Once you’ve settled your kids in the children’s section at the Crozet Library, park yourself a few feet away in one of the rocking chairs with a view. You know the ones (and if you don’t, hotfoot it over there ASAP): beautiful, comfy wooden wonders that face a wall of windows and mountain scenery in all its seasonal glory. Relax and say ahhh.
What if you took the VIP experience of a music festival and turned it into the entire event? That’s the question Festy founder Michael Allenby asked himself last fall, when circumstances made hosting even a small-scale outdoor festival seem impossible.
Fortunately, the word “impossible” isn’t part of Allenby’s vocabulary. Which is why he relocated the Festy from Nelson County to Earlysville, and the grounds-with-a-view at Chisholm Vineyards. He announced that concertgoers could buy tickets in pods of two to six for any of 14 live music shows, and experience them from private boxes, roped off and six feet apart. Contactless food and drink orders were available, as were fancy restroom trailers instead of cramped port-a-potties.
The response? “It was AWESOME!” said one attendee on Instagram. “Very luxurious. Food/drinks were delivered to us super fast, and we could sing our hearts out without disturbing anyone else.”
The entire endeavor was such a smash that not only did it return to Chisholm Vineyards in the spring, but Allenby expanded the Festy to Charleston, South Carolina, and Asheville, North Carolina, scheduling a total of 150 shows running through November. (This season’s crowdsourced local lineup has included Eddie From Ohio, Rising Appalachia, and Aoife O’Donovan.)
“There is no better time to innovate in the live music business than right now,” Allenby says. “I have always fantasized about starting from scratch.”
When Laura Mulligan Thomas arrived at Charlottesville High School in 1982, she had her work cut out for her. The recent James Madison University grad and newly hired orchestra director was greeted by just eight young musicians. “We had a serious identity problem,” Mulligan Thomas recalled during a TEDx talk she gave a few years ago. “Most people didn’t even know that we had an orchestra at the high school. So we set out to change that.”
Nearly four decades later, her award-winning group has 100 members, and its alumni teach music and perform in symphonies and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. Others have played in pop, rock, and country bands, including for the likes of Taylor Swift, Dave Matthews, and Michael Bublé, to name just a few.
Ask about the secrets to her success, and Mulligan Thomas laughs. Then, after a slight pause, she says she loves teenagers. “When guided and inspired, they are capable of amazing feats of artistry. And I’m so grateful that I get to spend this important, informative time in their lives with them.”
All of her classes are her favorites, she says, adding that she keeps in touch with many former students. (She’s particularly close to one of them—Emily Thomas Waters, her daughter and the orchestra director at Walker Upper Elementary.)
“I have these really rich experiences with these humans, and every four years there is a new crop, but only 25 percent of them turn over, so I get to keep 75 percent of my kids every year,” Mulligan Thomas says with obvious delight.
And while those kids were with her, they earned awards in music festivals all over the country, as well as in England, Austria, Italy, France, Ireland, and the Caribbean. Large trophies line shelves in the CHS orchestra room, but more important than all that hardware is the sense of community Mulligan Thomas has created. Her students “work together, alongside one another; they give and take and respect each other’s opinions,” she says. “They’re contributing and productive and supported and part of something that is really special.”
She likens it to being on a winning team, and calls herself the coach and cheerleader. She says she has high standards, but she also lets everyone know that mistakes are part of the process: “You have to take risks to grow.” Her teenage musicians do their best work when they’re told what they’re doing right, because “getting picked apart is not healthy,” she says.
Another thing that’s not healthy is the forced isolation brought on by a pandemic. When COVID-19 hit and in-person classes were put on hold last year, Mulligan Thomas knew it was “really important to keep everyone’s spirits up.” Even on the grayest winter days, she wanted remote classes to be “fun and positive,” and she invited several guest artists, “alumni who were doing amazing things,” to join the Zoom sessions. (When the orchestra was finally all together for an in-person May concert on the Charlottesville High School football field, they wore T-shirts that said, “We survived Zoom rehearsals.”)
Mulligan Thomas, who plays cello and piano, says she’s always working on a new, interesting project or two (she and her daughter played with indie-rock band Bright Eyes at the Ting Pavilion in August, and she’s looking forward to a return visit to CHS from West African drummer Massamba Diop later this year), but it’s the orchestra that remains the most interesting thing of all. Thirty-nine years in, she says, and “I still love it.”
