Exploring the Frances Walton Competition and Its Impact

Ever dreamt of weaving a successful career in the music world? This episode promises practical wisdom from the Frances Walton Competition Chair. We explore her incredible journey in the music industry and discuss the impact of her work in the Puget Sound area. We also delve into the progressive opportunities provided by Farm for Dreams and the International Euphonium Summit. Plus, exciting plans to bring music into the 21st century with live performances on King FM 98.1 and potential for video production.

We've set the stage and now, it's high time we reveal the thrill and anticipation surrounding the Frances Walton Competition through the Ladies Musical Club of Seattle. Looking forward to learning about the attractive prizes and opportunities for the winners? From a week-long outreach tour, a cash prize, to performing on King FM 98.1, the rewards for your talent are limitless. We also shed light on the application process, the types of instruments accepted, and the importance of extending the reach of professional musicians to rural areas. Tune in to hear about the exceptional importance given to underrepresented composers of color and women composers.

As we move towards the conclusion of our enlightening conversation, we explore the specifics of the membership application process and the incredible prizes for the winners. We discuss the noble mission of the Ladies Music Club of Seattle, its significant contribution to the local community, and the Francis Walton Competition. Hear from Lynn Muehleisen, the Competition Chair, as she shares their enriching experiences and insights on how music has the power to change hearts and minds. So, are you ready to ignite your passion for music and make a difference? Tune in now!

Find the Video Interview at https://www.youtube.com/@LivingHistorySeries
#euphoniumsummit #livinghistoryseries #farmfordreams

Transcript

Interview & Opportunities in Music

Speaker 1 0:00

much more. I can't wait for you to look over the interviews and read. I was honored to interview Betsy Rom yesterday. Elizabeth Rom I don't know if you Elizabeth Rom Probably sounds really familiar. She's done a couple of operas.

Speaker 2 0:19

Okay, I have to admit I'm not good about, you know, keeping up with the latest, the latest people Right, I'm so busy with this program I even dropped my opera news subscription so I never know who anybody is anymore.

Speaker 1 0:37

Well you get to hear your husband, john seems to be an amazing individual and composer. I was reading through in Geeky L I'm a little biased Right Just. I can't wait to share a bigger vision with you about Farm for Dreams and I was so looking forward to this particular. I mean I look forward to every single interview. But your organization, francis' mission, her reason for being in involvement with music and the Puget Sound, and both my wife and I have descendants from the Netherlands area, sweden and oh okay, you read about Cranby and Norway.

Speaker 1 1:33

I did yeah and my wife's family is from Norway, okay, and so we have that kind of connection. And then it said it's a. I was like no way. And then her background I'm Cello, and how Cello and Euphonium are People. Yeah, I've just recently called Euphonium being called the Cello of the Wind Band, yeah, and so everything just seems to be working out. And then additionally, additionally it's so amazing by doing this interview and being with everyone that's involved, I am so looking forward to knowing that I can provide extreme value to Euphonium and the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle by furthering Yall's mission, in addition to the opportunity to being part of the International Women's Brass Conference. They usually oh, oh yeah, this opens up that door, by the way. Oh, oh yeah, you like that, did you know?

Speaker 2 2:51

Oh, you're. And I will have to say I don't know if you bumped into this, but we now accept men into our membership. Oh, that's spectacular. But we're still kind of fairly women-centric. And interestingly enough, and this is where so my executive director, whitney Henderson, she is a trombonist, so she will just like so this is the International Women's. Tell me again the Brass Conference.

Speaker 1 3:21

You'll see all Everything's going to be listed on my website and all the documents. Oh, sorry. So Dr Gale Robertson used to be co-host that conference a couple times and they have amazing competitions and I think that Don't quote me on this, even though my otter's quoting me on this verbatim. I believe that they have an ability to provide a nonprofit table at their conference, as well as ITEC, which is the International Tubi Euphonium Conference that is held, I believe, yearly and Week-wink.

Speaker 2 4:08

Yeah, no kidding, because I mean I've had Chamber Music America on my radar and we are members now and we're going to actually have an ad finally in October. But I can't afford to go to New York for their conference and buy a table. There's just no way, because we're you know, we're a nonprofit. Do you know where those two conferences are going to be?

Speaker 1 4:28

So we've just had ITEC in. I want to say either Albuquerque or Phoenix. I think it was Albuquerque last month for the ITEC, for the International Women's Brass Conference. I'm unsure. However, I do have another key player for you In doing all this. I love connecting people and opportunities.

Speaker 2 4:55

This is fabulous.

Speaker 1 4:57

Dr Amy Shoemaker-Bliss, you can go on my site. You don't even have to write that down. You can go on my All the creatives. Did you take a look at that creative, by the way, the way the creative I created for you.

Speaker 2 5:15

Oh, you mean the questions no the picture that I created here.

Speaker 1 5:21

I sent it to you. Hold on, I'm going to send it to you on the chat right here on Zoom. Okay, I want you to take a look at it, because it's been a tremendous honor to be able to do all this for everyone. It's taken my computer a minute to load for some reason today, but there it is in the chat screen. What do you think?

Speaker 2 5:47

Oh, yes, yes, you messaged that to me. That's Fran, with the 2023 winners, the tall guy right in the middle. There is Sean McClain, who is the host of Northwest Focus Live on King FM. That's part of our price package they get to perform live on King FM. Sean is the personal friend. He's a great guy. He produces very high-end videos. He got a grant for great equipment. He's got three cameras and a steady cam. He produces videos of the live performance, but then he allows afterwards for the performers to retake anything and he splices it in. Those are loaded up onto their YouTube channel, the King FM. It's classical King FM 98.1 on your FM dial.

Speaker 2 6:45

I love that. Yes, they're really great videos. Our winners have full access to it. They can use it any way they want. They also release them to what's called NPR live sessions.

Speaker 1 7:01

I'm very familiar with that.

Speaker 2 7:05

Go on there. One of our 2022 solo winners, ji Chen Zhang, phenomenal saxophonist, was picked up by NPR live sessions as an artist to watch. That's phenomenal. This is one of the price packages that we're really pushing now, because King has guaranteed that they will make the video. It's up to NPR live sessions whether or not they pick them up. But our 2022, because we have a solo division and we have what was called the Sombol Division. We're now going to call it chamber music ensemble, because we realize that people were searching chamber music and we weren't popping up.

Speaker 1 7:51

Great, Great. I give you yes.

Speaker 2 7:55

Yes, we're working at man. We're really trying to push this thing into the 21st century. Our chamber music ensemble winners in 2022 are Tala Rouge, viola.

Speaker 1 8:08

Are you going to update that on the website, because I know it's?

Speaker 2 8:12

Yes, our website is really behind right now. Unfortunately, I don't have control over that, so I have to wait for other people to do it. The good news is that Tala Rouge, I have some news on that for you, okay, but Tala Rouge has a featured article in the most recent issue of Chamber Music America, soulpay Wow, awesome. And they used their video that was made by King FM to get a residency at Dunbart Nooks. So this is a really powerful prize package and we can get into the weeds of it. I don't know, are we in the? Oh?

Speaker 1 9:01

not yet we haven't seen it.

Speaker 2 9:03

Okay, so I'll talk more about it, but we're really trying hard to be more effective with our marketing, because this program has been around for a long time and it's sort of We've been hiding our light under a bushel for way too long, and when I became chair in 2022, we took the two years of our pandemic shutdown and just retooled the whole thing. That's all yeah. So we're really trying to get people to understand that this is a competitive prize package.

Speaker 1 9:35

Okay, so in the prize package. I know you want to dive into it in the interview as well. I don't want to spoil the actual recorded interview, yeah.

Speaker 2 9:46

I don't mind repeating things. Oh, okay, I'm endlessly enthusiastic about this program.

Speaker 1 9:52

Right, okay, cool. So can we do a deep dive on that right now? Sure, go for it. Yeah, expand on that, and then we'll do a snapshot of it during the actual recording.

Speaker 2 10:07

Sure. So if I can just give you kind of the basics of this program, we audition ages 20 to 35 from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the US territories. You do not need to be an American citizen to apply for this program. As long as you're living in the US and have a US address, you're good to go. We audition brass, woodwinds, strings, piano, voice, marimba and recorder, which is rather new and then we have.

Speaker 2 10:42

Ocarina? No, I don't think we have Ocarina in there and in each category. If you go onto our landing page at getacceptedcom I'm sure a lot of your listeners know all about Get Accepted and you put together your own little file on that you can go to our landing page. You can either search under Ladies' Musical Club of Seattle or the Francis Walton Competition. It will pop up, and on the left-hand side of our landing page is a drop-down menu that says Start an Application Right now. Our applications are not going to launch until November 1st, but you can go in there and search about what was about the program last year, which will be close. You know there may be some tweaks or might be a change in the application fee, but that drop-down menu will take you to one of those categories as well. That's our solo categories as well as our chamber music division, and you can read all about the requirements and what are the accepted instruments in each category. They're listed by Like euphonium. Yeah, like euphonium, euphonium. We need more euphonium and it's a pretty slick system.

Speaker 2 11:59

You go in and we accept only audio tracks, no video, because our first rounds are blind and so our judges only know your instrument and your rep for those first rounds. Until we have selected the finalists, everything is blind. All the way up to the selection of the finalists, the judges do not know who anybody is until the finalists are revealed. It's pretty exciting. And then we have for our finals, which are in person. You need to come to Seattle for them.

Speaker 2 12:36

We're working on trying to offset travel costs. That hasn't happened yet, we're hoping to. We do offer a chance to sign up for a home stay with one of our members or friends of our organizations, and they're always great. We try really hard to take care of our finalists. Each finalist gets a $250 finalist award, including each member of the final's chamber music ensembles. So, for instance, a quartet is going to get $1,000, but we award each person individually. Along with that, all finalists get a professional video of their performance and professional still photography. It usually takes a couple of months before we get all that edited and get it to you, but you'll be able to use that any way you want.

Speaker 1 13:33

Let me tangent off that. The quality beyond this is Nicholas talking, and for those that are reading this right now, the quality is wow. Y'all are going to be in for a treat when you be part of this competition and this organization. They really treat their finalists every step of the way and that's why what brought me to the Ladies' Club of Ladies' Music Club of Seattle is the quality of competition. I mean, they go all out as much as they can, so yeah, Thank you for saying that, nicholas.

Speaker 2 14:17

I really appreciate it, and I want to give a big old shout out to our videographer photographer who's also doing her social media. His name is William Muñoz, he's originally from Puerto Rico and he has his doctorate in trumpet, so we don't have to explain a thing to him. He knows how to beautifully accommodate the musicians. We have a really wonderful and you could go on the Ladies' Musical Club of Seattle YouTube channel and watch hours and hours and hours, because we live stream everything during the finals. And I want to back up too. One of the other things that we do for our finalists is that the day before the finals auditions the auditions are always on a Saturday, the first Saturday of June. The winners' concert is the first Sunday of June, but we back up to that first Friday of June.

Speaker 2 15:12

The day before the auditions, all of our finalists have the opportunity, if they so choose, to sign up for a rehearsal time. It can come in. We have rehearsal rooms ready for you to warm up in and then you have about. I think we give about a half hour in the hall, which is in a church that has great acoustics and everybody sounds great. I mean, in 2022,. I remember we had a marimba play and then a guitar and I thought, oh, the guitar is going to sound puny. No, everybody sounded great in there, it was just fantastic. So and then the judges are up in the balcony where the sound is really great. And so, to just get back to the prize package, so you've got the finalists prize package and then the and that's just for those that make.

Speaker 1 16:07

Just make the finals round, right, right, wow, that's like beyond, like that is beyond the value of what I consider a competition package to. It's really extraordinary guys.

Speaker 2 16:28

We really feel good about it, and I want to give another shout out to my predecessor, gail Perstein, who has a program for 23 years. She worked really hard to get a lot of these things into place, especially the finalist fee, and then we took it to the next level because we were really pushing hard for the first time with social media and understanding that the visuals are just so important. So we put into place the photography and videography and the live feed, and so then the winners package is again photography, videography of the winners concert On June 1st. On June 2nd is the winners concert. June 1st is the auditions. June 2nd is the winners concert. It's all again live streams, so grandma and grandpa in China or Austin or New York can watch ya, and it really is fun.

