Listen to Winsor Music on WGBH!

Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan featured Winsor Music and Kevin Harris in advance of our performance at the Mission Hill Arts Festival sponsored by Celebrity Series. Listen to Gabby and Kevin talk about Kevin’s work “Pulse” and Winsor musicians play excerpts of that piece here! The interview begins at minute 22:15 of the recording.

2020 UPDATES (post from fall 2020)

Original post from Fall 2020

We hope you are all staying well and safe! In the absence of our regular concert and outreach schedule here is what Winsor has been up to:

• As we think about the future of Winsor Music, racial justice is at the forefront of our minds and recent actions. The events of this spring have catalyzed an examination of our organization and our individual lives and through this process of investigation, introspection, and contemplation we are implementing changes that reflect Winsor’s core values. Please read in more detail about our plans here.

Dr. Lisa Wong plays at the Hope Hospital

• Winsor was proud to be part of the group of musicians who created musical content for the COVID-19 patients at Boston Hope Hospital, as part of Boston Hope Music. The Boston Hope Hope Hospital was a 1000 bed temporary hospital set up in the Boston Convention Center, and because of its CMO Ronald Hirschberg and Dr. Lisa Wong, had as one of its priorities the use of the arts and music in the healing process. Three 30-minute musical playlists were available to patients throughout the day to receive their “doses” of music. You can listen to these curated playlists on the Boston Hope Music Healing Youtube Channel. Boston Hope Music is evolving and continuing to give music to patients and caregivers in the Boston area through a music lesson program for medical workers and performances at vaccination sites. WGBH’s Jared Bowen interviewed Gabby, Lisa, and Ronald about the Hope Hospital for his program “Open Studio.” You can watch the interview here.

World Busk for Health Facebook Live Concert

• Winsor was part of the team that created WorldBuskForHealth, a social media initiative to encourage people to upload musical videos of gratitude for the nurses in their lives that started on May 6, the beginning of National Nurses Week, and culminated in a live Facebook performance from musicians all over the world on May 12, International Nurses Day. You can watch Gabby’s tribute to her nurse at Dana Farber here.

• Winsor was part of Gloria Chien’s incredible project "Notes of Hope - Music for the Frontline" broadcasting nightly music videos for medical workers at Mass General, Brigham and Women's, Children's, and Boston Medical Center.

Díaz Family Reunion Concert (from Jan 2019)

Originally posted January 2019 — Gabby Díaz on the upcoming family reunion

On our next Winsor Music concert on March 16, 2019 my parents, brothers, and I will be performing together as a family for the first time in Boston! Each one of us has deep ties to Boston and the music scene here, and I am so excited to introduce my brothers to the Winsor community.

Manuel, Betty Anne, Andres, me, Roberto

People often ask me what it was like to grow up in a family of musicians. Music was everywhere in my childhood, some of my oldest memories are of playing underneath the piano while my parents rehearsed. My parents and I played and listened to music constantly. I’ll never forget the sound of my dad remarking on my practicing, “Out of tuuuuuuune” as he chopped carrots in the kitchen.

In addition to my parents, I had two musician brothers to look up to. When I was just starting to play, they were well on their way to phenomenal careers as performers. The closeness of my family is due in a large part to our relationship with music. The three string-player kids, me, Andres, and Roberto, all had our first moments on our instruments guided by our father. His deep connection to music influenced us all from the very beginning. The road to a life in music was a rather bumpy one for him, and I thought I’d share a little bit of that story with you.

Refugees in France, before going to Chile, and my grandfather, Gabriel

In the 1930s my grandfather, Gabriel Díaz, was forced to evacuate his family from Spain because of his heavy involvement in the resistance against Franco. After a series of harrowing events including hiding from air raids in an orange grove, being separated for months, the loss of a son named Gabriel, and walking to France, my grandfather, my grandmother, Manola, and my father, Manuel, boarded a boat to Chile.  After one year of being bedridden by tuberculosis, my father began his childhood in Chile. One afternoon he and my grandfather walked by a pawn shop and saw a violin hanging in the window. Pop begged for the violin and my grandfather laid out two conditions:

1) He must take it seriously and practice.

2) He would have to get a degree in something else first.

Gabriel, Manola, and Manuel

My dad agreed and the violin was his.

Pop and his pawn shop violin

Pop was very serious and creative about music from the beginning. He was given a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade but had no record player, so he made his own out of a little motor, a cone of paper, a violin bow stick, and a cactus needle!