Ralph Sampson, Dawn Staley. Malcolm Brogdon, Tiki Barber. Leah Smith. It’s no secret that many storied athletes have graduated from the University of Virginia. What may not be as well-known, though, is that athletes (of both the varsity and casual variety) don’t spend all their time at venues like Scott Stadium, the John Paul Jones Arena or Davenport Field. There are plenty of lower-profile outdoor spots on Grounds where anyone can enjoy a game of pickup soccer, basketball, football or softball—and who knows Hoo you might run into.
Now that they’ve had some time to recover from the premature and disappointing end to their 2017-18 basketball season, Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome or Isaiah Wilkins might be up for joining you in a game of H-O-R-S-E on one of the Dell basketball courts, located near Ruffner Hall on Emmet Street.
It was recently announced that two-time Super Bowl champ and UVA alum Chris Long is the featured speaker for this year’s Valedictory Exercises. But before he takes the stage on May 18, maybe you’ll find him tossing the pigskin around at Carr’s Hill Field, three acres of artificial turf on University Avenue.
Washington Nationals first-baseman and former Virginia baseball standout Ryan Zimmerman won’t have much time to spare now that the Major League season has begun, but who’s to say he wouldn’t be up for a little batting practice at Copeley Field on Massie Road (across from the North Grounds Recreation Center) if he’s on Grounds come fall?
Sure, Danielle Collins recently defeated five-time Wimbledon winner Venus Williams at the Miami Open, but if the one-time Wahoo and two-time NCAA national singles champ has a break between WTA events, she might swing by her former home courts at the corner of Emmet Street and University Avenue and give you a few pointers on your backhand.
The next time Olympian, FIFA World Cup champion and two-time Hermann Trophy winner Morgan Brian is in town, the UVA First-Team All-American probably wouldn’t be opposed to joining a game of pickup soccer at Mad Bowl, the three-acre natural grass field behind Madison Hall that was one of the university’s original playing fields.
The photographer Robert Llewellyn looks at things differently than you and I. While we might point out the colorful crocuses that dot the snow-covered front lawn of his Earlysville home, Llewellyn really sees them. And he wants to be certain a visitor does too, bending down to point out the particulars of yellow stamens and purple petals.
There’s something professorial about the 72-year-old, who’s made it his business to photograph the minutest details of flowers, seeds, trees and forests, among the myriad other subjects he’s carefully examined over the course of 35 books.
“We’re only here to visit the trees,” Llewellyn says as he moves from one room to another in his airy home studio. “They were here way before humans; they’re hosting us.” He places what appears to be an ordinary piece of bark on a table below a large window lined with crystals of different sizes and shapes that he’s currently using in conjunction with circuit boards to create images of cities. When he turns the wood over, it becomes something else entirely: a foreign land covered with a maze of tiny trenches that bark beetles dug as they laid their eggs. When the eggs hatched, Llewellyn explains, the beetles burrowed out.
“Notice how none of them cross,” he says, clearly in awe of the trench trails, and then he points out the small holes in the wood through which the insects eventually surfaced.
Llewellyn pauses at the thought of this, and then asks, “What would you see if you were looking at the world for the very first time? What would you smell? What would you hear?”
He says everyone should collect something because doing so compels us to “really see the world,” to develop the skill of observation (“you see the things you choose to collect everywhere”) and changes how we view the planet. Anything Llewellyn himself sees is fodder for his work (he laughs at the memory of nearly being run over in a downtown Charlottesville crosswalk, where he’d lingered too long to photograph cracks and circles on the pavement). And although he dislikes using the word “work” to describe how he’s made his living for nearly 50 years, the teacher in him can’t help tossing out a quote by Michelangelo: “If people know how hard I work to create my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”
But as numerous critics have pointed out, Llewellyn’s photography is wonderful, such as the large image of a snapper’s eye, just one of the photographs in his studio that demand a closer look. When asked about it, Llewellyn admits that his wife, Bobbi (a psychotherapist), bought the fish at Whole Foods (“It cost about $30,” he says, still somewhat outraged), and brought it home one evening for dinner—eyes, scales and all. Before cooking the snapper (“Martha Stewart says you’re supposed to leave the scales on” when you prepare it, he reports), Llewellyn shot the photo, which hangs near a large table covered with small skeletons, bones and skulls.
