juneau Symphony\u2019s season will also be its first with Jacqueline Brand, a violinist and associate concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Here in Juneau, she replaces former concertmaster Lisa Ibias.<\/p>\n
As concertmaster, she will be the lead musician for the orchestra. Music director and conductor Troy Quinn compared the position to that of a U.N. diplomat between him and the rest of the orchestra. Brand interacts with the leads (principals) of other sections, like brass or percussion, as well as directing her own. With her in the first violin section of the orchestra are Kathy Maas, Heather Parker, and Huo Gua Xia. This will be their first concert together.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese folks see the most notes, the most rhythms (out of all the sections),\u201d Quinn said. \u201cIt really is the melody of the orchestra, so technically, first violins have to be very proficient. A lot of time, the orchestra is looking to that section and the concertmaster for the leadership of where the music is going. It talks the most in the orchestra \u2026. There\u2019s not much down time when you\u2019re playing first violin. You\u2019re in the action\u2026 all the time. So it takes a tremendous amount of skill and focus to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new concertmaster <\/strong><\/p>\n Brand has been playing the violin for over 50 years, first picking it up when she was three and half.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother really wanted me to be a violinist, a musician artist. She wanted to be an artist but she didn\u2019t get a lot of help from her mom, so she was like \u2018my daughters will do this.\u2019 My older sister did play the violin, apparently said I was always begging to play, so she put a violin in my hand,\u201d Brand said.<\/p>\n She has had an active career. She studied under the famous Russian violinist Jascha Heifetz at age 12, taking Heifetz Master Classes for four years. She also studied under Eudice Shapiro, a well-known violinist and recording artist, and Ruggiero Ricci, an American violinist known for his performances and recordings of the works of Niccol\u00f2 Paganini. She received the Young Musicians Foundation Awards, came in first place at the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, has been honored at numerous national competitions, and has participated in many symphonies and festivals.<\/p>\n Brand has also had the opportunity to work on motion picture soundtracks like \u201cWar of the Worlds,\u201d \u201cAvatar,\u201d and \u201cRogue One,\u201d and with recording artists like Michael Bubl\u00e9, <\/em>Justin Timberlake, and Tim McGraw. It\u2019s an exciting experience to record, though different to be in a controlled environment instead of performing live where there\u2019s a give and take with the audience, she said.<\/p>\n For her, music is an act of joy. <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBring love to what you do and make sure you\u2019re really enjoying it and having fun with it,\u201d was her advice to younger musicians. \u201cDon\u2019t take it too seriously, because it\u2019s supposed to be about giving. The people I know who didn\u2019t get beat up really hard when they were young seemed to have an easier time performing \u2014 and the love of it. Make sure from the beginning that you have that love of music.\u201d<\/p>\n She compared being a professional musician to being an athlete; both require dexterity and regular practice.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t practice for a while you feel it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t pick it up after a month and say \u2018Oh yeah,\u2019 it\u2019s more \u2018Oh dear.\u2019 I\u2019ve played for over 50 years, but if I don\u2019t practice, if I miss two or three days, everybody knows. It\u2019s a relentless thing, but when it\u2019s all happening, there\u2019s nothing like making music with everybody. I remember playing in Carnegie Hall with the (Los Angeles) Chamber Orchestra and it felt like the World Series. Everyone in their section is on their bases, everybody mattered and everybody counts.\u201d<\/p>\n She is excited to play in Juneau for the 2017-18 season as concertmaster, even if it rains, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fun for me to have a completely different change of pace and to make music with people who enjoy it and love it. In LA it can be a little more intense and not about the joy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Longtime Juneau violinist <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI think one of the things that is really special about coming together in a symphony is that you\u2019re just one little piece but you\u2019re in this big, whole picture and it\u2019s such a neat feeling that you fit. It\u2019s glorious. It\u2019s just really cool,\u201d said longtime member of the Juneau Symphony Kathy Maas.<\/p>\n Maas has played more than 100 concerts with the symphony over the course of 45 years. Like Brand, it was her mother who introduced her to the violin.<\/p>\n \u201cI had two sisters, and my mother was a violinist, and so she decided we just had to have a string quartet in the house,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n String quartet music, especially Beethoven\u2019s, has remained a favorite to play. Regardless of what it was, she said she came to appreciate every piece she learned with the symphony.