“Karen Pinoci’s short but lethal illness shouldn’t have rocked me so. Were it not for this: She was my conductor,” writes Kathleen O’Brien in the 6/22 New York Times. “I play cello in a community orchestra in New Jersey, the New Sussex Symphony, and she was its music director for 27 years. For two hours every Tuesday night, she led us, taught us, cajoled us, amused us, goaded us, encouraged us.… It’s the perfect orchestra for me, though—strong enough to play music that speaks to me, yet needy enough to welcome an amateur…. We know our limitations and try to avoid playing music that is beyond our reach…. Karen could sense the hesitancy and fear that were choking off our musicality…. ‘It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect,’ she’d tell us…. ‘But say something with your music! Why are we here, if not to say something?’ … Her final concert was last November, when we played Brahms’s Second Symphony…. I’ve come to accept that for the rest of my life this music probably will remind me of her shocking death. That’s O.K. It will be an honor, the perfect soundtrack for my grief.”
Posted July 6, 2018