Competition Winners and Prize Announcement

Speaker 2 17:26

We get all these chat comments during the live streams from people all over the world, and Sidebar are one of our solo winners this year Her winners concert YouTube. So this is Gracie Potter, 20-year-old trombone player. Her winners concert YouTube has gotten over 64,000 views. What and Gracie? And I think this might be one of the reasons why Gracie just won her age division with the International Trombone Competition. So she's awesome. I just love it. So back to the prize package for the winners. Each winner will receive at the successful end of their outreach tour. That's when we give the money for the winners. We wait until after. They each get $3,500. And that means each member of the winning chamber music ensemble gets $3,500.

Speaker 1 18:35

So and the soloist?

Speaker 2 18:37

And the soloist. So each soloist there's two solo winners. Each of them get $3,500. Our quartet that won this year, kodak, you know, they get a total of $14,000. And so duo's 7,000, trio's 10,500, quartet's 14,000. And now I get to drumroll announce that we are now accepting quintets for the first time.

Speaker 2 19:05

So that will be $17,500. You have a week long outreach tour. We go. We have two concurrent tours. Our two soloists this year will go to Eastern Washington For those of you who know that part of the state a largely rural communities all the way from Yakima, all the way up to the Canadian border. You'll be going into schools, K through 12. Usually perform about three public concerts and and then at the same time, the Puget Sound tour, which I will lead, will have our Chamber Music Ensemble Kodak Quartet, from New York. They're, of course they were formed at Eastman Conservatory, thus the name Kodak, but they're currently in residence at Manus School of Music. Phenomenal, they played this ligity that just blew us out of the water. We love new music, and so and then the other really great part of the prize package that I cannot overemphasize you will have the opportunity to play live on Classical King FM 98.1, which is the Seattle area's classical music station and truly it's one of the premier classical music stations in the country.

Speaker 1 20:25

I mean, there's not a lot of them left. It's really cool. Why don't you recap what happened with your yeah?

Speaker 2 20:32

Oh, with? Oh, yes, absolutely. So what happens? The program is called Northwest Focus Live. It's hosted by Sean McLean, 98.1. 98.1.

Speaker 2 20:44

You can go to kingorg, k-i-n-gorg and look all about this great station. They videotape these live performances. They have very high end equipment I think three cameras, including a steady cam and they put together these beautiful videos. They allow you, if you felt, eh, I needed to retake something. They'll let you retake after the broadcast and they'll edit it in. There Takes a couple of months, but they really produce a great video. It's loaded up to the kingorg website as well as their YouTube channel. You can use that video any way you want. And, in fact, our Chamber Music Ensemble winners in 2022, talarouge Viola duo, who is featured in Chamber Music America's issue, their summer issue right now, they use their video to get a residency at Dunbarton Oaks as well as, I think, something other. I think probably the Chamber Music America article came about because of that, and the other thing that King does with these videos is that they submit them to a program called NPR Live Sessions, that's, national public radio live sessions. You can look up that website.

Speaker 1 22:04

That's like hitting gold y'all.

Speaker 2 22:06

Oh God, it has not only exposure, it has international exposure. And they actually chose one of our solo winners in 2022, ji Chen Zhang, brilliant saxophonist, student of Kenneth Se, who's in Iowa, I believe great saxophone studio there, and they chose his video as a new artist to watch. So it's a fantastic package. So I think I got all of it. The money tour we are currently how does the tour? It kind of varies so, because the two broadcasts are both on Fridays. So our East tour who's doing the first Friday are coming in a little early so that they can rehearse with their collaborative pianist and then they do their Friday tour. They have Saturday off and then Sunday they take off for Eastern Washington. They'll have five full days of school visits and public concerts and then they're done that Friday. The Kodak Quartet will come in on Saturday, we'll have a first concert on Sunday and then we'll start five days. So it's about a week-ish.

Speaker 1 23:29

Okay, so do you provide a pianist for the yes, oh, wow.

Speaker 2 23:34

Yes, yes, we pay for the collaborative pianist. Now I want to back up to the final list. Final list Absolutely. We do not pay for your collaborative pianist If you don't bring your own, which a lot of people do. If you don't bring your own, we have a list of recommended pianists in the area. You will have to negotiate those fees with them. However, if you win, we will pay your collaborative pianist for the winners' concert, so you won't be out any extra money there. We currently don't have the funds for travel to and from Seattle for either the finals or the winners' tours, but we're working on it. We're working on it, we're going to try to find a way and hopefully your winnings will offset your costs, because we really want to get it to the point where you're keeping all your money. That's a goal for us. So that's kind of edited in nutshell with the program.

Speaker 1 24:32

Let's dive a little bit deeper. You mentioned something I don't know if you all read it. On the transcripts, though Is that they not only provide the finalist a $350.00?, $250.00., $250.00. That's how you increase it there $250.00. Is that upfront or is that?

Speaker 2 25:00

Yeah, so we give them their $250.00 check, so we have the auditions all day and then at about 6.30 we have a winners' ceremony and announcement and we call everybody up one at a time and cheer them, hand them a check, hand them a little certificate You're a finalist, and usually a little bit of swag of some sort Coffee mugs or something like that. So we make it a real and we livestream that too, so mom and dad can watch and see if you won. And so they get their $250.00 at the end of that day.

Speaker 1 25:36

That's awesome. Now do they have to be a member of the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle beforehand?

Speaker 2 25:43

No, no absolutely not, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 25:46

And they awarded a membership for, let's say, a year's membership into the organization for just making finals round by chance.

Speaker 2 25:58

I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that.

Speaker 1 26:02

So to be a member in the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle, is there a fee to join?

Speaker 2 26:11

Yes, Okay, yes, and let me just talk a little bit about our umbrella organization.

Speaker 1 26:16

Yes.

Speaker 2 26:17

Because we're talking about the Francis Walton Competition, which is a program of the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle, which is a pretty large organization. Lots going on there. And so LMC I'll call it for short was founded in 1891. It is the oldest music nonprofit probably in the state but certainly in the Seattle area, and we were early on real movers and shakers in kind of establishing the classical music scene in this area. And I could go on and on about the history. I won't go on our website, lmccattleorg, click on about and go to the history. It is phenomenal. I will say one thing we re-ran an international artist series from 1900 and 1995. And you can look at the list of artists that we brought out Stravinsky, rachmaninoff, marion Anderson, fritz Kreisler. I mean it's unbelievable what these women did early on. But that ended in 1995.

Speaker 2 27:23

And at that point the organization and most of these types of organizations, women's groups, even though we now accept men into our membership. The women's movement in the 1890s was kind of at its zenith and most of those groups have died out now. But we've still trudged on. We have about 150 members, most of them are performing members. You have to audition to be a performing member because we have a public concert series that runs from October to May and we have usually about 60, 60 concerts all free of charge of the gift to our community. And we've got all sorts of musicians in our club, we've got a composers group, we've got chamber music, we've got an opera workshop, we've just got a little bit of everything. So that's public concerts.

Speaker 2 28:21

We have a program called Music and Schools where we identify Title I schools that are underserved with music education and bring in all sorts of performances, both classical and world music, in that program. And then we have the Francis Walton competition. So if you look at our mission statement, it's providing classical music for our community through performance, education and awards. So those three programs cover those mission statements. I would say that the Francis Walton competition actually covers all three of those because there's an education component when we go into the schools, there's a performance component and we provide awards as well.

Speaker 2 29:06

And I do want to emphasize that our prize package is not a scholarship, it is money for you to do whatever you want with it, because we do audition a wide range of age groups and we have recognized that there's that tough time after you've graduated or even if you're still in school and you're trying to get something on your resume and you're trying to get some experience, and we see it as a win-win situation because we can use your talents and your abilities to inspire school kids. And what we really hope is going to happen is we're going to plant the seed of outreach and a desire to give back to your community, to all of our winners. That's really at the heart of this, and I will say that I am so, so pleased that so many of our former winners have gone on to create their own outreach tours based on their experience, on ours. That's golden, that's really important.

Speaker 1 30:09

That's a win in your book.

Speaker 2 30:10

Oh God, yes, yes yes, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 30:14

So, on that, when they, when anyone enters this competition, are they granted a one-year or trial membership to focus? Yes, thank you.

Speaker 2 30:26

Thank you for saying that. Yes, they absolutely are, and we do that for both men and women. Now, because you too, gentlemen, can be a lady, we're not going to change our name. I know it sounds impossibly quaint and old-fashioned, but it has such historicity in our community. We're going to keep it, I think.

Speaker 1 30:44

So there's a really interesting I wanted to bring this up earlier. We went through this in our fraternity and sorority music fraternity sorority Kapi Kapi Si in Talbe, the Sigma, where the brothers are brothers no matter gender and sisters are sisters no matter gender, yeah, and so I wanted to bring that an additional opportunity for y'all to reach out into the local chapters that are up there and coordinate some intern community service opportunities.

Speaker 2 31:20

We actually have an intern right now who's working for us, who's at the School of Music at University of Washington, oh, that's spectacular. And we've had programs off and on. In fact, some of our, we have some. We've got members all the way from 18 to like 100. And we do have you know, sadly to say, they're starting to die off. But we have a number of members who joined when there was still a student group within the program and I mean some of them have been members now for like 70 years.

Speaker 1 31:56

That's amazing.

Speaker 2 31:57

And Francis Walton herself is 95.

Competition Announcement and Instrument Diversity' Simplified Title

Speaker 1 32:01

And she can be seen in the picture. She's a phenomenal cellist who's travels around the world, and all those details will be provided somewhere on farmfordreamscom, as well as all the really awesome creatives that this is going to be, this is going to substantiate through this coming. Oh, man, I'm so I do have. I want to get to your announcement of this competition. When they go to check it out and they'll see, you know, prior competitions and the soloists and chamber music auditions, are they able to, you know, kind of nudge able to subscribe to a newsletter that will announce the acceptance of new, new, the new competition for this next season?

Speaker 2 32:55

Right. So what do you need to do? We don't have a newsletter right now, but we have a free interest form. If you go back on getacceptedcom, go to our landing page and that drop down menu that says start an application, click on it and says free interest form, go ahead and sign up for that and then we're going to feed you information as it becomes available and so that kind of serves sort of as our interest form we probably will have most of the information about.

Speaker 2 33:24

You know, our requirements are going to be very, very similar to last year. There's a couple tweaks where we're trying to, you know, improve our messaging and the in the application fee may be different, and that will be announced also in October, probably, I would say by the mid-October, because November 1, we will launch applications and then application deadline is March 1st of 2024. I want to emphasize to your listeners that we're probably only going to accept 200 applications. That's about as many as we can really manage with our group, because it's all hands on deck. Are you, are you, are you For the adjudication?

Speaker 1 34:16

Right, absolutely, now that 200,. Is that going to be subdivided in a way that only, like five, it's first come, first serve.

Speaker 2 34:25

It's first come first serve. Absolutely. We always get more pianists than anything else. Big surprise, so it usually goes piano the piano top, then strings, then woodwinds, then brass and voice are kind of neck and neck. Marimba and then recorder. But last year we got seven marimba applications.

Speaker 1 34:47

Wow, that's incredible.

Speaker 2 34:49

And it was you know. All of a sudden, we were on the marimba radar.

Speaker 1 34:53

And it's going to be really exciting because my next I have a I think he yeah. From two days from now, I'll be interviewing an amazing composer for Euphonium and marimba. He's a marimba professor, oh, get out of here, yeah yeah, so like like I'm saying, it's all coming full circle.

Speaker 2 35:18

Yeah, and this is one of the things that's kind of unique, I think, about our program is just how many different instruments we accept, and so that means that the Chamber Music Ensemble we do have a restriction about you can only have one large instrument per, and that's just. That's just a.

Speaker 1 35:37

Select one tuba.

Speaker 2 35:39

Yeah, one, one double bass Traveling Because of the traveling and it's it's just problematic and the setup and breakdown, you know, because we're going to multiple schools and all that kind of good stuff. But we do have the ability of accepting some pretty unusual Chamber Music Ensembles. It's not just all string quartets and so, like last year we had, they didn't make it into the finals but I was like really intrigued and so the Chamber Music Ensemble that was bassoon and harp, oh wow, I mean, why not? Because all I can think of is, you know, rolling these instruments into these schools. The kids just go berserk, and especially the kids over in Eastern Washington, you know, they rarely really get to hear high quality musicians. And one of my favorite stories with Fran Walton, when she was first running this program and got this great idea by, because she had been in Norway where she witnessed a program that brought great musicians out into rural areas One of her first tours they ended up performing in an Apple orchard.