When you look around Llewellyn’s vast studio—at the carefully organized and displayed raw materials from past projects and those currently in the works; the precise, stunning photographs; three enormous computer monitors; large light tables; a Wimshurst electrostatic generator that he enjoys demonstrating—it’s all a bit overwhelming. But to Llewellyn, who’s about a year into a project that looks at our planet, something he calls the Orb Project (“since we live on one floating in vast space, spinning 17,000 miles per hour”), it’s home; the place where many of the “things that have called out to me” over the years are always within reach.
“Being a photographer is quite simple,” says Robert Llewellyn. “You start with a frame. You then must decide what to put in the frame and what to leave out. You also must decide where to put things in the frame. Things at the edge create tension. Things in the middle create calm.” Llewellyn offers the following advice to photographers who want to expertly frame what nature has to offer.
The best time to photograph outdoors: “You can make a photograph no matter the time of day or the weather. Some say you cannot make good photographs at noon on a clear day. Well actually, if you look straight up you find, say, an awesome backlit forest canopy. I like to go out in what people call ‘bad’ weather—rain, snow, freezing rain, fog, wind, clouds, whatever. Play the conditions, as they say in sports. The landscape changes with the weather and seasons. The Norwegians say, ‘There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.’”
Photographing wildlife: “Sit in the rain all day and wait for wildlife to appear. Actually, except for puppy dogs and kitty cats—although I am not sure about all the cats—animals do not like humans and will run away or bite you. Real wildlife photography is an enormous skill that I greatly admire. It usually requires thousands of dollars in telephoto lenses. You may have to wait days to get the image you want. You may wait days and get nothing. Having said all that, go into the wild and see what happens; what finds you. And be ready. You may only have a moment.”
Capturing landscapes: “I have heard there are rules of composition. My personality does not resonate with rules. Go out and see what calls out to you. It will wave, ‘Over here, do me.’ The test is: Would it hurt if you left it? Then explore it with your camera, with no idea what the image will look like. Make lots of images. You learn from each one. And you grow. Lie on your back. Crawl on your belly. The photograph you will like the most is the one you could not have possibly imagined. Be wild. Be bold.” SS
Vocalist Veronica Swift has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center several times. She’s got a regular gig at New York’s legendary Birdland, and she tours with trumpeter Chris Botti. She’s also shared the stage with Michael Feinstein, Esperanza Spalding and Paquito D’Rivera. But the 23-year-old Albemarle County native says the place she’s most happy is the band room at Albemarle High School, working with her former director, Greg Thomas, and mentoring members of the school’s jazz ensemble.
So it’s no surprise that Swift, the daughter of local musicians Stephanie Nakasian and the late Hod O’Brien, didn’t hesitate when she was asked to sing at Swing Into Spring, a March 11 concert to raise money for the AHS jazz band’s trip to Swing Central Jazz, a three-day high school competition and workshop that’s part of the Savannah Music Festival.
Swing Into Spring
The Jefferson Theater
March 11
“When I look back, a lot of what I have—and some of the best times of my life—is because of high school band,” says Swift, who lives in New York when she’s not on tour. “And what Mr. Thomas does for music education, well, it doesn’t feel like education because of all the great stuff he does and the way he thinks outside the box. I want to help that in any way I can; I want to be there for the band in the same way that Mr. Thomas was there for me when I was in high school.”
In addition to Swift, the Jefferson Theater show’s lineup includes John D’earth, Robert Jospé, Jamal Millner, Devon Sproule, Charles Owens, Terri Allard, Madeline Holly-Sales, Berto Sales, John Kelly, Stephanie Nakasian, Michael Coleman, Chance Dickerson and Dan Barrale. Erin Lunsford will also lend her voice to the event, which will feature the AHS Jazz Ensemble backing up the musicians, who will perform jazz standards and pop and R&B hits.
“Adults let me sit in with them when I was a kid, and it revolutionized my music,” Lunsford says. “I still try to play with people who are better than me—not that I’m better than these kids; some of them are really amazing—but playing with people who are more experienced than I am is how I grow even now, and I’m happy to give the opportunity to these kids that I had growing up.”
Liam O’Hanlon, a saxophone player in the AHS band [of which this writer’s daughter is also a member], is grateful for the opportunity. “It’s a privilege to have the support of so many of the area’s best musicians,” he says. “It makes me appreciate how fortunate we are to have such a passionate and supportive music community.”
O’Hanlon and his fellow student musicians will use money raised from the show to help pay their way to what’s been called the “Super Bowl” of high school jazz competitions, where, as one of 12 bands selected from nationwide auditions, they will compete against groups such as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Big Band and the San Francisco Jazz All-Stars for the Faircloth Award. They’ll also participate in sessions with jazz masters, including Jason Marsalis and Marcus Roberts, and perform at Savannah’s Jazz on the River.
