I’m delighted to be able to collaborate on this abroad program with Joe and Christa and to take students to experience Vienna, Prague, and Paris during this wintery and festive time of year. I have traveled to Europe to study music, perform, visit friends and have always appreciated the stunning variety of cultural opportunities in each country for understanding the world and what we can do to make it harmonious for each other. My musical background is keyboard-centric, with piano, harpsichord, and organ and now carillon directing my musical adventures, providing me meaningful connection points across borders and good ways to meet new people. I gained experience with the German language by living in Hamburg for a year while studying the organ music of J.S. Bach and I have always loved French language and culture since I took after-school French lessons in first grade, which led eventually to an organ tour of historic French baroque and Romantic organs with my doctoral organ studio at the University of Washington. My Czech adventures began when I met a fellow organist, Jirina Dvorak (a common last name in the Czech Republic–a bit like Jones); while living in Hamburg, I visited her in Prague and I’ve been back to the city four or five times since, expanding my Czech musical repertoire each time.
I will always be excited to attend small hole-in-the-wall concert venues, explore dusty libraries to research composers, to hang over the walls of gilded box seats in symphonic and operatic extravaganzas, and then to bond with locals after the concert over regional specialties. I’m keen to look for new foods and recipes to bring home and share with family and friends. These trips give us all new ideas for how to live life well and to share the bounty with our friends and neighbors. Vive la musique!