Speaker 2 36:50

Wow, that's a great store venue, isn't that great? I don't know what was going on with school there If it hadn't been built yet, or you know they do. In fact, right now we're we're dealing with forest fire smoke from Eastern Washington. They get fires over there quite a bit and I know there was a tour. It was probably about 2014. And they were in an area that had been ravaged by forest fires and the school was smoke, damaged and they had the performance outside.

Speaker 1 37:19

Wow.

Speaker 2 37:20

Yeah, so it's really. These are life changing experiences. I can't overemphasize that.

Speaker 1 37:28

Well, let's keep emphasizing that, yeah yeah. It's really, it's really critical, especially the ideal client and you. Really. I really appreciate you taking the time to look over the questionnaire I developed and really hone in on your ideal candidate for these competitions. Now that 200 is including each ensemble or each participant in the ensemble.

Speaker 2 38:01

No, no, each ensemble. So we would see an ensemble as a unit, not fire people or something like that, yeah.

Speaker 1 38:09

Man, that's. That's. That's phenomenal. Let's see if there's anything I would love to cover before we actually go to our recorded interview. Yeah, that's phenomenal information. I can't wait to see what becomes of this. Even even oh, I forgot to clue you in on something. I just got this this morning, like right before our we jumped on this recording here, I got a message from the director of low brass from China, who is going to be doing an interview.

Speaker 2 38:49

Oh, awesome, I'll tell you. Well, I mean based on. I mean, we get so many Asian applicants, a lot of South Koreans, but a lot of Chinese and G Chen, the saxophonist who played this, you'll have to go online and watch. It's called Cyber Bird Concerto. It's by a Japanese composer. Oh my God, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 39:13

See, it was the composer wrote it as his sister was dying of cancer and her last words were in my next life, I want to be a bird. And so the end of the piece, g Chen took off his mouthpiece and just does a series of bird sounds with circular breathing, and it's just, oh my God. I mean our judges just went berserk. I'm trying, you know I have to because I do not judge at any level, so I have to remain very, very blessed at most times. But G Chen's playing this piece and we're just, all you know, our mouths are a game. So that was what was picked up by NPR live sessions.

Speaker 2 39:56

But we are getting. He's gone back to China and he is now a saxophone professor and that's not a well-known instrument, right, china? So I mean it's all brass, low brass, woodwinds. I mean it will be very interesting to see what comes out of those countries and they love to come to school here. Hopefully we'll be able to still, you know, retain enough of a relationship with China where they'll be able to come to school here, right, because I see it as a complete enrichment of our country, absolutely.

Speaker 1 40:31

Yeah, and if they haven't already read through some of the earlier interviews in the eventual book or document that all these transcriptions are going to be part of, is that euphonium and saxophone are invented by the same person.

Speaker 2 40:51

Oh, aldo Socks, yeah, he invented euphonium too.

Speaker 1 40:55

Yes, he did.

Speaker 2 40:56

How did my husband not know that we were talking about euphonium last night and he's undergraduate degrees in saxophone?

Speaker 1 41:02

Yeah, so it started off as a saxhorn and it developed into Phil Cornel Basso and goes to the Italy side. So it's really fascinating. I just interviewed Marina Bozelli, from Italy, and Matteo Tundo, phenomenal Italian musicians, artists, wow. And we are going over the preeminence and the primer for euphonium in Italy, as it started and launched with Ponchielli's Concerto, and Ponchielli, yeah.

Speaker 2 41:42

Is it a euphonium?

Speaker 1 41:44

Concerto yeah, it's a Concerto porfum, Cornel Basso by Ponchielli. And my friend Drs Henry Howie that was one of his biggest research contributions to the euphonium community is going over Italy and transcribing it all by hand and such like that and bringing it to and now it's published and Marina Bozelli actually performed it in Italy and it's one of the first operas ever known and first euphonium soul is ever known to make that impact. It's the first.

Speaker 2 42:24

Well, I mean, it's a gorgeous instrument and it's really sad that so few people really know anything about, myself included. I'm just kind of trying to come up to the bar here, so yeah.

Speaker 1 42:38

So it's really interesting. In addition to that, we just had our Leonard Falcone, which is an Italian immigrant, who was one of the first ever euphonium players, bring over that into the Michigan area, and then it's been a competition at Blue Lake Arts Festival, I believe Michigan, since 84. And they have a piece called actually have it right here, concert variations by Jan Bach, and I don't know if you can.

Speaker 2 43:14

I love you have to get a closer to that. There you go, okay, oh wow.

Speaker 1 43:19

Okay, and so that right, there would be a phenomenal way to make a difference in it for those reading. And if you worked at that, jan Bach, and you currently have a double bell baritone, that's what it calls for in the piece. If you have a double bell baritone and you double bell, not bill double bell. I did the transcriptions. It's catching my Michigan accent because Michigan oh, there you go.

Speaker 1 43:56

And so that would be a really fantastic way. If you all haven't watched or listened to any of the interviews with Dr Gail Robertson and so many I mean even Dr Adam Fry and many, many, many euphonium artists have a double bell euphonium or double bell baritone. Pick that up and take that on tour.

Speaker 2 44:20

Oh, that would be phenomenal. I'm just going to get out of the sun here a little bit.

Speaker 1 44:24

That's cool. I love that natural sunlight though.

Speaker 2 44:27

Yeah, we don't always get a lot of that. Yeah, I will have to admit right now, as far as the membership is concerned and this is something that we need to really work on, but I'm not on the membership committee so I can't be in charge of everything but we don't have any brass players in our club right now.

Speaker 1 44:45

So that actually brings me a, brings up a great point for you, lynn, for your organization is not only so. How can parents get involved? I was thinking of our community members in general, can they? I know endowments are really awesome, that they could set up through a trust or possibly. I saw some sponsorships available for businesses, or in kind donations or or just funding for your, for the competition itself.

Speaker 2 45:21

Yeah, so we have a handy dandy donate button right on our website. We do quite a bit of writing of grants. That's not my area, but we do have an endowment and I mean you can look at our finance page on the website, assuming it's up to date. We're right on. The one of the reasons why there's not a lot going on in the website right now is we're about to launch a new website, so everything's just sort of in this sort of you know, static period before everything kind of launches and then we'll have more ability. But we have a healthy endowment. We've taken a big old hit in the market, like everybody else has, but we do have a number of local grants that we generally get for culture Office of Arts and Culture through the city of Seattle, fales Family Grants. I don't know if we've ever actually gotten an NEA grant. We need to look into that, but certainly anybody at any time and we will.

Speaker 2 46:28

You know I was. I was president of the organization at one point and I was always advocating for a wide and shallow donor base, not a narrow and deep. So $25 here and there, you know, whatever people can give, we use every dollar very, very carefully. We have a skeletal staff of our executive director, an assistant director, our social media person and a part-time admin, and that's it. The rest of it is all run on volunteer power. So we're penny pinchers have been for a long time and we've got a great finance committee. I think there's three CPAs in our organization, so they're always hammering us. You know to be careful of costs, but yeah, if anybody wants to, and also, along with any kind of donation, we're always looking for volunteers. I myself, personally, over the course of a season for the FWC, manage about 50 volunteers.

Speaker 1 47:36

And how can I I'm sorry to cut you off, but I'm really I want to dive into that. How can someone, through reading this or even watching what's going to be aired on the YouTube and such like that, how can someone who doesn't live in the Seattle or Washington area get involved and volunteer?

Speaker 2 48:00

That might be a little bit difficult, just because you know it is kind of regional specific. Can they share? Share in what way?

Speaker 1 48:11

Share all the information with all.

Speaker 2 48:14

Yeah, I mean we're always trying to get the word out there If they want to volunteer in that way, especially if they're associated with any organizations. We have a growing database that we send out information about. In particular with the FWC, the Francis Welton Competition, we have a very large database of music professors probably around 8,000, that we send out information. But if anybody is involved in, you know, double-read society or whatever group you're part of, you know, because we have a limitation as to how much marketing dollars we can put in, generally speaking, nonprofits should not spend more than about 20% of their budget on marketing. So we're really targeted and we just cannot put, you know, advertisements in every single specific magazine around. We chose Chamber Music America this year to try to really kind of up the ante with our Chamber Music Division. But yeah, and reach out to me awards at LMCCattleorg. I love, obviously, talking to people and getting the word out about this program because it really deserves to be on the national scale of competitions, I think in our country.

Speaker 1 49:44

It's about to hit the international euphonium summit, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 49:48

Whoa, I want to be flooded with euphonium applicants.

Speaker 1 49:52

Well, there's a thing with some euphoniums we tend to have a procrastination element to us. If y'all get this and have read it so far, y'all need to be one of the first ones to send me your solos instead of the last ones, because you may not get one of those 200 slots.

Speaker 2 50:14

Right, right, don't delay. I mean, usually things kind of chug along pretty slowly November, december, but January we start getting hit hard. And that March 1 deadline, you know, sometimes we'll extend it a lot of the 48 hours or something like that, but don't count on it because if we get 200 by March 1, that's it, we're going to shut down.

Speaker 1 50:35

So I'm curious. You said one large instrument. Euphonium is not typically a large instrument. Can you do? There's a growing number of euphonium trios in euphonium quartet.

Speaker 2 50:50

Oh, that would be awesome. Oh, I think we can manage that. I think that you know, and we kind of take things on a case by case basis, we try really hard to, you know, relook at our standards and really, if anybody wants to, you know, reach out to me and say is this ensemble okay, Please do. And then we'll talk about it and we'll talk about how we could really, you know, work that on a tour. I mean, a low brass quintet would be awesome.

Speaker 2 51:23

And there's going to be some larger instruments there. We're going to try to make it work as much as we can, because at the end of the day, it's about taking those instruments into the schools and have the kids lose their cotton pick in minds.

Speaker 1 51:37

I wonder if we can get you all to be a sponsor.

Speaker 2 51:40

Oh, great idea, Nicholas. That's a really great idea because I keep thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to like because I do one of the or.

Speaker 1 51:49

Enterprise, because Enterprise has those card weekends? Yeah, we've tried Enterprise Budget.

Speaker 2 51:55

Yeah, we tried all of the big guys. None of them will do it and it hurts had something. But we yeah, that's a long story we had a bad situation with hurts, so I'm sorry, hurts people. Reach out to me if you want to apologize.

Speaker 1 52:11

Okay, we'll take that On that. One of the first quartets that's ever been noted to include euphonium is a quartet that includes a cornet, a alto horn, a small e-flat horn like brass band, a baritone and a traditional baritone and euphonium as the base part of a quartet Quartet, yeah, so yeah, I mean we are just kind of up for all sorts of adventures and that's why we want to remain as flexible as possible.

Speaker 2 52:53

If you read something that sounds like it's really inflexible, reach out to me let's see if we can make it work, because that has been what has happened not just in the Francis Walton competition, but across the board in our programs. I remember the days when we finally started accepting saxophone as an instrument within our public concerts, there were some traditional people that were not happy about it, and now I mean we've had at least four saxophone quartets that have won the Chamber Music Ensemble division. I mean they are just so freaking exciting. The repertoire is great, the sound is fantastic and it's again it's unpacking these old ideas of saxophone as a jazz instrument, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 53:48

Also, I want to emphasize that, as far as accepted repertoire in our competition, we have really, I think, the whole idea of what classical music is now is a much bigger tent, and I really got a sense of it with Tala Rouge, viola Duo that one in 2022. Because there's not a lot of Viola Duo repertoire. So they are actually, they have their own commissioning program Wow and so they're really working hard to find new repertoire, to get new repertoire written. They do a lot of their own arranging and their name Tala means golden in Farsi, because one of the members is of Iranian descent, and Rouge, of course, is red because the other member is Cajun.

Speaker 1 54:46

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 2 54:47

And so they try to pull in Cajun music, in Middle Eastern music. They're doing a program right now where they're trying to do more on Byzantine music because there's a Byzantine collection where they are at Dunbartonokes. And so we do have requirements that you got to hit when you audition, but they loosen up as we get to the finals. The finals you don't have to perform the repertoire that you used in the first rounds. There's still requirements, but especially the chamber ensemble. I think that the requirement is basically at least two pieces that reflect the repertoire of your ensemble. Okay, well, that could just be anything. At case in point, aero saxophone quartet from Michigan was in the finals this year and they played a Jennifer Higdon piece called Bop, which was very, very jazz-oriented. And then once you win and you're committed to the tours, we really loosen things up because we want you to take stuff in the schools. I always see I mean a lot of the kids want to hear a Disney tune. Okay, so we'll start a Disney tune and I call that the gateway drug into the more serious stuff.

