Page 230 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

Husband-and-wife violinist Daniel Phillips and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor are active chamber musicians who play in a wide variety of venues all around the world, from international festivals to their own living room.
Devanney Haruta: What do each of you enjoy about playing in chamber ensembles?
make a unified way of playing. We talk about things in rehearsal and work things out. It’s an exciting, dynamic thing. Not dissimilar to what jazzers do when they get together, except we don’t improvise the notes, we just improvise the interpretation. Or work it out quickly,
in any case.
Tara Helen O’Connor: Absolutely. I love the challenges in chamber music. Sometimes it’s just one on a part, so you’re really responsible for your voice. You have direct control of your artistic input and output. What you do can very much affect what your colleague does. That kind of spontaneous interplay is absolutely amazing to be a part of. It stimulates your imagination and your heart. It makes you express yourself in different ways, and that always changes. We can play the same piece with different people, and the experience of the piece changes. It’s always new.
Daniel Phillips: Chamber music is the perfect balance between solo music and a large ensemble.
Chamber music almost never has a conductor, so that means it’s played entirely in a committee way. Often in a group there’s someone who’s assigned to start the piece, but af- terwards, whoever has the lead melody gets to lead. There’s nobody outside telling us what to do. One of the great challenges is to pick up on what everyone else is doing and
230 The Music at Tippet Rise
CONVERSATION WITH
TARA HELEN O'CONNOR AND DANIEL PHILLIPS