Pianist/violinist and singer Virginia Feldman is a Play-In Organizer par excellence, and ACMP’s North American Outreach Council (NAOC) representative in Portland, Oregon. Get to know Ginny through this interview with NAOC Acting Chair, Celeste Chau. (And if you live in or near Portland, sign up for her Play-In on November 26!

Celeste Chau: Ginny, can you tell us a bit about yourself, and your career and musical background?

Virginia Feldman: I trained at Sherwood Music College, which was a college that took high school students in Chicago. My violin teacher was a Chicago Symphony guy. So basically it was all concertos and orchestral pieces, and I took piano with the guy who was the accompanist for the Lyric Opera, so there was a lot of opera stuff.  I never saw any chamber music – zero, zippo – my whole career. During my senior year in high school, I was in six different orchestras. All of them were classical, classical…I was a church organist back in the days when the big churches…you didn’t play anything modern… just Bach and stuff.  So I didn’t see any chamber music. I had no idea it existed. Needless to say, if I was in six different orchestras, I was pretty deep, pretty compulsive about practicing.

And then I went to college and I was pre-med, which means you gun for grades. And you have no life. But I did some music. I played in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. I played the violin. You didn’t have a piano in the dorm room. So it was pretty much the violin. I learned that music can be fun, and funny! That was what I did for eight years, throughout my undergraduate and medical school. And then I became an intern in pediatrics, and then a resident in pediatrics, with zero time for music. Then I got married – all of which was lovely – and started having kids of my own. I did almost no music during that time.

So I pretty much didn’t play for 15 years, while having and raising kids. I was chatting with this gal in music and she asked what music I do besides singing. Well – I had been principal violinist for youth orchestras in Chicago and was a pretty decent violinist.  She said she was having this big chamber music festival in a couple of weeks and she really needed another violinist. I told her I’d never done chamber music. She said, “Just come!  I’m sure that you can do it.” 

I did go off to that chamber music festival and I fell in love with it! 

I stopped playing concertos and playing in orchestras, and it has only been chamber music ever since. I said to myself: Why would I want to play in a group of 20 people playing the same part in an orchestra, watching someone wave the baton? That’s how I came to be a chamber player.

In the meantime, I had a career in pediatrics. As the Chief of Pediatrics, I was also an administrator. I had all those headaches and admire those who want to keep them up, but I was very happy to pass the baton to the next person when I retired. And then I got involved in and loved international medicine. I spent a lot of time in developing nations. And my career post-retirement has been pretty much political. Wishing I had been a lawyer – seeing what our country needs now. 

CC: How did you hear about ACMP, and how long have you been a member?

VF: The way I came into ACMP was that Martha Pressler, who had been on the board for a while, had been organizing play-ins and she said, “ Virginia, it’s a great organization. Join up!” That’s how I found out about ACMP and I have been a member for about 15 years. Martha moved away from Portland, so I took over running play-ins for the past 10 years. 

CC: Are there any pieces of chamber music that who have played, which have special significance to you as a musician?  

VF: The slow movement of Beethoven’s Opus 132, “Thanks to God for healing.” For me, it’s the most moving piece of music for healing. For all the people in ACMP who might not be in my political space – on November 10, 2016, I just couldn’t survive! I am very fortunate to have a pedal organ – an original pedal organ from the 1890s. I was able to go down and work out my frustrations on the pedal organ. I was able to work out a rendition of this string quartet movement for organ. I probably played it 10 hours a day. And then I was church organist that week and the subsequent week, so I played it for my church, whose community was also grieving. So that is still my go-to piece of music when things look bleak.   

CC: What do you enjoy most about ACMP and why should people join?

VF: There are so many things I like about ACMP – it’s hard to know where to start! One of my big finds was a gal in Portland who was looking for a singer, but had to settle for a violinist, because I was not the quality of singer she was looking for. So you can go online, as you know, and find out what level of player someone is, what nights they are available, and what type of music they like playing. The directory’s got everything – and the person’s geographic location.  So she was able to email and call me, and say, “Ginny, let’s get together! I love to play the piano, and I like to play with singers.” And I said, “Maybe you’d like me on the violin. I am not an A+ singer – you didn’t read the fine print!” So we got together for the next year and a half of her life, and we made wonderful music together. It was only a duet, but it was wonderful. 

So – there is that ability to connect with people. You can find a quartet, or if it happens to be a sextet, whatever. ACMP provides that wonderful meetup function.

Then there are play-ins. Through ACMP, I was able to advertise that I was having a play-in.  That was really great when I didn’t have enough applicants.  You need about 35 to have a decent mix of players.  When you are trying to gear up to get a group of people together, you’re able to advertise “Hey, Portland! We’re organizing a play-in on November 26. We need violins, winds, or what have you…” That capability has been really rich.

CC: Have you had any memorable or funny moments in chamber music?

VF:

After 15 years of not playing and then get invited to chamber festival:

So I go get my violin, which had been stored in my basement. I opened the case up, and I almost had a heart attack as the bow hairs were all over. It was like opening up a coffin.  I screamed, and my husband asked what was going on. I said, “There is a body in my violin case and its hair is coming out!”

What I subsequently learned was that if you are not going to play your violin for 15 years, you are supposed to spray your case with bug spray. The horsehair gets eaten by little things like mites. 

A better way to keep bugs out of your violin case: JOIN ACMP!!! And keep on playing…

And another story:

You get to be so friendly with your fellow chamber music players. They become your brothers and sisters. You become very close to them and you begin to read the expressions on their faces. For a while I was starting to develop this stuff on my violin… Did you see movie “The Red Violin?” Well – you don’t want stuff on your varnish. So I took my instrument to my local violin guy.  And he said, “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll work on it and I’ll get it off.” And he got it off, and then it started building up again and I told my fellow players about it and they said, “Oh that’s interesting…” One day I got back from my violin guy and it was all cleaned off, and then it accumulated again. And the guys and girls I played with pointed out, “You know, Ginny, every time you play with us, your nose really runs” (LOL). So, you can call it many things, but it was mucus in medical terminology. Anyway, I found out I had an allergy to my rosin. So I switched rosin. Problem resolved! So that’s what you need – you need people to be honest with you. And that’s what your fellow strings players are all about.

CC: What does chamber music mean to you and where do you hope to see the state of chamber music playing in the future?

VF: Chamber music really keeps me alive in hard times. Music has always done that, but chamber music and extra step above because it’s interaction with people. I can always sit down on my piano and play Chopin, but it’s just Mr. Chopin and me together.  But it’s not the rest of the world together. Chamber music really connects me to the rest of the world together. 

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