“Every time I hear the AHS jazz band, I shake my head in wonder at the sound they are creating,” says Terri Allard, the benefit concert’s co-organizer. “Seriously, the band is that good. And add to that 15 professional guest musicians, and you have one incredible evening of music and camaraderie.”
To help fund the AHS Jazz Ensemble’s trip to the Savannah Music Festival, go to gofundme.com/SendAHSJazzToSavannah.
Cutter Huston has never had to worry about clean clothes. But it wasn’t until he became involved with The Laundry Project that he realized not everyone takes something so basic for granted.
The son of an Army brigadier general, Huston was living in Tampa, Florida, when his mother, Michelle, saw a news story about people who were unable to find employment because they didn’t have clean clothes to wear to job interviews. “That resonated,” he says, and it occurred to him that something as simple as washing clothes “could change someone else’s life.” And that’s why Huston, now 16 and a junior at Albemarle High School, decided to volunteer with Tampa’s Laundry Project, which allows low-income families to wash clothes and linens free of charge with the help of volunteers, who assist with laundry services, provide child care and turn laundromats into community centers.
During his time with the group, Huston grew close to The Laundry Project founder, Jason Sowell, and he says leaving the organization was one of the hardest things about moving when his father was reassigned and the family relocated to Charlottesville last summer. But during a chance encounter with Sowell in Washington, D.C., in June, inspiration struck: Why not start a Laundry Project here? And before you could say “wash, dry, fold and repeat,” Huston had introduced himself to Trey Coe, owner of Express Laundry on Maury Avenue. It didn’t take much convincing to get Coe on board, Huston says, and the area’s inaugural Laundry Project day came off without a hitch at the end of October. Sponsors included Ragged Mountain Running Shop, Whole Foods and Bodo’s Bagels.
In addition to washing 242 loads of clothes at no cost (saving customers about $500), Huston served dozens of people a free breakfast, and he was able to send many home from the laundromat with extra food. “Trey and I both want to provide hope to people who have lost it, and help them regain a foothold and get their lives back where they want them to be,” Huston says.
A member of the AHS cross country team and the school’s Math, Engineering & Science Academy, Huston says a date hasn’t been set for the next free laundry day, but he’s hoping to do three or four in 2018. “I have been very lucky to be in a family where I don’t need to worry about clean clothes or having enough to eat,” he says. “And it’s my duty to give back and spread the love to everybody who deserves it.”
We’re not fans of the candy corn and skeletons that appear on store shelves in July. And don’t get us started on Christmas merchandise that shows up before the leaves begin to fall. But there’s one holiday-related item we do suggest you think about now: a pasture-raised Thanksgiving turkey from a local farm, which probably started taking orders in late summer, and will likely run out of birds any day now.
Getting the centerpiece of this year’s Thanksgiving meal straight from a farm, where the birds are allowed to dine on fresh grass, bugs and other vegetation (supplemented with non-GMO feed), used to be a novelty. Nowadays, however, naturally raised birds from places like the Miller family’s Sunrise Farms in Stuarts Draft are in high demand.
On the Millers’ 90-acre farm, free-range turkeys wander between pastures—where they control the bug population and fertilize the grass—and well-ventilated shelters. According to the family, Sunrise birds’ “richer-tasting meat is the result of raising our turkeys on an all-natural diet, with plenty of exercise and freedom to roam. And we never overfeed or underfeed our poultry, instead providing feed that suits the natural growth of the turkeys.”
Keep in mind, though, that the price of a pasture-raised turkey is quite a bit more than those bought at a grocery store, where factory-frozen birds sometimes cost less than a dollar per pound. Farm-raised birds go for about $5-8 per pound, and there are several reasons for this: Grazing fields take up a lot of pricey land; a certain number of turkeys are lost to predators every season; and labor and feed is more expensive.
For details about purchasing your Thanksgiving main course directly from a local farmer, contact one of these places:
Polyface Farms
55 Pure Meadows Ln.,
Swoop (540) 885-3590, polyfacefarms.com
Sunrise Farms
2177 Tinkling Spring Rd.,
Stuarts Draft (540) 337-3773, sunrisefarm.net
Sylvanaqua Farms
398 Buck Mountain Rd., Earlysville (202) 213-8421, sylvanaqua.com
Timbercreek Farm
2245 Garth Rd. 295-7600, tcofarm.com
If you’re hosting a smaller Thanksgiving crowd this year—or the thought of roasting an entire turkey makes you want to call the whole thing off—consider buying a rotisserie chicken. Not only are they convenient, but if you get a good one, everyone at the table will enthusiastically, er, gobble it up.