Speaker 2 56:13

And Classical King FM loves, you know, thinking outside of the box with their repertoire. They're very much DEI-oriented, they want underrepresented composers of color and women composers, and so we're really trying to push that. This is a classical competition at its heart, but we want you to show us something that you are really super committed to and helps you play at your top level, and that may not only be Bach and Beethoven and Brahms although we love Bach, beethoven and Brahms, we love all the dead white guys but we do want a little bit of everything, so that 20 minutes that you are given in the finals, you get 20 minutes back up First round. There is no time limit. You can play a whole concerto on one of those tracks if you want to Just understand that. The judges the first round judges may not be able to hear the whole.

Speaker 1 57:18

Thing.

Speaker 2 57:19

But when you get to the finals, you have 20 minutes, which is inclusive of any talking you may do. The finals judges, who are hired outside of our organization. They are completely neutral. They cannot have you know whether or not their student made it into the final. They cannot have a student who applied in that year. So we really try to distance everybody as much as possible. They are not only assessing your musical excellence, which is probably top tier if you got into our finals. They are also judging you on your ability to connect with an audience.

Speaker 1 57:58

Communicate.

Speaker 2 57:59

Communicate, and so we have had people who had, like a whole little theme to their program. It was very interesting when we relaunched in 2022, a lot of the finalists talked a lot about how hard the pandemic was, and this piece helped me get through it. You know that sort of thing. Kodak Quartet that won this year. They had a whole sunrise to sunset theme in their pieces. So we love it. We love it. We want to see your personality. This is not. You know, very, very you know strict Opera In a box kind of yeah, although opera is not that way anymore either. You know, we're really trying to connect with people's passion and what they're going to be in their professional careers, and some of them are, you know, already fully launched. This is not necessarily an emerging artist kind of competition, although our two solo winners both of them 20 years old- so do they have to be 20 years old by the time they enter the competition, november 1st?

Speaker 1 59:10

20 years old by yeah.

Speaker 2 59:12

We're very specific and this will change November 1st when we have our applications launched. But I can tell you right now your birthday must be and I have this on a sticky note because I have to remember it all the time your birthday must fall between June 2nd of 1988 and June 1st of 2004. So what that means is that you can apply when you're 19 as long as you turn 20 on the day of the finals. Conversely, you can be 35 on the day of the finals and your birthday can be the next day when you turn 36 and you're still good to go, and when it is so, it's the date of the finals that we base that on.

Speaker 1 1:00:02

That'd be a great birthday gift for yourself. Hint, hint, there you go there you go.

Speaker 1 1:00:10

So I wanted to cover real quick before we hit the record button on the video portion. Dr Gale Robertson I want to kind of cover her background. She's an amazing female composer. She was the arranger for the Tuva Doors at Disney, oh wow. She's been in the studio for 20 years and she has an exceptional studio down at University of Central Arkansas. I think she has around 30 students in her studio. That's awesome and she's a phenomenal jazz musician. Just throwing that out there.

Speaker 2 1:00:52

Yeah, yeah.

Membership Benefits and Updates

Speaker 1 1:00:54

I think as soon as this hits, I would love to. I anticipate a lot of influx in your website, so make sure William Munoz knows that there might be an uptick in traffic, but your membership is there for those that want to join the membership portion. Is it a yearly due or is it quarterly? Is it monthly, yearly?

Speaker 2 1:01:31

yearly.

Speaker 1 1:01:32

And.

Speaker 2 1:01:32

I'm trying to remember what it is right now.

Speaker 2 1:01:35

I think it might be $120 a year. I mean it's really very low. And that gives you, if you are a performing member and we have at large members you know I no longer perform, so I'm technically an at large member so we have people who are just are non-musicians, like the CPAs and everything, who just want to get in there and help us out, and we love them for it. But your membership gives you, if you are a performing member, the opportunity to sign up to perform in one of our venues for those public concerts. So you get that.

Speaker 2 1:02:14

There are a few public concerts that are not free because they're usually lecture concerts, but they're usually really low cost. And, like, we have this really great historian who has joined the club now. He's a retired University of Washington School of Music professor, Larry Starr oh my God, he's hilarious, and so he's been doing lecture recitals for us and it's just a very active, lively group. We usually have at least a couple of kind of social events per year. We have a big fancy pants annual luncheon, which Talerouge Viola do is going to come back and play for us for that. That's awesome, yeah, yeah. And that's another thing about the King FM thing. Sean always wants these people to come back, so Talerouge is going to play for him again when they're here in town, and then they'll get another video out of it.

Speaker 1 1:03:11

So that's incredible. What a prize package. So let's see, I was on the membership application site. It's $25 to apply the general member honorary I applied in like 1995.

Speaker 2 1:03:27

So I don't remember what any of this stuff is anymore.

Speaker 1 1:03:30

And I am looking at all the euphoniums I even listed. It looks like Maybe wait, nope, euphoniums I even listed, yet so is there actually a list of oh? Yeah, there's an extensive list.

Speaker 2 1:03:49

I didn't even know that. Yeah, add euphonium.

Speaker 1 1:03:52

Yeah, add euphonium please, because there's going to be.

Speaker 2 1:03:56

Wow that other brass instruments are on there. I'm going to have to look at that.

Speaker 1 1:04:02

Let's see, trombone is on there, not tuba, which is interesting. Oh no, we want tuba in there. No trumpet, what yeah? No trumpet.

Speaker 2 1:04:13

No, french horn.

Speaker 1 1:04:15

French horn is on there and trombone is on there. No, english horn is not brass instrument. Let's see. Yeah, only French horn and trombone. That's odd, wow.

Speaker 2 1:04:31

Well, I'll go, I'll tell my ED about that, because that's very strange.

Speaker 1 1:04:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:04:38

We have a member right now that plays Gamelan. I mean, come on, oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we should just say there's an amazing professor, One of my theory professors.

Speaker 1 1:04:55

it's really fascinating to bring up Gamelan. I stayed in Indonesia for two months and I learned the entire language. Oh, wow, and so you bring it up. Gamelan brings me back that way. And then my professor of mine at Northern Arizona University, bruce Ryeprich, percussion slash. He had a fascination with gongs all over the world and Gamelans, so it was really fascinating.

Speaker 2 1:05:33

I just popped out to look at our page. Where was it that you saw that, was it?

Speaker 1 1:05:38

under the no, you have to click on the membership here. I'll send you the link. That link.

Speaker 2 1:05:46

Oh, it's the application. Yes, oh yeah, that needs to be updated. How weird. Okay, I'll look at that later.

Speaker 1 1:05:53

Cool, at least I got you the link, so I need to ask you how to pronounce your last name.

Speaker 2 1:06:01

So mule like the animal, okay, and then, like Eisenhower, ignore the H muleisen.

Speaker 1 1:06:09

Muleisen yeah.

Speaker 2 1:06:11

The H throws everybody off because it's before the L. So people like to say muleisen Eisen, wutze Deutchenamen you got one, you got Wutze Deutchenamen too. Hoster von Heide, yes, I have to tell you, since we're not recording yet, right? We're on the order, though I'll just let you know that my Facebook page is public because I use it so much and so I get constant friend requests from some. They're always widowed vets, so when I saw you were a vet, I was like widowed vets Right.

Speaker 2 1:06:56

You are godly and just want to love you and I thought, oh, who is this? No, I don't know. I went, but I happened to look at your page and I was like what a wait, a minute, something different. It worked out really well, because normally I just delete, delete, delete all your requests.

Speaker 1 1:07:15

I'm really honored that you had accepted my request and then we're able to do this now, because it's such a there's so many words you can put in that whole pause right there. That is just beyond amazing that we're able to work this out. And come on to this.

Speaker 2 1:07:40

And you caught me just right before the tours because my first tour people are coming two weeks from tomorrow, so I am in crunch time, but this is working out great. I am absolutely delighted to be able to do this. This is great.

Speaker 1 1:07:54

So let's go to the recording session now. Man, this is going to be phenomenal. Recording in progress. Hey everybody, welcome back to the International Euphonium Summit. I'm Nicholas Huffdorf on Heidi, and this is the awesome Lynn Bielhine. And if you haven't already been privy to the transcripts yet, I want to encourage you, we want to encourage you to Wow, and our of? Well, there's tons of words. I don't even know how many words it actually recorded of our pre-video recording interview, but the information, as with every interview that we have have had contributed by amazing artists, composers, conductors and now competitions and organizations that make an impact. Welcome to the chair of the Francis Walton competition of the ladies music club of Seattle, lynn Muleisen. Welcome.

Speaker 2 1:09:07

Hello, hello, euphonium players, I am delighted to be here, thank you.

Seattle Ladies' Music Club Competition

Speaker 1 1:09:13

Wow, fantastic interview. I haven't gotten a chance to answer your email. It's just your email to get a very, very, very large file of interviews. I mean, it's just really gold y'all to be able to get that access. If you're a parent, if you're a someone who has someone involved in music anywhere, regardless if you're a Euphonium player, euphonium artist or music member globally, you'll want to get those transcripts. And hoping to have all those transcripts somehow not through Google Translate, thankfully sometime here in the future. So be, yeah, y'all get access. You're not going to. I mean, come on free with an email, you get all that access. Anyway, that's the last. Well, there may be more plunge for that soon enough, but let's go ahead and get started with this live recording here of your organization and what y'all do. And so let's you have the floor, Ms Lynn Muleisen, to share this Francis Walton competition, the organization, the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle, when you started it and where you're at now.

Speaker 2 1:10:40

Okay, all right. Well, I love to talk about this organization. So our umbrella organization over all of our programs, which is inclusive of the Francis Walton competition, is the Ladies' Music Club of Seattle. We have a quaint, old-fashioned name because we were founded in 1891 by a group of women who were trying to get classical music started in this rough and tumble pioneer town in 1891. Seattle was kind of a crazy place then, and so they started their own concerts. They started their own with their own performing members, but they also did a concert series that ran from 1900 to 1995, brought in people like Rachmanin, Austin Stravinsky and Marion Anderson and Fritz Kreisler. A whole Italian opera company they brought in with all the sets and the costumes and everything. It was crazy.

Speaker 2 1:11:40

But as the years went on, our organization started to really look at our mission statement, which is fostering classical music in our community through public concerts, awards and education, and they really started, especially about in the 1980s. They started looking at our community. Where are the needs? There began to be cuts within music programs and public schools, so a program called Music and Schools was developed, which is still going on today. We go into Title I schools and provide music education through classical and world music. We have public concerts, which are all free of charge, except for the occasional lecture concert that features our performing members. We have about 150 members total. Many of them are performers. We provide free concerts between 60 free concerts between October and May. We have a huge archives program. We've got a composers group, We've got an opera workshop group and we have the Francis Walton competition and this brings us here now, yes, the Francis Walton competition.

Speaker 2 1:13:01

Francis Walton is a living legend in our area. She's 95 years old, she's a cellist, still playing, a conductor and a composer. She also formed many performing ensembles in this area, both for youths and adults. And she was in Norway at some point, I think maybe in the 1980s, and she bumped into a program in Norway where great classical musicians were brought out to rural areas. And Fran came back and she loves Washington State and in particular Eastern Washington, which tends to be very rural, a lot of agricultural land, and Fran said, huh, this musical club of Seattle has this little scholarship program. At that time it was really just University of Washington School of Music students and she thought let's make that what she called a debut tour. Let's take those young musicians, let's take them all over Eastern Washington. She even had an early concert which was for kids, out in an apple orchard, and she got bitten by the outreach bug and so she grew the program. They started, okay, let's audition kids all throughout Washington State. And then we added Oregon, and then we added California, and then we added Alaska and Idaho and Hawaii and before we knew it we had grown this program quite a bit. Fran stepped down about 1997 and Gail Persine took over the program. There were several different iterations, several different names, but we finally decided to honor Fran herself, so she is our namesake.