<\/p>\n Her advice for young musicians is to start out practicing correctly.<\/p>\n \u201cI spent a lot of years practicing incorrectly, and it\u2019s only been in the last few years really that I tried to turn that around. Now I\u2019m trying to undo 60 years of playing that wasn\u2019t done right. I think it\u2019s really important for me that I pass on to someone that they need to practice correctly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Fiddle me this <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI really appreciate the opportunity to be here in Juneau and be in this high caliber orchestra in a small town of 32,000 people,\u201d said Heather Parker, who has played with the Symphony since 2009.<\/p>\n Parker has been playing for 21 years, starting at age nine. In the beginning, she fiddled (a fiddle is a violin, just played in a different style), something she describes as \u201cfreer.\u201d A fiddle is often played by ear, and that skill has helped Parker in the first violin section.<\/p>\n Music, she said, brings people together.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the special things about live performances is that you have this whole community built of both people here and from other places that are all on the stage at the same time with the same goal, and you also have this audience that is there for that experience that will never be recreated in exactly the same way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Violinist and teacher <\/strong><\/p>\n Fellow first violinist Xia is busy in the Juneau music scene. He has played with the symphony since 1995. He teaches in Juneau through the Suzuki method, a music curriculum and teaching philosophy created by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki. He\u2019s also active with the Juneau Alaska Music Matters (JAMM) program in the Juneau School District. In 2016, he became the director of the Juneau Student Symphony, which is sponsored by the Juneau Symphony, an orchestra made up primarily of youth.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026the Juneau Symphony saw a need last year to help youth graduating from the JAMM program bridge the gap between the JAMM program and playing in a full orchestra setting of the Student Symphony,\u201d said Juneau Symphony president Sarah McNair-Grove. \u201cWe sponsor what we call the \u2018Small Ensemble\u2019 for this purpose and Xia is also the director of this group.\u201d<\/p>\n The concert <\/strong><\/p>\n The first concert of the season will be Saturday, Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 22 at 3 p.m. the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium and will feature three different pieces.<\/p>\n First is \u201cFinlandia\u201d by Jean Sibelius, which pairs with the Juneau Public Libraries\u2019 Big Read event of \u201cStation Eleven\u201d by Emily St. John Mandel, Quinn said. The library is giving away free copies of the book and inspiring community discussions and events around its themes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe picked a piece that would be inspiring and sort of go with their theme, and really talking about communities overcoming hardship. \u2026(\u2018Finlandia\u2019 has) sort of become the Finnish National Anthem. There\u2019s a middle section of this piece that has a hymn tune that\u2019s very famous so it\u2019s been played a lot not only at funerals but at national gatherings in Finland, so we\u2019re bringing a little Nordic to Juneau for October,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The second piece will be \u201cThe Lark Ascending\u201d by Ralph Vaughan Williams, \u201ca beautiful serene piece in which the violin echoes the bird \u2026 it\u2019s a beautiful pastoral showpiece for the violin and for chamber orchestra,\u201d Quinn said.<\/p>\n The final piece is Johannes Brahm\u2019s \u201cSymphony No. 3 in F Major,\u201d which has never been played in Juneau before, Quinn said.<\/p>\n Tickets can be purchased through the Juneau Symphony, Hearthside Books, and the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. For more information on future concerts, go to juneausymphony.org.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re lucky to be in a community that really appreciates the arts,\u201d Parker said. \u201cThe fact that the Juneau Symphony has been around for 55 years is great. We have a pretty musically diverse community and I think that\u2019s a really special thing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022 Clara Miller is the Capital City Weekly\u2019s staff writer. She can be reached at clara.miller@capweek.com.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first concert of the Juneau Symphony\u2019s season will also be its first with Jacqueline Brand, a violinist and associate concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Here in Juneau, she replaces former concertmaster Lisa Ibias. As concertmaster, she will be the lead musician for the orchestra. Music director and conductor Troy Quinn compared the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":9120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9119"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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