What follows are a few tips for selecting a perfect whole chicken, which will set you back between $5 and $6, at your favorite local grocery store (Foods of All Nations, Whole Foods, Wegmans, Harris Teeter and Kroger are all solid options).
Weight matters. You might look silly doing it, but we suggest you pick up every chicken on display and gage its heft; a heavier bird is a bird where the juices haven’t evaporated out of the meat.
Skin deep. The best-tasting chickens are evenly browned with taut skin. Avoid shriveled and discolored birds because this is a sign of juiceless meat.
Watch it. Looking at a display of cooked chickens but there’s no rotisserie in sight? Ask a store employee how often the birds are restocked, or look for a timestamp on the bag or container, a good indication of when the chicken was prepared.
Plain is better. On a recent hunt for rotisserie chickens, we encountered barbecue- and lemon pepper-flavored birds, which sounded good, but take it from us: If you want to use your leftover chicken for stock or a stew, it’s best to steer clear of heavy spices and marinades, which get stronger over time, and could adversely affect the taste of days-after dishes.—SS
Grocery store rotisserie chickens are all good and fine, but if you really want to impress your guests, order your Thanksgiving chicken from Al Carbon, where Myriam and Claudio Hernandez will marinate it for 24 hours before they slowly roast it in a green charcoal oven that they imported from Peru. According to the Hernandezes, whose whole birds sell for $12.50, they “honor our local broiler chickens by simply allowing the coal-fired flame to massage the secret spices while drawing out their natural flavor.”
Al Carbon 1871 Seminole Trl., 964-1052, alcarbonchicken.com
On a recent Thursday, Julian Waters was giving blood while answering a magazine reporter’s questions—a typical morning of multitasking for a busy politician. But Waters isn’t your typical politician. The Western Albemarle High School senior is running for the Samuel Miller District seat on the Albemarle County School Board. The youngest person ever to do so, he says his desire to seek elected office kicked into high gear when his father asked him two questions several months ago: Have you thought about taking a gap year? And what would you do if you did?
Waters says the idea of running for school board began to percolate a couple years ago when WAHS administrators wouldn’t allow him to start a model aviation/drone club. “It was frustrating that I couldn’t bridge the gap between my personal passion and an extracurricular at school,” he says.
When a new principal took the reins at Western, Waters made his case again, this time with more success: “We got on track with the rest of the school’s clubs, and started flying that fall,” he says. “Being able to go to school and fly during lunch made [high school] so much more valuable to me, and I want to give the people who feel left behind because they can’t do what I did the same options—we lose value in education when everyone doesn’t have the same opportunities.”
Waters, who shares his passion for model aviation with younger students during a weekly club at Henley Middle School, is a two-time participant in the Tom Tom Founders Festival’s Youth Summit, where this year he was on a panel devoted to changing education. In 2016, he addressed educators and administrators at the World Maker Faire’s Education Forum in New York, and locally, he’s helping craft High School 2022, an initiative aimed at making work-related learning part of Albemarle County’s high school curriculum. Waters says his school board campaign currently has two main focuses: perspective and preschool.
His perspective comes from being in the classroom and working every day with students and teachers. “I understand how learning standards can positively and negatively affect everyone,” he says, admitting that he has sometimes struggled as a student.
“We need to move away from the standards model and expand out of the classroom by offering experiential opportunities that allow students to work in communities, which would provide a more well-rounded educational experience.”
As for preschool, Waters says he feels lucky to have attended a good one. “And I think we do ourselves a disservice by not having a district-wide preschool, which would create equity, reduce academic deficiencies and help enormously with social barriers.”
Because he’s only 17 (he turns 18 in September), Waters is legally required to be accompanied by an older family member or friend when he’s collecting the 125 signatures he needs by June 13 to get on the November 7 general election ballot (he currently has about 100). When he knocks on doors, the people who answer are “very positive, and they’re more curious than anything else,” he says. “A lot of them are open to having a younger perspective, and they want to know how they can help.”
