Many Opera musicians pursue other work to supplement their opera income to make a complete living in music. It takes some creativity and planning to accomplish this. Quite a few musicians in Arizona Opera are freelancers, educators and university professors.
They view the Opera like a "home base" and the outside work infuses their opera performances with additional flair and expertise.
Pushing the envelope
Timpanist Neil Dunn is Dance Production Coordinator and instructor at Kansas State University. In addition to overseeing aspects of production, concert promotion, and community outreach, Neil teaches Rhythmic Notation, Composition for Dancers, Dance as an Art Form, provides musical accompaniment for dance technique classes, and does lighting design for mainstage dance concerts.
Neil took up percussion as a teenager with the purchase of his first drumset and has been involved with dance since he was introduced to dance accompanying in college. It has been a big part of his career ever since. After moving to Tucson, Neil worked as a dance accompanist for the University of Arizona, School of Dance.
Neil is credited with many original compositions for dance and has performed at festivals and has collaborated with choreographers in creating new works.
Chamber music
String players Cynthia Baker and Katherine Black Shields perform together in Quartet Sabaku.
The quartet has performed across Arizona for the last ten years and they have been on the Artists Roster of the Arizona Commission of the Arts.
Cynthia also performs in an early music ensemble, Musica Dolce. They specialize in music from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras. In this ensemble she performs on a variety of instruments including Baroque violin, harp, krummhorn, treble viol and even percussion.
Musica Dolce performed at a recent Arizona Opera fund raiser, the Annual Opera Ball.
Arts leadership
Bassoonist Jill Marderness is a founding member of Quintessence Chamber Ensemble, recognized for its long and distinguished history. She also performs with Enchante Music.
She has been selected for panels addressing “The Performer as Educator” at the Chamber Music America (CMA) National Conference, the Music Educators National Conference, and the CMA Institute of the 2002 Western Alliance of Arts Administrators Conference.
As a promoter of the arts in the community, Jill has also served as President for Valley Chamber Musicians, a consortium of nine professional chamber music ensembles in the Phoenix area, and as Director of Central Community School for the Arts in Phoenix. In the summers she teaches at the Bay View Music Festival, where she has been a faculty artist since 1979. She is very active in community outreach for Bay View and teaches several classes including "Thriving in the Arts."
Her husband Fred is a percussionist with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and also attends the Bay View Festival.
Active freelancer/dutiful Committee Chair
Native Arizonan Nathan Mitchell is a very active horn player who performs regularly with the Phoenix Symphony, Tucson Symphony and New Mexico Symphony. He also is in high demand for Broadway productions such as The Lion King and Wicked at ASU's Gammage Auditorium and other venues across Phoenix. He will spend a month on the road this year playing horn with the national touring company of Camelot, starring Lou Diamond Phillips. He is a founding member of a professional brass quintet based in Phoenix, the Sonoran Brass Quintet, which performs weddings, religious services, and corporate functions as well as recitals, concert series and clinics in local public schools around Arizona.
Since 1997 he has spent each summer serving as Principal Horn and Faculty Brass Coordinator of the AIMS Festival Orchestra in Graz, Austria.
Nathan is also the chair of our Negotiating Committee, which is very busy right now working on getting our Collective Bargaining Agreement issues resolved. Nathan and the Negotiating Committee have been active since March 2007 attempting to reach an agreement with Arizona Opera management on a new contract for the orchestra. The previous contract expired in June 2007.
Show and tell
Musicians from the Arizona Opera Orchestra are a diverse community of highly trained music professionals. They frequently present concerts throughout the United States in addition to their performance activities with the opera.
While AZOOMA musicians may call Arizona Opera "home," many of them pursue other interests to make a living. As a result, AZOOMA musicians are professional experts and community leaders with years of training and experience - and it shows!
Violist Katie Shields has submitted a tongue-in-cheek article on the trials and tribulations of being an opera string player.
Continue reading "How To Be An Opera String Player"