Speaker 2 1:14:51

The Francis Welton competition, and it grew up to 2019. We were then auditioning the 19 Western States so Texas, north and West and auditioning ages 20 to 35. At this point it became less about the emerging artists and more about that period of time for a lot of our winners post grad school although you can be 20 years old and apply and in fact, our two solo winners this year, both 20. But we auditioned 20 to 35. We now auditioned brass, woodwinds, strings, piano, voice, marimba and recorder. Thank you, we have two solo winners and one small, or what we're renaming used to be called the small ensemble division. It's now becoming the chamber music ensemble division and we are now this is a big, big announcement we are going to quintets. So we we accept duos, trios, quartets and quintets now.

Speaker 1 1:16:05

So I'm going to. I'm going to pause you right there because a lot of this information is on the recording, so you want to get that transcript and you you'd mentioned something that I want to do a quick tangent. And why we have this amazing competition at the forefront of the International Euphonium Summit is that year when they started this outreach and this growth 1997, they had a euphonium win the competition. They've had three to euphonium winners, three euphonium participants at least, but Daniel, health staff and Jason Gilliam Daniel in 1997 and Jason in 2002, to really give our instrument and name in a start, with this symbiotic relationship.

Francis Walton Competition Updates and Details

Speaker 2 1:16:57

Yes, yes, and in fact I remember quite clearly I wasn't involved, I was in the club and I was doing other things, but I remember very clearly that euphonium winner in 2002. Because I I'm an old singer and I wasn't really familiar with the instrument and I fell in love with it. I thought this is a great and he was adorable. I think he was a preacher's kid and he just knew how to talk to people and he was preaching the gospel of euphonium and I believe he went on our Eastern Washington tour and I just thought how great is this? He's just. He's just, you know, planting the seed, with all these kids going into the schools who go home to mom and dad and say, mom, dad, I want to play euphonium and mom and dad go. What Mind blown. So, yes, we absolutely accept euphonium and and in fact I we had a really big uptick in brass applications overall in 2022.

Speaker 2 1:18:04

So we shut down, like everybody else did during the pandemic, and we took a two season period to just kind of completely retool the program and see what, what needed to be tweaked as far as our messaging and what we realized. As the previous to the pandemic we had a category that was just wins and we just put woodwinds and brass in the same category. So what we decided to do was split that, because what I noticed is that we really weren't having very many brass applicants and and. So when we split it and made it very specific so when you go to our site on get acceptedcom and you go to our landing page and you go over to the left and hit a little drop down menu, that's all those links will be listed below to everyone that's watching.

Speaker 2 1:18:53

You will see that all you have to do is go to your instrument group requirements. You don't have to read through everybody else's. You just go to the brass and you'll find out all the information that you need. We will be launching applications on November 1. So right now, our landing page reflects last year's application process, but it's going to be very, very similar, so let's cover the age requirements really quick 20 to 35.

Speaker 2 1:19:21

Can you go into that right there? Yeah, and so you need to be at least 20 years old on the day of our finals, and no older than 35. So that means that your birth date has to fall between June 2 of 1988 and June 1 of 2004. And, in fact, when you set up your account on get accepted, you have to put your birth date in there. So if you do not qualify, you will not be able to complete the application.

Speaker 1 1:20:00

You can join as a member.

Speaker 2 1:20:02

Yeah, yes, absolutely so. Membership in Ladies' Musical Club of Seattle. You know it's something that you want to be in the greater Puget Sound area. We do have people as far north as probably Bellingham, which is maybe 100 miles north, and all the way down in Olympia, which is maybe 75 miles south, and people out on the San Juan Islands that come in. But, yes, you can go to lmccattleorg Links below, links below and go to our membership information and find out about that, and we accept both men and women into our membership. So, yes, gentlemen, you too can be a lady, and we have a lot of men in our club now, which is great, it's just fantastic.

Speaker 1 1:20:55

So let's cover that competition aspect and I want to dive into what you let those that are reading the transcripts get to understand the picture of and the scape of what is in. Who's in the picture?

Speaker 2 1:21:14

We have Francis Walton, oh yeah, this is our 20-23 winners. So you will see me in a bright orange jacket and Fran, who's seated in a teal sweater, 95 years old and to sharp his attack. Oh my gosh, she's just sharp as a tack.

Speaker 1 1:21:33

And then the one who's right behind her is.

Speaker 2 1:21:37

Sean McClain. He is the host of our local classical radio stations program called Northwest Focus Live. So the classical King FM 98.1 is one of America's premier classical radio stations. It's a powerhouse in our region. It's very supportive of our programs. They love us because we provide them with really great performers and they're also very, very supportive of local musicians and musical ensembles. They're awesome, awesome.

Speaker 2 1:22:15

So Sean is right there in the middle and he is the host of, as I said, northwest Focus Live, and playing on that radio show is part of the prize package for the Francis Walton competition winners and, as we talked earlier, I can't understate the power of this part of the prize package because when you play live, they will produce a very high-end video. They have, I think, at least three cameras, including a steady cam. They produce a beautiful video which they also allow you to retake anything that you weren't happy with in the live performance and they'll slice it in. It's really super slick and they upload that to their YouTube channel. Kingorg is their website and you can find their YouTube channel I think it's probably under classical King FM 98.

Speaker 1 1:23:14

All links will be down below.

Speaker 2 1:23:16

Yeah, yeah, and you will see some of these videos. Now. Not only will you have complete free access to that video to use in any way you want, but King also submits them to National Public Radio's NPR live sessions. Oh, here that NPR, npr this goes not only national, it goes international. And one of our solo winners last year, ji Chen Zhang, saxophonist his beautiful video was picked up by NPR live sessions and proclaimed an artist to watch, so it's a super powerful part of our prize package.

Speaker 1 1:24:00

Oh, you all like to be an artist, to watch Really. Come on, come on Really.

Speaker 2 1:24:08

It's awesome. It really is, and Sean is a super smart musician himself. He is unfailingly generous and really determined to have to give everybody every chance to feel as comfortable as possible with their, with their performance, and sometimes this is really fun. This will happen this year. King FM loves our, our winners, so much that sometimes they use these broadcasts as donor events. So one of our broadcasts this year in September will be a donor event, which is always kind of gives a little bit more buzz in the studio when you have a live audience, so it's really fun.

Speaker 1 1:24:48

That's amazing. So I'm curious does the competition allow and accept professionals who are not in the audience, Professionals who in that age bracket?

Speaker 2 1:24:58

Absolutely, you do not need to be in school. We have had winners that are full fledged professionals, for instance, the small ensemble or the chamber music ensemble that won in 2022. Talarouge Viola duo, who are featured in the Chamber Music America magazine for summer full fledged professionals, they're out. They've not only play in their duo, but they both have other ensembles that they play in, so we've had music professors win.

Speaker 1 1:25:33

So you need to bring your egg game y'all. So this, and that's an understatement, and and it's not one to be taken lightly for this competition, if you haven't read, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll show the hand a little bit for those that didn't get the transcripts just yet. Only 200 applicants, y'all, I'm wondering. I in that, that's, that's, that's really competitive. And if you, when you bring your egg game, everyone else is going to bring their egg game, or oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:26:10

You know, and it's really intriguing that they have opened up this competition so much to where you know, I got wind of it and from another euphonium artist, william Lomb. His video review of the competition was so well done and he spoke so highly and I didn't realize a lot of these competitions exist for you know, I want to showcase these competitions for student, future and current euphonium artists who want to see, or need to see, a presentation. They're family members. Hey, there's some really nice, really exquisite opportunities for audience and just musicians in general. Wow, what a Jen.

Speaker 2 1:27:07

I have to say William Lomb. He was a finalist. He was our youngest finalist in 2022. And he was such a generous competitor. One of the things we really try to make sure is that when people make it to the finals you know our organization is run mostly by performers or retired performers. We know what it's like to compete. It's already hard enough, so we're going to try to do our best to make it as positive an experience as possible for you and and it really showed in the spirit of a competitor like William, because he was super generous with all of you know his competitors, because when you get to the finals, you're all auditioning against each other, all the different groups you know.

Speaker 2 1:27:55

In 2022, when William was there, we had euphonium, french horn, clarinet, flute, cello, violin, viola, singer, marimba. It's kind of crazy, but it's also really exciting. And what we found with a lot of our finalists they get to know each other. They jump into an Uber and run down to the space needle or all you know, all of the the touristy sites around here. We've had people who have gotten to know each other in the finals and re-auditioned as a chamber music ensemble together. Oh, phenomenal.

Speaker 2 1:28:31

Oh yeah, it's so much fun. So that's what we want. We want to be the friendly competition that really supports our finalists.

Speaker 1 1:28:40

So just FYI, the first if you need to get the transcripts, because we dive really deep into all this in in like fine tooth and comb is blind auditions all the way up to the finals round audition to determine the winner. That finals round is not a blind audition, no, but everything else before that is.

Speaker 2 1:29:06

And we really want to emphasize because this and we're trying to change a little bit of our, our messaging to make it clear we had a lot of confusion. People thought that they could submit videos. You cannot, because it is blind, and so audio only. I do know that there were some people that were able to, you know, take tracks off of video that they really liked and to be able to submit that. I want to to really encourage your listeners if you're going to apply, make sure you get just as high quality a recording as you possibly can. You know, don't let the dog bark in the background. We've kind of heard it all and we're not going to. We're not going to, you know, cut you down because of that, but you want to make sure that you show yourself at your very, very best.

Speaker 1 1:29:55

One thing we didn't cover in the in the transcripts is do you provide critiques back to the auditioners who didn't advance into the final round?

Speaker 2 1:30:05

We don't. We we did it one time. Unfortunately, we are getting so many applications that we can't can't quite manage that. Certainly, if people you know want to get some feedback, they can always contact me and I can see if I can, you know, find a few things for them, and certainly there's. Sometimes there's really simple things like just not following the directions. Although we're even pretty liberal about that, we don't, we don't cut people immediately because they didn't follow the directions.

Speaker 1 1:30:38

So is there a way to like upgrade your come? Maybe this is a really cool add on into your competition. Just thinking outside the box on this video right here is is there an opportunity for an artist or for those that are going to be competing this November to add on an element of, like a certain fee to get that feedback for the semi final round?

Speaker 2 1:31:10

Yeah, I probably not. We want to be really careful about that because there are competitions that have come under a lot of criticism because they have add on fees. There's some competitions where you have to. If you're chosen as a finalist, you have to pay an additional fee, and you know we're trying really hard to be up above board and I don't I don't need to be criticizing any particular competition out there, but we're trying really hard to make sure that we're very clear.

Speaker 2 1:31:41

We are a nonprofit. We are not. We take every penny of the application. The portion of the application fee that we get goes right back into our program. We don't get the whole application fee because we have to pay, get accepted for for that service, because we actually do the whole adjudication of the first rounds through get accepted. It's really slick, nice program for us. But yeah, these are things that we're always trying on for size and seeing what we can do in in the future. If we do start being able to manage some comments back, I I don't think we would add another fee on top of that. It would be reflected in the first fee, because a part of that too is just. You know, trying to manage multiple fees would also be very difficult.

Speaker 2 1:32:35

But right now, we just made the choice because in 2022, when we launched after our two year pandemic hiatus, we got more than twice the number of applicants that we'd ever gotten before, and that was because we were much more targeted with our marketing and, I think, because we streamlined the application process, so it was much easier and we just went phew, through the roof. Well, my committee, you know, were like excited and wanted to kill me at the same time, because we had oh my God, you know what are we going to do? So it was really all hands on deck. And that's when we decided that the management of trying to, you know, because we didn't want just straight comments to go to the applicant without some fine tuning, you know, because we are not in the business to critique people in a harsh way. That's not what we're about. So we wanted to make sure that if we do that, it's really very carefully used, so that, so that people don't just have their spirits wiped out. So that's what we chose to do.

Speaker 2 1:33:49

Now We'll see for the future if we can do that, because I know that that's a real value add for anybody, and certainly for the finalists they get PDFs of. We usually have five judges. We like to have an uneven number, so we have a deal breaker, because, man, I would not want to have to judge this thing, because once people get to the finals they're all so good and I'm so glad. I don't judge because I fall in love with everybody and I want everybody to win. But we give PDFs of all the judges comments to, you know, to each of the finalists. They get those and so those are really a value add for them.

Speaker 1 1:34:31

That's amazing. So let's dive into. We didn't, we weren't with it. We clear perhaps in the transcripts and like to reiterate the repertoire for, especially with you phoning as a focus, the repertoire that is kind of required, the required repertoire, rather, for you phoning specifically, or for any instrument, is something that is a considered a staple for the instrument, correct.

