I had the enviable experience of growing up in a house with constant music, with my father playing violin and viola, one brother violin (classically untalented but loved it), one brother cello (he became a professional cellist in NYC, delighting my father), one brother revolting and playing only Sophisticated Lady badly on the piano. My mother wanted to join in and tried the cello but saw the huge gap between starting a new instrument and enjoying chamber music with friends. 

When I was put to bed at a young age, I crept out many nights and listened to string quartets sitting on the stairs. Which I hope explains and excuses why I know many quartets intimately without their name or number! (And have enjoyed coaching them as an adult.)  

My father, Jay C. Rosenfeld, evidently received good music training as a child, and studied violin in Europe as a teenager, in Belgium around 1914, before the war took over European life. He was required by family pressure to return home to the United States and run his father’s retail business, but maintained his musical life by writing reviews for the Berkshire Evening Eagle (once he got the job of reviewing the first Casals Festival in Prades, France for the New York Times- 1950 or so), conducting a local orchestra, and playing chamber music with many others. 

My father played violin and viola quite well, though he didn’t go into music professionally. But he knew Helen Rice from the 1930s, and they played quartets non-stop in the Berkshires and in New York from then on. He discussed creating something like ACMP with Helen Rice and her good friend Ruth MacGregor and was, I believe, an eminence grise in that undertaking.

When I reached 13 years old, I was invited to join them and a cellist for my First Flute Quartet!! – the Mozart A major. I wore braids and barrettes and braces. I only remember the last movement, perhaps that’s all we played. It is a rondo with a very catchy theme, which I played fine…but I lost my place. No problem, the theme came back, it was a rondo after all, and I found my place. But it was the wrong instance, and I was soon out again. No problem, when the rondo theme returned, I picked it up. Again in the wrong place. They didn’t stop – one doesn’t! – and finally the rondo theme returned, and it was the coda, and we ended together. I was Very Unhappy, to be in the cold so much of the time, while Helen was full of good cheer and I suppose gave me some sort of encouraging compliment….

Fortunately, there was a next time. 

About Jayn Rosenfeld

Flutist Jayn Rosenfeld is a close personal friend of ACMP’s Executive Director Stephanie Griffin. Once Stephanie started working at ACMP, she learned of Jayn’s close association with its founder Helen Rice. In fact – Jayn even has a coffee table made by Helen in her living room where Stephanie has enjoyed many a chamber music party over the past decade or so! Stephanie first met Jayn through the contemporary music scene in New York City, and the two became close friends when Stephanie joined the Princeton Symphony, where Jayn was the longtime principal flutist.

Among Jayn’s many accomplishments were founding and serving as flutist and executive director of the New York New Music Ensemble (NYNME) and playing with the International Society of Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Richardson Players at Princeton University, the Washington Square Chamber Players. She was principal flutist in the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and won a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant in 1986. Her many recordings include concerti by Cimarosa, Steiger, Kraft, and Constantinides, solo works by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Leon Kirchner, John Anthony Lennon, and Robert Erickson, and many chamber works on the Bridge, CRI, Opus One, GM, Musical Heritage, Columbia, and Centaur labels. Ms. Rosenfeld taught flute at the Greenwich House Music School; The Juilliard School in the Music Advancement Program; and at Princeton University for over thirty years. A graduate of Radcliffe College and the Manhattan School of Music, she studied flute with James Pappoutsakis, William Kincaid, and Marcel Moyse.