Waters, who’s running against incumbent Graham Paige, a retired WAHS science teacher who took office in 2015 after winning a special election, has put together a small team made up of high schoolers plus his mother, who serves as the campaign’s treasurer. “We’ll really ramp up once I officially announce my candidacy in June—or maybe sooner,” he says.
If he wins in the fall, Waters plans to attend college locally so he can fulfill his four-year term. “It’s been such a great, positive experience so far,” he says, adding that his hope is to “offer fresh perspective that further strengthens the [county’s] thriving community of lifelong learners, and broadens learning opportunities to engage each and every student.”
When Kate Tamarkin was an undergraduate at Southern California’s Chapman University, orchestra conductor was not on her list of career choices. “As a female back then, it never occurred to me to even want to [do that],” the music director and conductor of the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia says. But she was studying music education, and one of the requirements for getting her teaching credential was completing a conducting course.
“I dreaded it,” she says, smiling at the memory. “I tried everything to get out of that class, and I didn’t know how I’d get through it.” Turns out Tamarkin did more than get through it—when she stood before a group of musicians for the first time, “a match was struck, and there was fire,” she recalls.
Kate Tamarkin: The Farewell Concerts
April 22
Old Cabell Hall
April 23
Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center
Dressed in purple and seated in a conference room at the orchestra’s office on West Main Street, the charismatic Tamarkin ponders her retirement this spring, following 11 years at UVA. She says that several decades after that first college conducting gig, she considers herself to literally be a conductor—something that channels music to the musicians, who express their energy to the audience, which has an emotional response that comes back to the conductor and completes the circuit. “When a concert is going well, my back gets all warm, and it’s not just the lights; I can feel that the circuit is complete,” she says.
Daniel Sender, a professional violinist and the orchestra’s concertmaster, says Tamarkin’s energy also extends to members of the symphony. “She has such a warmth from the podium, which is not to say she’s musically light,” he says. “She’s very intense, but her warmth makes the symphony an inviting and open space to make music.” And given the makeup of the group—professionals, students and members of the community—“it takes a very special person to guide those forces together,” Sender says.
Due to the current search for her successor, audiences haven’t seen Tamarkin in action since September, when she conducted the first concert of the 2016-17 season. The finalists for her job—Benjamin Rous, Adam Boyles and Cheung Chau—have been at the podium for this season’s middle three concerts, but Tamarkin will return to lead the orchestra for the final time on April 22 and 23, in a program that includes Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.
In reflecting on her tenure at UVA, Tamarkin points first to the musicians. “We ask a lot of them, and they give, and keep giving,” she says. “They are a tremendously talented set of people with generosity of spirit and a real commitment to music.”
She’s also enjoyed her time as a professor in the McIntire Department of Music and takes pride in having several students who have gone on to become conductors, at least one of whom started out studying economics at UVA. “I poach econ majors!” Tamarkin says with glee. “It’s quite fun; you never know where the talent is going to pop up.”
Another highlight for Tamarkin is the symphony’s youth concerts, which are a priority “because arts funding in the schools is diminishing, and it falls to other organizations to fill the gap,” she says. Elizabeth Roberts, a professional bassoon player and instructor who’s been with the orchestra for 16 years, collaborates with Tamarkin on kid-friendly scripts.
“We include lots of superheroes,” Roberts says. “And we find ways for kids to hear classical pieces that they have maybe heard on TV commercials, or something else that’s very popular. We hope our narrative helps them understand the music.”
The woman who taught herself to play the French horn as a young girl, considers Mozart a “cherished friend,” and was selected by Leonard Bernstein early in her career to lead the Chicago Symphony while he was there as a guest conductor, says she has no intention of halting her own pursuit of music when she retires after nearly four decades at the podium. Tamarkin is a certified music practitioner who plays the harp for critically ill or dying patients, and she is the creator and program coordinator of Hospice of the Piedmont’s Music by the Bedside. She’s also a musician in residence at UVA Medical Center and she plays regularly at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital.
“It’s hard to explain the magical, soothing effect of the harp,” says Tamarkin. She recently told WVTF radio that “in many cultures, they play someone out, they sing someone out, they chant someone out. …We try to watch the patient’s breathing to read all those nonverbal and verbal signals that we can receive and then match the music to the condition the patient is in, and then, hopefully, help them relax, to get to a place where the whole experience is easier.”
One experience that won’t be easy for many is Tamarkin’s departure from UVA.“Every leader brings their own style,” Roberts says. “Kate brings a great joy for the music and a joy for what she does as a conductor, educator and artist. We will all miss that joy.