Speaker 2 1:35:07

Yes, but we also accept arrangements, you know, especially for those instruments that don't necessarily have just a ton of repertoire. You know, the pianists, I mean, come on, they have ridiculous. And the singers and the string players. So there are, some of our instruments don't have just a heap of repertoire. So we do allow arrangements and I would think for you phonium, there would be like a ton of it.

Requirements and Details for Music Competition

Speaker 2 1:35:36

You know. So that's absolutely acceptable as long as it follows the requirements, which are are mostly historical era based. So I mean, for instance, I've got it right in front of me here. So if you have to record four tracks, there's no time limit to the tracks. So just be aware that the judges may not have enough time to hear the entirety of it. But the track one is from Baroque, classical or romantic periods, so that gives you a lot of wiggle room.

Speaker 1 1:36:09

So that includes Ponkelli's. Yeah, there you go. And then there's also the Concerto for Phil Cornel Basso, transcribed by Dr Henry Howie, out as Sam Houston State University good friend of ours.

Speaker 2 1:36:24

Wonderful. And then track two, contemporary piece by a living composer or composed no earlier than 1950. Okay, so, track three, a piece of your choice, and track four, an accompanied piece. And these and I will emphasize that these requirements were written in concert with University of Washington School of Music, brass faculty. So, and then we have a few little things. You know. Of course you can use piano accompaniment. We provide Yamaha. Well, this last two years, yamaha nine foot CFX. So we have a concert grand, but that's that's. Let's go for the finals, yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 1:37:11

Let's cover that. They do not. They do not provide a piano accompaniment. However you need to have. If your solo is needing an accompaniment in the first couple rounds here, you need to provide that your cost, if I was, if I'm not mistaken and then in the finals round you have to have your own accompaniment. However, they do have a really nice list of pianists who are willing to accompany you and you have to work those fees out yourself. And these are all. It's all. It's all in the transcripts. If you get the download or the or the eventual book and however, that piano will be provided or reimbursed. Not reimbursed They'll be. Yeah, go for it For final.

Speaker 2 1:38:04

So for if you win, if you win, you will play a winners concert the day after the auditions and we will pay your accompanist for the winners concert for the winners concert, so that's after the finals round and after every other round.

Speaker 1 1:38:23

So you're going to be out of pocket for that specifically and for, for right now, the travel expenses to get to the Seattle area for the competition.

Speaker 2 1:38:36

However, there is I can tell you about. So if you, if you get into the finals, you do have to come out on your own dime. However, there is a finalists award package. You will, you will receive $250 at the end of the day of the of the finals. Also, we provide first come, first serve home stays with our members and friends of our, of our program, and I have to emphasize if you are chosen as a finalist, don't wait around, get in on one of those home stays, because we did have a couple people who waited too long and we didn't have anybody else to put them up with, but they worked it out. You also get professional photography and videography of your audition and, if you win, also of the winners concert, and these are really well done.

Speaker 2 1:39:33

photography and videography by William Munoz are wonderful social media guy who happens to have his doctorate in trumpet and so he really understands the needs of the of the high quality really good quality, and everything that we do during the finals weekend is live streamed, so your mom and dad, your boyfriend, girlfriend whoever will be able to watch it wherever they are in the world.

Speaker 2 1:40:03

And there's one other oh, and also one other thing that we do for our finalists that I think is really helpful the day before the auditions, we have a rehearsal day in the audition space, which is a church here just right across the street from the University of Washington campus. It's beautiful, and so you will have the opportunity again. You got to sign up fast. If you want to come in a day early, you'll have the opportunity to get used to the space and figure out what's going on acoustically. It's really a beautiful acoustic space. We also take down all of your setup needs. That helps us really run a super efficient audition day, and we have stage managers that set up and break down everything, and so if we get that information from from our finalist the day before, it allows everything to really run on time super smoothly.

Speaker 1 1:41:00

And then for those who win, the price.

Speaker 2 1:41:05

Okay, the price and I do want it before I go to the really good stuff.

Speaker 2 1:41:09

I would just want to make sure that I emphasize with your applicants that we, we do not allow electronic instruments or electronic enhancements. Okay, and we also do not allow prepared piano, because I mean, it's not that we have anything against John Cage. We think he's super groovy, we love extended techniques, but we have to be careful of this instrument because we rent it and we can't be sticking stuff down in between the strings, doing odd things. No slapping the strings either. No, slap. Well, we're kind of sort of let the string slapping is not too bad because that's not going to really damage anything.

Speaker 1 1:41:50

So yeah, so so I kind of want to. You said extended techniques and that's a somewhat unfamiliar term, unfamiliar term especially with our beginner artists who are looking at making this a career, or even the the parent or a loved one. Extended techniques for euphonium would also be considered multi phonics or popping or slapping of the instrument, stuff like that. That's not really considered part of the classical music repertoire. So keep in mind when, when the competition is specific on the requirements to take that, in taking that as a massive initiative, to be firm with that, not too wild. So if you need to ask about a certain piece or elements of a piece or performance, put a, put a comment below or reach out to awards at LMC Seattle, seattleorg.

Speaker 2 1:43:05

Yeah, we we're pretty liberal with with extended techniques. We we kind of love them, we really do. We have had lots of people use extended techniques the flutist. We had a flu trio in the Chamber Music Ensemble finalists this year and they did a lot of extended techniques and we love it. So you, we just can't do anything with the piano. That's going to be invasive of the in in fight. You can do whatever you want with your own instrument. We've had stomping and slapping and whistling and singing through the flute and I mean we've we've kind of seen it all. So we're really liberal about that because that those are very exciting pieces to take in to outreach tours. We love it.

Speaker 1 1:43:56

So and so let's go into that outreach.

Speaker 2 1:44:00

Okay, so here's the prize package. How's that?

Speaker 1 1:44:03

Yeah, that, that's that. Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 2 1:44:07

So the prize package is so we have a solo category I mean solo division, I should say and a Chamber Music division. We choose two winners in the solo and one in the Chamber Music Ensemble. Each of the two solo members will receive $3,500. At the end of their successful outreach tour, which I'll talk about more, Each member of the winning Chamber Music Ensemble will receive $3,500. So that means a duo $7,000, a trio $10,500, a quartet $14,000, and now quintet $17,500.

Speaker 1 1:44:56

To be euphonium quartet or euphonium quartet. Euphonium trio, euphonium duo, euphonium marimba duo hey low brass ensembles.

Speaker 2 1:45:07

Yes, yes, yes, please. All of the above and you'll come back to Seattle in September. We have outreach tours. We have two of them. One of them will be the two solo winners and the other one will be the Chamber Music Ensemble. One of those tours goes all the way in Eastern Washington. It's a very rural tour. It goes all the way from Yakima up to the Canadian border. The other tour stays in the Puget Sound region. We do one run out to a little town called Raymond, but most of it is fairly urban.

Speaker 2 1:45:44

We go into schools K through 12. We try mostly to go to Title I schools that are underserved with music education. It's crazy fun. It's usually the first week of school. It's a really great opportunity not only to inspire any of the music students, but we do a lot of full school assemblies. We talk about collaboration and discipline and all those good things that music can give us Critical thinking. The kids lose their minds. I mean they just love it. It's really fun.

Speaker 2 1:46:26

We usually do about usually three public concerts as well per tour. One of the public concerts on my tour in the Puget Sound region is going to be in this really cool Northwest focused art museum. That's going to be kind of our artsy, fartsy performance. And then, really great opportunity, you'll play live on Classical King FM 98.1, northwest focused live, and you'll get that incredible video and an opportunity to be heard literally all over the world and your listeners can. If they want to get a taste of it, they can go to kingorg and live stream the program. And then we'll be on Friday nights, on Friday nights at 7pm Pacific time. And actually, if you want to hear our winners, our two solo winners Yvette Kraft, violinist and.

Speaker 2 1:47:23

Grace, that will be on, and Gracie Potter Trombone will be on Northwest focused live on Friday, september 8th, 7pm Pacific time.

Speaker 1 1:47:38

We're going to provide those links below because it's going to be a much later date.

Speaker 2 1:47:45

Oh, it's going to be after. Yes, it's going to be after, okay.

Speaker 1 1:47:49

But that's fine because, it's going to be recorded and be able to review correct.

Speaker 2 1:47:55

I'm not sure if they're uploading those videos. I mean, they will eventually upload the professional video, but that sometimes can take a couple months. And then on the 15th the winning chamber music ensemble, kodak String Quartet, who is currently in residence at the Manus School of Music, will be playing. And it's just a. I just can't underscore enough the importance of this and it's a great prize package and you know we're really all about that.

Speaker 2 1:48:31

At the end of the day, that outreach tour, we're wanting to change hearts and minds, of course in the schools, but also the hearts and minds of our winning musicians. We want them to get the outreach bug and a lot of our former winners have and have created their own outreach program. In fact, if I can get a shout out to two of our former winners, dana Jackson, bessunist and Sophie Bear, daniel, and they started a music festival up in the San Juan Islands, which is north of here it's just absolutely beautiful area and they put in an outreach component because out on the islands, even though there's some pretty wealthy people that live out there, there are, you know, service industry people who live there with their kids and they don't get these kind of opportunities in the schools to hear these great musicians. So it's very it's really so gratifying to see our former winners get out there and do a lot of outreach and let's cover that a little bit more.

Speaker 1 1:49:43

You have spoken in our transcripts before. This is that some former winners have actually come back as a chamber music ensemble.

Speaker 2 1:49:54

Yeah, yeah and I will. I will also mention that you can actually, if you win as a soloist, you can reapply as a chamber music ensemble, wow. And so one of our examples was two of our solo winners who went on a tour together. It was a soprano and a violist, I think, and their collaborative pianist and we do pay the collaborative pianist for the tour, so you're not out any money there. They, they loved each other so much during the tour, they formed their own little chamber music group and re-auditioned. So it's an opportunity for you to get to know people too, and we just never know what's what's going to develop within all of these relationships.

Speaker 1 1:50:50

That's really awesome because that leads us right into that next question is what three key attributes does your organization find common among those who are in the finals and you're mentioning especially in the, the transcriptions about hopping in the Ubers and stuff like that together and going down?

Speaker 2 1:51:12

Yeah, it's really fun. I mean I have. I just have a few notes here. I just want to make sure that I so you know.

Speaker 2 1:51:20

Number one, of course, is the superior musicianship, and by the time people get into the finals they're usually top tier performers. But we also put a very high value now and encourage our finals judges to assess speaking ability, engagement with the audience, passion for their particular instrument. This is where a euphonium player has a real advantage, because you know not to diss our fabulous pianist, because we get ridiculously fabulous pianist, but everybody knows piano. When we have a euphonium player or one of the, you know the Maremba category was not added until you know, just a couple of years before the pandemic hit this is an opportunity for, within the context of your audition, to really talk about your instrument and and and to promote it and to advocate for it. So during the finals, you get 20 minutes and that's inclusive of any speaking you might do. So we now have and this is not necessarily required, but we have had finalists who kind of have a little theme with their program, people who auditioned in 2022, because that was the first in-person event that our entire organization had had since the pandemic. People talked about. This piece really meant something to me during the pandemic. This really got me through. I love my instrument because of this. That's something that, if you can incorporate that into your great music making, that's a powerhouse audition when our you know, our our finals judges do not.

Speaker 2 1:53:13

We do not require scores during the finals. You don't have to provide scores, and we do that for several reasons, and one of them is because we want the finals judges experience to be really organic, not about the notes on the page. It's about how much hard are you putting into this. You know you're going to give a great performance, or you probably wouldn't have gotten into the finals. So how can you take it to the next level? What can you show? That's that makes the judges go. That's the person I want to see go into that, that little.

Speaker 2 1:53:49

You know kindergarten class in in Shalam Washington. You know that that's what we're looking for. So you want to push yourself and also really think about your programming. We are very, very accepting with new music. We don't make this a requirement, but it's always a great thing to see underrepresented composers of color and women and LGBTQ plus represented in your program. Do it. Do it. Make sure it's great music, of course, and it's going to be something that you can play really well, but all of those things can really help push you past. You know just the general level of ridiculous excellence which we tend to have in our finals Right tune it up just a notch.