Pop obtained his degree in mechanical engineering while also completing a music performance degree. After graduating, he began life as a professional musician, performing the Chilean premieres of concerti by Bartok, Hindemith, Berlioz, and Walton.

At the suggestion of a mentor he applied for and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study with the greatest violist of the 20th century, William Primrose, at Indiana University. Pop picked up his family of 5: his wife Pauline, and children Jenny, age 7, Roberto, 6,  and Andrés, 2, and flew to America. (Fast forward: Roberto now plays on one of Primrose’s instruments, a 1600 Amati viola!)

William Primrose, an inspiration to us all!

After his Fulbright was complete, Pop and the family returned to Chile, where political tensions were high. He knew that he did not want to stay in the collapsing country, and wanted to return to the United States. While playing with the Chilean Chamber Orchestra he got to know the great American composer Gunther Schuller.

Pop asked Gunther if there was any work available to him in the States, and Gunther contacted his friend Robert Shaw, conductor of the Atlanta Symphony. Mr. Shaw graciously allowed my father to join the orchestra as long as he was in the American Musician’s Union, luckily he had joined so he could play some gigs while living in Bloomington. Pop immediately traded their car in exchange for plane tickets, and landed in Miami on September 11, 1973, the day of the Chilean coup.  

Me with Gunther at NEC after a performance of John Zorn’sContes De Fées

Once in the States, Jenny, Roberto, and Andres were all interested in music and took lessons from their parents. Tragically, Pauline was killed in a bicycle accident a few years later. Now a single father, my dad continued to play in the Atlanta Symphony and took odd jobs on the side to support his family, like a paper route and repairing old cars. Pop’s engineering degree proved  beneficial as he soon got work as a draftsman. Jenny focused her interest in fashion and cosmetics and decided music was not for her. Roberto, then a violinist, and Andrés, a cellist, became quite serious about music. They both decided to go to music school, and moved to Boston to attend the New England Conservatory of Music. Around this time, my dad met and married Betty Anne, a fabulous pianist, and I came into the picture. My mom, a Georgia native, studied with incredible pianists Menahem Pressler, William Masselos, Edward Kilenyi, and Lee Luvisi. Her beautiful, soulful playing fit right in with the Díaz boys.

Andrés with a mustache, and Tito (Roberto)

After completing their schooling at NEC, Roberto became a member of the Boston Symphony, and Andres won the Naumberg Competition and toured worldwide as a soloist and chamber musician. I had just started playing the violin and piano, studying with my parents, and I remember thinking how amazing my older brothers were. They would always play for me when they came home for holidays, and I absolutely loved listening to them practice. Roberto would send me presents from the exotic places he traveled to on tours with the Symphony and the Boston Pops, and Andres would tell us hilarious stories about places he played and the people he met, like the time a violinist went missing during a rehearsal and was found later stuck high up in a tree!

They would send us cassette tapes of their concert performances, and I would secretly listen to them every night under the covers on my walkman.

I would listen to certain pieces they played, like the Dohnanyi Serenade, over and over again until I knew exactly how every moment of the music sounded. I hoped that some day I might be able to play with them.

When I was 16, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of lymphatic cancer.  This difficult period in my life solidified my need to become a musician. Music was a release for me and no matter how crummy I felt, listening to music always made me feel better. After about a year of chemo and radiation, I was healthy again, and it was time to think about college. There was no doubt in my mind I wanted to come to Boston to attend NEC. By this time, Roberto had moved away and was now principal viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Andres was teaching at Boston University.

Mom, Pop, and me

I started school, and in the years following Andres moved to Texas and began teaching at SMU, and Roberto became President of the Curtis Institute of Music, the prestigious music school in Philadelphia. Jenny went on to an impressive career at Neiman Marcus, where she is a top saleswoman for Chanel. A few years ago, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and during her treatment and recovery she worked on Bach’s Goldberg Variations as a kind of personal therapy. Once she was healthy, my brothers and I performed a string trio arrangement of this great work to benefit the cancer center in our home town.

Fun times with big brothers!

Three years ago, after retiring from teaching, my parents relocated to Winchester! Although Boston is quite different from Columbus, Georgia, they have settled in and are enjoying Boston to the fullest. My mom has gotten to know a wonderful singer and is playing the great Lieder repertoire with him every week, and my dad has joined the Longwood Symphony. They are avid concert-goers, and I love hearing their opinions on the concerts they hear every week.

