MEET OUR MUSICIANS
M E E T OUR M US IC IA N S CYNTHIA ESTILL Principal Bassoon
Hometown: Mount Carmel, Illinois | Member of the Nashville Symphony since 1972 You’re retiring at the end of this season after 44 years with the Nashville Symphony. As you look back, what are some of the highlights? It has to be the Carnegie Hall trip in 2000, when Kenneth Schermerhorn was conducting. It was a great trip. My 8-year-old daughter went with us, and she got to go to the concert. The next amazing thing that happened was the opening of Schermerhorn Symphony Center in 2006. The orchestra has changed a lot over the years, and it’s gotten better and better. What repertoire have you especially enjoyed performing with the Nashville Symphony? I really loved the way Kenneth Schermerhorn conducted Mahler. We did quite a few Mahler symphonies, and that was always special, because Kenneth was very energized by the music. I think we felt that, and we could emulate his feelings. What inspired you to become a musician? I started out singing, and my mother was a singer. When I was little, she would sit down at the piano and sing Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, just beautiful music. I was raised on classical music. My mother would have us come in and watch Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts when we were little. She had a whistle she would blow, and whatever we were doing, we were supposed to come running. I’m sure she blew the whistle for Leonard Bernstein. Back in the 1950s, girls had a choice of three or four things they could be: a nurse, a teacher, a secretary,
or a mother. Bassoonist was not on the list. I’m very happy about having been a mother and a teacher, and I just inserted bassoonist as part of that too. Which composers write the best music for the bassoon? Bach realized that the bassoon could be a melodic instrument and not only part of the counterpoint. In his B-minor Mass, he has a bassoon duo as an obbligato in one of the arias, which is beautiful. And Haydn picked up the banner and used bassoon and oboe in a lot of his trios, and there are tricky parts in some of his later symphonies. Mozart wrote amazing bassoon parts, especially in the later piano concerti. And Brahms just really speaks to me. Stravinsky also writes amazing bassoon parts, and he challenged bassoon players at the turn of the 20th century with The Rite of Spring, which has a beautiful solo. Do you have retirement plans? I have a beautiful piano at home, so I’m planning to dust it off and go back to what I started on. Also, I bought an accordion, which I’m excited about, and I have a whole bunch of other instruments. I’m excited about being able to travel more. My sister and I are going to Europe this summer. I’ve always loved to sail, and I haven’t been able to spend much time doing it recently.
Learn more about the musicians of your Nashville Symphony at NashvilleSymphony.org/meet-our-musicians.
INCONCERT
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