Speaker 2 1:54:40

Yeah, just a notch. And I gave this example before we started recording of Ji Chen Zhang, saxophonist. He's now teaching back in China and he was one of the solo winners in 2022. And he played an extraordinary piece by a Japanese composer called Cyber Bird Concerto, and it was written by a composer who was dealing with the death of his sister, whose last words were in my next life, I want to be a bird. So at the end of this piece, ji Chen takes off his mouthpiece and he does a whole series of bird calls which could you know, could be kind of cheesy. It was not, it was technically extraordinary, but he is also an incredibly emotive player. I mean, the emotion was just flowing out of him. I'm getting chills just thinking about it and he was really really super good. You know, it was just amazing.

Speaker 2 1:55:40

And then Tolaruj Viola duo, who won in 2022. They had such a great repertoire. I mean some of it. They did a Beethoven piece, but they did a Montserran arrangement. They had something by Caroline Shaw you know who's? You know a new composer who won the Pulitzer a few years ago. I mean it was really interesting stuff. So don't phone it in, put yourself in. I loved.

Speaker 2 1:56:12

You referred to William Loom, who was our euphonium finalist in 2022. And he mentioned in this video that we used for most of the time. I'll put a link below to that. Yeah, yeah, william was just an awesome guy, although he decided to go to UNT instead of my alma mater, jacob's School of Music, for his master's but I'll forgive him. But he mentioned that he felt that being in the finals pushed him to the next level and that really pushed him to up his game and I think that's another thing. That's a real win-win for our competition If that really helps people. You know whether or not you win and William didn't, but we hope he comes back and re-auditions because we want to see how he develops, because he was awesome.

Music and Art Impact Exploration

Speaker 1 1:57:12

That's really awesome and so covering for our beginner artists who and their parents, who are listening, watching, reading, perhaps a lot of, maybe even some high school parents and high school artists, don't he heard something just right there or read something? She said Pulitzer Prize composer. So for a lot of the industry, they may not know that Pulitzers can be awarded to composers and musicians, which is amazing, just. I mean, there's so many opportunities and hopefully I'll cover a significant amount with all these amazing interviews on this International Euphonium Summit this year, if not the year's following and what's going to be happening. I can't wait for y'all to like, like, get that bug for outreach, get that bug to share, like, follow, subscribe to not only the Euphonium Summit channel but to the Francis Walton Competition and the Ladies Musical Club of Seattle's channel and all those that are participating.

Speaker 1 1:58:36

We really want to equip future and current Euphonium artists, musicians alike, really with a roadmap for a successful dream life and their mission. Oh boy, howdy y'all. I hope you see the passion in her eyes, as well as mine and everyone who is involved with this amazing event, as, oh, it's just really inspiring to me. If it is inspiring to you, please make a difference, make an impact and I did want to give a shout out to your organization, not only accepting male counterparts, but you're opening up the opportunity to join the ranks if you want to. Or and we do cover this in the transcripts, transcripts is if you are passionate and share that same passion as us and making a difference and an impact, and you perhaps you don't even have a student artist, or you may know of one, or want to honor someone and don't know where to start, maybe with an endowment or whatever.

Speaker 1 1:59:56

Hit this organization up. They're one of several organizations, but that's the whole. Ideal of this summit is to showcase each and every organization, each and every professor, artist, each and every studio, each and every composer, to showcase their passion. You see, feel the intentional purpose to make that impact. I hope you, I certainly, from the bottom of my heart, hope you understand and feel that. And if you feel a connection with Lynn and with the ladies musical club of Seattle from this podcast, whether it's written, whether it's video, whether it's podcast or covered somewhere in some form, and you want to make a difference, here's how.

Speaker 2 2:00:58

Wow, thank you so much, nicholas, and I just want to piggyback on something you were talking about with with new music and really encourage your listeners, your euphonium players, you know, if you feel like there's not enough repertoire out there for your instrument, get to know composers. I happen to be married to one, so and we have interviewed.

Speaker 1 2:01:20

so so far, and I watched the calm. But yes, exactly, You're hubby.

Speaker 2 2:01:26

Yeah start working on on finding a way to partner with a composer who listens to you, who is willing to be educated about how your instrument works so that they can write the best way possible, especially for your, your experience yourself, for our new artists and overall, is getting composer to listen to your technique, your ability and even I am I'm sure your hubby prescribes to this.

Speaker 1 2:01:59

ideation and intention is maybe get a composer to write a one notch up, to challenge you until learning something.

Speaker 2 2:02:09

Yeah, absolutely. And you know one of the things again, I talk about Talerouge Villa duo. Just because they, you know you can go to their website. I think it's just Talerougecom.

Speaker 2 2:02:21

We'll put it below yeah they have their own commissioning program because there isn't a lot of viola duo repertoire out there and so they're pushing. I mean what an amazing thing I mean it's. It's such a long haul. Look at, you know, their doing things that are helping their career right now, but they're also planting the seas which will encourage that particular ensemble to be able to grow and develop well past when they're on this earth If they leave behind a particular repertoire. That is so exciting.

Speaker 2 2:02:49

I have to just give a shout out to you know, one of my favorite people on earth, dale Warland, who had the Dale Warland singers in the Twin Cities. He's a perfect example of this. He, I think, and he was very committed to new choral works and I think within his tenure how many years it was he commissioned like 250 pieces. I mean this is the kind of thing that we need so desperately, because you know the great works of the old dead white guys. They're great, I'm all for them, I love all of them, but we need to keep pushing our art forward.

Speaker 2 2:03:41

Classical music tent is much larger and much more diverse than it's ever been before. I love it when we have pieces that are incorporate jazz, that incorporate world music, that incorporate Cajun music, middle Eastern music, whatever you know it can be in that classical music tent and it will just broaden our audiences. That's what we want, because that's also part of what we do. It's not just about producing great musicians and everything. When we go into the schools we know that most of those kids are not going to go into music, but we're also building audiences. I was one of those kids. I grew up in a little teeny town in Northern California that was kind of an arts desert, but somehow my mom managed to take me to a concert, to here, and it flipped a switch in my head. I was raised with country western music, but I wanted to listen to this music. There's always those kids out in the assembly. You see little light bulbs go on over their head. Maybe those will be the people that will then be the audiences in the future.

Speaker 1 2:04:57

So I didn't cover your bio. Actually we went straight into. So just let me all know as an audience is. Her background is a retired singer who completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Cal State, chico. Master of Voice degree at Jacob School of Music. I know she brought up that program of Jacob School of Music up in Indiana and because of William Lund choosing North Texas, I really wanted to. I'm like wait a minute. We didn't even go over your bio.

Speaker 2 2:05:39

Well, there's not a whole lot to it. You know, very, very small career.

Speaker 1 2:05:43

No, but still, as a person who is an ad pure advocate of the arts. It's truly fantastic and you brought it up just moments ago that light bulb moments I cover with all the artists is when you first believe that and you accepted, and you learn your, you, you transformed your mind into yes, I want to become an artist. Yes, I want to impact the arts. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 2:06:19

It wasn't a voice concert that really flipped the switch for me as a child. What was it? It was the Romero Brothers guitar ensemble. Wow, I don't know, somehow they ended up in my little town and I wasn't interested in playing guitar. It was the music. It was the type of music, it was the. It was the communication between.

Speaker 2 2:06:47

That's why I love chamber music so much, because the communication is fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and that was that's the thing that I really remember in my head as a child. Oh, my God, that's the kind of music I want to do. I mean, as much as I sang opera, it was really art song and chamber music. That was really at my heart. That's what I really loved. But I couldn't get hired to do it, so I had to sing opera and I love opera too, but that was what really did it for me. And I have to say that, you know, fast forward, many years later, I get involved with this group and it's like this is what I've been wanting to do all along. You know I love performing and everything, but this is really where my heart is and this is what gives me, you know, the yaya, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:07:34

Oh my God, I just love it.

Speaker 2 2:07:36

So it's so interesting as you think back over your life. What was it that flipped that switch? And it was really the guitar you know, the Romero Brothers guitar ensemble.

Speaker 1 2:07:47

And that's the exact bridging point I hope to uncover with every single artist, composer, everyone that is involved. I want the beginner artists to see that bridge connection and realize you know it may not come for your sixth grade year, your seventh grade year, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, even into your college years, like with Dr Adam Frye, into his sophomore year in college even, or after you graduate college. Yeah, I want to touch point with your competition and accepting former winners in other divisions.

Speaker 1 2:08:28

Now you mentioned Talerouge as a duo and I was thinking, since they have a commissioning for those that are watching this. That's why you're throwing it like this, because I had a brainstorming moment One of our Euphonium artists watching this, or a parent at Wink, maybe you watching. Let me know if you do take this as a mantle. Put this on yourself. To do is commission them for a Euphonium and Viola trio.

Speaker 2 2:09:02

Why not? That would be awesome.

Speaker 1 2:09:05

Now the question is would they be able to reapply for the competition?

Speaker 2 2:09:10

No, yeah. So the deal is. I know, dang it it would still be a great piece. So the deal is as far as reapplying for the Chamber Music Division, you can reapply if you've won in the Chamber Music Division, but you can only have one member of the original ensemble. So it's Lauren Spaulding and Aria Cheragosha. Are those two violists? And so if one of them, like, reapplied in a string quartet or something else with two Euphoniums or whatever, they could do that and they can also apply for the solo division as soloists. But we have to be careful because otherwise we could have basically the same people.

Speaker 1 2:10:06

Okay, so maybe and this is just wild here what if it's a commissioning of a Euphonium solo piece accompanied by a Viola duo?

Speaker 2 2:10:19

Well, that I mean that would have to be an ensemble. So our solo division? You're trying to game the system, mr. So the solo division is strictly a solo instrument with piano accompaniment.

Speaker 1 2:10:35

So the piano can play the piano.

Speaker 2 2:10:38

Well in the we will have piano duos in that not a piano duet but a forehands can do the Chamber Music Ensemble, just because we're not going to have two pianos on the tour. So and and we did have, and we kind of tweaked our system a little bit to prevent this. But the first year that we relaunched we had actually two people that attempted to call themselves a Chamber Music Ensemble when it was a solo with piano and we said Nope, that's the solo division. So we really try to make it, and we understand that there's a lot of repertoire out there that's equal the piano and the solo instrument. We know that. But for clarity's sake we really kind of keep those in two divisions. And I wanted to piggyback on something you said about you know, don't despair, you don't know when the thing is going to really click for you.

Speaker 2 2:11:41

Lauren Spalding is a perfect example that I. I think she was playing viola, but she wasn't really serious about it and she started her education Something super smarty pants, science. I can't remember what it was now, but she didn't really get serious about playing solo viola and then playing in Chamber Ensembles until she was I want to say she was, you know, getting towards her mid-twenties and you know that's really unusual string instruments, because these string players start when they're, like you know, two years old, with a teeny tiny violin. So she's a perfect example of somebody that just she made this commitment. She just decided I'm going to start practicing X amount of hours per day and just see what happens.

Inspiring Stories of Musical Success

Speaker 1 2:12:33

So let's let's take that one further. I'm going to ante that and increase that ante of for those that are parents, or for those who are maybe prescribed to the non traditional student artists, level, hobbyist this competition you heard you heard Lauren's story just now and for those that are enthusiasts or hobbyists and don't know if you should take the time or invest in that time. Look what happened to Tala Rouge.

Speaker 2 2:13:12

Another example this was a few years ago, but I remember we had a pianist when it's been a while ago and of course things are, you know, pretty competitive now. But he was actually a pharmacy student. He was getting his degree in pharmacy, but he would also happen to be a pianist. And actually we had a small ensemble win from Berkeley. Oh, they were super smarty pants. None of them were music majors. One was an architect and one was like I don't know a rocket scientist or something, and they just did this on the side and they won. They were called the Golden Bear Trio. I remember that because they came from UC Berkeley and Berkeley's mascot is Golden Bear. So you know, things can happen. You know, it's just whether or not you're serious about you know, giving it your best.

Speaker 1 2:14:13

Absolutely, and that's a great oh man. This was a spectacular interview with Francis. It was really awesome Competition chair Lynn Muleisen and yes, I've had to work on that pronunciation. If you look at the transcripts, you'll get to see that and I really want to have her leave us with a final principle that's made a tremendous impact, that you've learned over the years maybe with Francis Walton herself that has become a standard practice.

Speaker 2 2:14:53

Oh, I think you know, oh gosh, there are probably about 5,000 of those sort of things. But we, you know, at the heart of this, what we really want is to inspire everybody involved, whether they're in the audience, whether they're a musician performing. And I spoke to it before. We want to change hearts and minds, and that has happened. That has happened in that we have had former winners start their own outreach tours. We have had former winners really kind of alter their idea of what classical music can be, and we've also done that for us.