Our Winsor concert on March 16 is going to be a fun one! The bros will play a piece I have heard them play many times and love hearing them play, the charming “Eyeglasses” duo by Beethoven. The three of us will play epic trios by Beethoven and Dohnanyi, and my parents will join us in a new Song for the Spirit by a local favorite composer, Marti Epstein. We will teach this song to the audience, and then we will all perform it together, bringing the Winsor family so dear to me and the Díaz family together.

Throughout the many twists and turns in the Díaz family history, music has been a constant source of joy, relief, and bonding. It has been quite a journey from Spain to Boston, but through it all my family stayed connected through the joy of music-making. We are so looking forward to playing together again and I hope you will be able to join us!!

2002, Me, Mom, Andres, Tito

Jenny, Tito, Pop, Me, Andres

Interview with Marti Epstein

The title of the piece you wrote for us for our Nov 26th concert, Komorebi, means the light that is filtered through the leaves of trees. Where did that image come from?

I have a book called "Otherwordly" which is where I found this beautiful word. The word inspired the piece- I love the image of the sunlight on the leaves. I often start the compositional process from a visual image.

Did the Winsor Music players' personalities and our friendship influence what you wrote?

While I don't really know Peggy, Rane and Gabby have played my music a lot, and I am friends with them - so absolutely both their gorgeous playing and their lovely personalities entered into my compositional process. Also, I do know Peggy's playing and was very much inspired by how beautiful her sound is.  

Is one instrument more difficult to write for than another?

Not really, but I played the clarinet (unofficially I still do) for many years and feel like I understand that instrument on a deeper level.

Who are your major influences? Do you think of them when writing?

Toru Takemitsu, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Morton Feldman, and Jean Sibelius are my biggest influences- I don't think of them consciously, but they're in the mix, for sure.

When did you feel like you found your compositional voice?

I was pretty young- if I played pieces for you from my freshman year, you would recognize them as my voice. I'm just a much better version of that now.

Are you writing for us, yourself, or the audience?

All three- but when I write for "the audience", I am putting myself in the seat of the critical listener and writing from that perspective. I am not interested in trying to guess what everyone in the audience will like; I'm more interested in inviting them into my world.

Your scores are always so beautiful. Is the care you take with making the score part of your process or something that happens after a piece is complete? Do you have a visually artistic side as well?

I am 100% a frustrated, no-talent visual artist! My calligraphy is absolutely part of the process, and the sound of my music itself is like aural painting (to me, anyway!)

Come hear Komorebi  and a whole program of fabulous music on Winsor’s concert Nov 26th. More info here.  

Remembering "Remembering Gatsby"

I first heard of John Harbison's orchestral work, Remembering Gatsby, as a kid growing up in Columbus, Georgia. My parents were both members of my home-town orchestra, The Columbus Symphony - my mom on piano and my dad on viola. (Fun fact: this orchestra was the second orchestra formed in the United States!). I would go to their concerts and always sit way up high in the balcony. One concert in particular is etched in my mind. I remember thinking the first piece on the program was super fun and made me want to get up and boogie. A few weeks later we acquired a cassette tape recording of the concert and I would secretly listen to it every single night under the covers on my Walkman while I was supposed to be asleep! I later learned that first piece was Remembering Gatsby (Foxtrot for Orchestra) by John Harbison.

A few years ago Emmanuel Music produced a concert version of Harbison’s opera, The Great Gatsby and both Rane and I were fortunate to play in that production. When we started the overture in our first rehearsal I thought to myself, “Whoa, this sounds really familiar!” The overture uses the same toe-tapping themes as that piece I loved as a child and memories of listening to Remembering Gatsby came flooding back. This past summer as Rane and I were thinking about programs for Winsor's 21st season I recalled the wonderful saxophone and violin solos in Gatsby, still fresh in my mind. My eleven-year-old self would never have imagined that someday I would know John Harbison well enough to ask if I could make an arrangement of Gatsby, and that he would say yes!

Rane Moore, John Harbison, Gabriela Díaz

It's a luxury arranging a piece in which you'll also perform. In this particular case, that luxury meant indulging myself in a chance to play the flexatone, a cartoony-sounding percussion instrument which makes two appearances in Remembering Gatsby - I couldn’t resist (click here to listen)! Arranging this piece also gave me the chance to highlight the many talents of my fellow musicians. For example, Rane Moore: she is not only a gorgeous clarinetist, but a fantastic saxophone player as well!

I’m so looking forward to playing his piece, and I hope you will join us on October 15th for a whole program of incredible music.

