Gaelen McCormick

Gaelen McCormick

Instrument: Double Bass

With the RPO since: 1995

Favorite time of year in Rochester, and why ... I love the spring time here, especially watching the magnolia trees bloom.

Hometown: Albany, NY

Drink or food you're most likely to order at Java's: One enormous chocolate chip cookie

When not performing with the RPO, you can find me: Biking by the canal, going to the movies at the Little

First music-related memory ... taking a pass/fail musical aptitude test in public elementary school. Thank goodness I passed! Those who didn't weren't allowed access to instrumental music in that school. I'm very glad that system isn't around now!

I decided to be a professional musician when ... I spent the summer at the Tanglewood music festival when I was in high school, and after hearing the Boston Symphony on such a regular basis, and meeting incredible and personable people like Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, I just had to make my life in this field. I feel there is nothing else for me that is both so challenging and so rewarding.

Favorite travel destination: Went to Cooperstown for the first time recently and loved it! Great views, great places to eat, wonderful opera company.

Influential teachers: My most recent teacher Jeff Turner of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and my long-time mentor and friend, Ed Castilano of the Syracuse Symphony. Both of these great players have shown me how much fun working hard can be.

Favorite ice cream flavor: chocolate, always chocolate.

What are your other "hidden" talents: I hope that it's gardening, but I haven't seen the results in the last few summers. (Green) fingers crossed that this is the summer the whole thing goes well.

Do you teach private students? Yes, and I love working with musicians of all ages. You're never too old to start an instrument, even one as large as the bass.

What other orchestras have you performed with? I have played in the "I-90" groups of orchestras, slowly working my way along that highway in NY State: Albany Symphony, Syracuse Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Erie Philharmonic, and Canton (OH) Symphony.

Oddest RPO concert (or rehearsal) memory: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was playing a terrific concert with us, and she had a very shocking pink top on that night. I recall that at some point when she wasn't playing, she approached the edge of the stage, and bent down to talk to someone in the audience, or so it appeared to me at the back of the stage. It turned out that she had taken away some toy a kid in the front of the audience had been throwing around all during her performance! It must have been awfully distracting to her to try and play through all that!

Favorite restaurant in town and why: The Dinosaur (or as my father likes to call it, "the big green dragon") - for the greatest, tastiest baked beans ever.

What types of music do you like to listen to? I love to listen to early music (Renaissance and Baroque) played on original instruments. I think it refreshes my ears to get away from the Romantic orchestral sound from time to time, like musical floss! I really enjoy the clarity of the gut strings and the sound of the lower pitch (ask me about that, it will take too long to write out why they use a lower pitch than the RPO!).

The RPO is essential to Rochester because ... The arts in general are essential to culture everywhere because it allows us to interact with each other in both the most basic and the most intellectual levels simultaneously. We can express emotions and connect events together through the arts that words and images and sound alone cannot express. After September 11, I felt that the arts were vital to helping our city, and our country, reconnect with each other. We were neighbors again, humans all hurting from that tragedy, and music was a way to express the pain and confusion we were all feeling. It was also a way out of that time and back to feeling normal again. I heard many people tell me how important the RPO concerts were to them at that point. I'm certain that that need never goes away.

My favorite part of working in the RPO is ... playing new pieces that have just been composed, and building on works that we have played many times.

If someone were visiting Rochester, what would you tell them to go see or do? Go up to the lake and have a frozen custard!

Biography

Gaelen McCormick has been a member of the RPO bass section since 1995. Before joining the RPO, she held positions with the Erie Philharmonic, Binghamton Philharmonic and Albany Symphony. Ms. McCormick recently became a founding member of the Pittsburgh Live Music Chamber Orchestra. She has been the bass instructor for the Eastman Community Music School since 2001and has also been on the faculty of Roberts Wesleyan College and Hochstein Music School. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Carnegie Mellon University.