Speaker 2 2:15:39

Talarouge certainly did. They kind of opened a door to more of a world music sound within the context of classical music, and so that allows us to continue to morph this program and to be the program that's flexible, not to just any other group that's out there, but we don't require standard repertoire. You know, we really try to, as much as possible, give some leeway to expand the musical worlds of our finalists, of all of our applicants, of our winners and of the kids that get to hear this great music and the public at large that go to the concerts. So that keeps kind of pushing forward in this program and I think we're going to continue with that sort of focus. We're not trying to be the fanciest or the biggest or whatever. We want to be the most supportive and the most inspiring.

Speaker 1 2:16:41

Wow, what a wonderful gift.

Speaker 2 2:16:44

That's a big, a tall order, but we're going to just kind of keep working towards it. And that's really at the heart of our umbrella organization, the Ladies' Musical Club of Seattle, because we keep trying to find where are the pockets of need. You know, instead of trying to be like everybody else, we're going to try to find those needs and address them as much as we can.

Speaker 1 2:17:06

Fantastic. What a spectacular interview on the International Footing Summit. Thank you to our guests for contributing such an amazing opportunity for our community, for euphoniums alike, for musicians all across the United States US territories currently.

Speaker 2 2:17:27

District of Columbia.

Speaker 1 2:17:29

District of Columbia Currently speaking. So maybe it'll be a global competition within the next couple of years. We don't know.

Speaker 2 2:17:38

I know. For all intents and purposes, I will say that it is international because you don't have to be an American citizen, you just need to live in the US.

Speaker 1 2:17:46

Well, there you go, folks. What more? What more? If you have a question, leave it in the comments below. Someone from the LNC Ladies' Musical Club will reach out, or one of us are a professional that is qualified to handle that particular element. We'll get back to you, or reach out through the links, various links and blog posts and whatever happens to be created within this interview and from this. Thank you so much for stopping by checking this interview out. Be sure to check out that transcript. It's gold, like every other transcript. Holy smokes y'all. Come on, I might just have a volume series now with each interview. Thank you so much, lynn.

Speaker 2 2:18:46

Thank you. This was a joy, absolute joy.

Speaker 1 2:18:49

Thank you all for coming by Until next time. See you soon. Bye, folks.

Speaker 2 2:18:56

Hi Recording stopped.

Speaker 1 2:18:59

Wow, what a spectacular interview.

Speaker 2 2:19:01

I haven't had any breakfast yet. I got to go.

Speaker 1 2:19:04

Yeah, so thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker 2 2:19:07

Oh, you know what, Nicholas? This was absolutely a joy and I am so glad if we're no other reason.

Speaker 2 2:19:13

I mean I want to see some euphoniums in the applicants, but I got to get on this membership thing. I don't understand why we didn't have euphonium, tuba and trumpet in there. That's really weird. So I'm going to be all over that real fast because this might be one. You know, in the same way that we were not getting many brass applicants because we had everything under wins, I think you know we don't have any brass players currently in our club, except for our ED who plays trombone, but she's not really performing anymore. That might be part of the reason people are going in there and they don't think that they can, you know, apply.

Speaker 2 2:19:53

Right that would be terrible, so I'm going to stop.

Speaker 1 2:19:56

I'm going to pause the recording here, sure, because I have a curious question. Yeah, I would love to with with everything that is available and I'm not what what I'm hoping to do with all these recordings and creatives that I I put forth in my own effort within the compines of farm for dreams, my company. I would love and I'm putting all my advertising dollars behind this stuff as well. As much as you share, I will exponentially share it with, especially with advertising dollars my own and not not any. I mean, I would love for as much as possible, even to put a link in your newsletter or something like that.

Speaker 2 2:20:54

Yeah, I, what I need to do is probably put you in touch with our executive director, because that's the course above my pay grade. But absolutely, I mean I can. I can just do an email handshake between you guys and and you can, you know, give you, give her all your information, and I don't mind.

Speaker 1 2:21:15

Because I don't mind not getting any recognition. It's not what I'm about. It's just I want to put this in as many hands as I can to showcase that, not only the euphonic, but what I see beyond, and I'm glad I pause the recording for this part. As every single year after this, I intend to do a live summit and I would love for y'all to come be a part of that.

Speaker 2 2:21:39

I would love it. I mean, I really appreciate this because it's you know, like I said we are, our marketing dollars are pretty narrow and and most of it is taken up with get accepted because we can directly market to applicants. I mean, we can do a whole thing where we can identify the 2035 year olds that play euphonium, that play this instrument, that play that instrument, and so it's probably our most effective. But I mean, the more we can get our word out, the more we can grow and you know it's a win-win. But let me wrap you into and I honestly, because this is kind of crunch time for me with this, I had not looked at your, your website yet, so I don't it's not up yet.

Speaker 1 2:22:29

It's not okay. No, and that's fine. It's not being recorded either.

Speaker 2 2:22:34

No, no, I mean farm, farm for dreams. Yes, it's not. I was not there yet.

Speaker 1 2:22:39

No, because I have to create everything from scratch.

Speaker 2 2:22:43

Oh, so you're really at the, you're really at the base level. Now, right, well, right.

Speaker 1 2:22:48

So I've had successful businesses before this. I've landed to two of my coffees in all the 711s across the nation, which 711 is the largest corporation in the world. They have over yeah, they have over 80,000 locations globally.

Speaker 2 2:23:04

And your coffee is in 711.

Speaker 1 2:23:07

Yeah, I had two coffees in every 711 in the United States pre pandemic. I was a, I was a farm producer, I there's all a long, extensive story. I have a lot of experience and I've worked with nonprofits. I've started a few nonprofits. I have launched fundraising campaign successfully, especially for families who needed like resources, like funds. I threw a for one of my child's friends who had hot nun Hodgkins lymphoma. He had. They needed their medical bills paid and I ended up getting the Houston Texans, the Houston Astros and a whole slew of organizations a lot of support in the community. We ended up I ended up raising over five grand for them just by now. I love connecting people and this is like right up my alley In this stage of life where I'm at. I mean, I'm a LinkedIn. I have over 11,000 LinkedIn connections, I have over 1213,000 followers and I just I love connecting, I love being that mediation.

Speaker 2 2:24:27

Well, let me connect you and Whitney Henderson. Dr Whitney Henderson, she's actually got a very interesting story. She was a member of our organization because somebody noticed that she was going through. So do you know the Museum of History and Industry here in Seattle?

Speaker 1 2:24:46

Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 2:24:48

They have all of our archives, going all the way back to 1891, including autograph photographs of all of those people that came for the International Artists Series it's. I can't even imagine how much that that collection is worth. But anyway, one of our members discovered Whitney working through our archives and it turned out she was writing her dissertation on LMC. But we didn't, we didn't know anything about her. So we grabbed her and said you know, join our organization and be our archivist. So she was, and then she is our first executive director ever Wow, since 1891. And when she was hired I had not ever read her resume. Oh my God, okay, so she has her doctorate in music. She was an executive at Amazon. She was like a manager of a group, of a strategic planning group, I think it was. She has crazy, you know, high tech skills. She, she, just I. She's very quiet and very unassuming and there's all of this stuff going on. So she has been a godsend, because when I and the recording is off, right, yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 2:26:07

I actually stopped it, yeah, when I took the chair I mean, I had already been involved with the program, with FWC for a while and the former chair, wonderful woman, worked 23 years. But the program was starting to contract and she didn't understand the power of social media. She didn't get it. She didn't understand, you know, the need for Sorry, my texts are coming in here. She didn't understand the need for visuals. She just didn't get it. And so in 2019, which was the last full season before we shut down for the pandemic- we only had 34 applications and I panicked.

Speaker 2 2:26:58

I was just like, oh my God, we've got to do something. But Gail was just not willing to to change. And it was, and I'm sitting here thinking this is such a great program, it's going to die. It's going to die, it's going to die.

Speaker 1 2:27:13

So before I forget, you know there's all female brass band, right? No, oh yeah, what are they called? Athena brass band, and I know a lot of the players.

Speaker 2 2:27:29

They're all going to see this.

Speaker 1 2:27:31

No, they're all going to see this.

Speaker 2 2:27:35

Oh, that's so cool. That's so. Do you know where they're located?

Speaker 1 2:27:40

I want to. I want to say it's Georgia Athena brass band. Wow, so they are in. They are the first, the first, all female brass band to do, to do, to do by, founded by informed by Laura, a lion burger. You know what? Here I'll do one better. I'm going to send you the link. Oh, thank you, there you go oh great.

Speaker 2 2:28:11

I'm going to click on the world just to get it going there, yeah, so, at any rate. So what? What we're doing right now is we're pushing this program in a way that it's never been pushed, and my goal has been to get it on the national scale. Oh, no way, they're from Texas. Oppositions oh, they're from Texas.

Speaker 1 2:28:32

I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 2:28:34

Okay.

Speaker 1 2:28:34

Okay, okay, dr Whitney Henderson.

Speaker 2 2:28:37

Yeah. So Dr Whitney Henderson saved my bacon because I I started, you know, with a committee. We started researching what are we going to do with this program, and we had a good long time to do it during the pandemic, but Whitney was hired in the spring of 21. And that was perfect timing. I had been working with an arts advocate, an arts consultant, but I was still just kind of like making it up as I went along and, you know, not ever having done anything like this. I've been in some kind of leadership position in LMC for almost 30 years but I hadn't done anything like this. And this program is huge. I mean, there's so many moving parts to it. That's one of the reasons why we've held back on trying to do comments to the first round people, because it was just another layer of complexity that we just couldn't quite.

Speaker 1 2:29:28

That's what simplifies the best key.

Speaker 2 2:29:30

Right. So so, at any rate, all to say, whitney Henderson is awesome. She is amazing, very subtle, nothing like me. We are polar opposites. You know I'm big and loud and she's very focused, and that has worked really well for us, like a yin-yang, yang, yang, yeah, kind of thing. Sometimes I'll make what I think is a hilarious joke, and there's just like oh boy and.

Speaker 2 2:29:58

I'm like that was supposed to be funny, but I don't care, she's she has. If you've been on the, if you, if you go on the LMC website and you hit the notification page both 22 and 23 and all this needs to be updated. But our, our virtual, our digital programs are in there and you can actually flip through them and you can see. And if I, if I, showed you what our programs look like pre pandemic, you would realize how far we've come. So we're really trying to up the ante and make it as professional as possible. But anyway, I probably wow, it's just been great.

Speaker 2 2:30:40

But I'll get, I'll do an email handshake between you and Whitney and she. It might take her a while to get back to you. She's in the middle of. Actually, she is going to give a paper in Switzerland or Austria about LMC at an international women's conference. So I know that she's kind of a little bit overwhelmed. But you know, give it some time. If you don't hear from her within a couple weeks, you know, circle back to me and I might be a little bit crazed, you know right September 6th 16th.

Speaker 2 2:31:21

I'm kind of nuts with the tour, but let's definitely keep in touch. Do you have?

Speaker 1 2:31:27

any wife ever come out here. Yes, Last time I'll. We'll text over the. Actually, I've been drinking a copious amount of water and coffee and my next interview is in like 50 minutes.

Speaker 2 2:31:40

Oh, no, no, I'll let you go, but you are, we would love to have you over, come for a visit especially coffee. Yes, that sounds awesome. Thank you, I would love to meet your husband. Oh, you, okay, he's just going to quickly because he's got the man has got to pee. There's your head, hello.

Speaker 1 2:32:02

I am so honored to have have y'all like wow, just amazing background. I can't wait to meet y'all, especially if we can get Dawn to come even have lunch with us too, right?

Speaker 2 2:32:16

right right, she's down in Tacoma, but we can. We can figure it out, we can make it work. Yeah, we will Okay.

Speaker 1 2:32:21

All right.

Speaker 2 2:32:22

Is she a member of LMC? No, she's not. She should be.

Speaker 1 2:32:26

Yeah, she should be. I'll talk to her, okay, awesome.

Speaker 2 2:32:30

Exciting.

Speaker 1 2:32:32

I can't wait for you to watch your wife's interview. I look forward to it. Thanks for interviewing her. It's gold.

Speaker 2 2:32:40

Oh, awesome. Thanks, Nicholas, have a great day.

Speaker 1 2:32:43

You too, y'all take care you too, Bye, bye, thank you.