-Gabby Díaz

Check out the orchestra version of Remembering Gatsby played expertly by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra here: 

Interview with Njioma Grevious

Njioma Grevious, of Newton, Massachusetts, is a 17-year-old violinist who has been a scholarship recipient of Project STEP’s string training program since she was 5 years old. A student of James Buswell, Njioma recently performed as a guest artist at the White House in a Project STEP string quartet and with the President’s Own Marine Chamber Orchestra during a State Dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Obama. As a member since its inception of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra led by maestro Benjamin Zander, Njioma has performed in concert halls throughout Europe. Njioma is passionate about chamber music, currently performing in ensembles including Winsor Music’s mentored Whistler Quartet, a New England Conservatory Preparatory School piano quintet, and with her siblings in the Mahewa Trio. From a recent conversation with Winsor Music:

As a senior in high school, do you find it hard to balance academic subjects with the demands of practicing? Do you have a planned schedule to make sure everything gets done?

It is hard to find a consistent balance so I take a flexible approach to getting everything done (or at least trying to!). I am always ready to adjust to any day’s biggest demands by shifting my homework or practice or rehearsal schedule to accommodate so much to do. But my basic structure is getting a good night’s sleep, finishing up any homework before school, either beginning practicing right after school or later in the evening on school nights. Because I have a lot of rehearsals in addition to practice, each day depends on what makes the most sense in terms of being efficient and how I am feeling.

What’s it like studying with a great musician like James Buswell?

It is absolutely wonderful studying with Mr. Buswell. I feel tremendously fortunate and I really enjoy his inspirational and intellectually rewarding approach. I am thankful for the high expectations he has for me and I love reaching for them.

You’ve been a player in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra since its founding, and traveled with the BPYO to Europe. Can you tell us something about that experience?

My experience with Mr. Zander and BPYO has also been life-changing. I can’t imagine what these last four and a half years would have been like without the great opportunity and excitement of developing as an orchestral musician under Mr. Zander’s leadership, and performing with amazing musicians and traveling to so many countries to make music even before reaching college. BPYO is such a high-level orchestra, and when we play amazing repertoire including works by Mahler, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Gandolfi in some of the world’s greatest halls, it is pure joy.

Do you find that you preference for chamber music or orchestral? Does your approach to music differ between the chamber groups you play with?

I love them both because each is collaborative! My general approach is always the same: bringing my love for the music and music-making. But I do bring a different kind of discipline to practicing and expressing myself to meet the unique demands of large ensemble and small ensemble playing.

You recently performed for President and Mrs. Obama at the White House, which must have been very exciting. What was that like?

Performing at the White House and meeting President and Mrs. Obama is still something that I have to pinch myself about! It was more than exciting!! The Obamas are such wonderful and warm and incredible role models to me and so many people I know. And to be able to play in the White House with a Project STEP quartet and with members of the President’s Own Marine Orchestra—it was surreal.

Apart from the appearance with Winsor Music on December 3, what other performances do you have coming up? Do you have a past performance that was particularly memorable for you?

Coming right up, I will be performing with The Whistler Quartet, a Winsor-mentored quartet this weekend at an assisted living and nursing home facility. Outreach concerts are meaningful to me because they are a chance to hopefully add joy to at least one person’s day who doesn’t regularly get to hear live classical performances. Performing with Saul Bitran, our coach, Alma and Peter helps me develop and is so much fun because they are excellent musicians and friends. In addition to the Brahms we’ll be playing, I’ll also be performing a movement from a Bach sonata for solo violin. In addition to the White House performance, I remember another performance where I felt a particular kind of satisfaction. This was on tour with BPYO in Madrid as we successfully finished recording Beethoven’s Eroica. I also will always have sweet memories of the many times I have had the opportunity to play really beautiful music with Peggy at Winsor benefit concerts since I was about 7 years old.

What are your plans after high school? Is there a conservatory or college that you dream of attending?

Right now I am in the process of applying to colleges and conservatories and for scholarship opportunities to afford college. I want to continue my violin studies with the goal of a professional chamber and orchestral career. I am truly excited about my next four years of violin performance learning from great teachers and peers.

We’re looking forward to your performance on December 3rd of the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin. Is this a work that presents special challenges for you as a performer?

Playing Bach is always a challenge and is always an opportunity to learn something new and improve both technically and musically. With that said, rehearsing and playing this concerto with Peggy Pearson, one of the most amazing musicians I have ever heard, only adds to that challenge! And added to even that I will also be performing this moving piece as a Young Artist with six other amazing professional musicians who I admire. This is definitely a very special opportunity. Thank you Winsor Music!