In this continuing photo project by Beckie Kern, a road trip to Bloomington was in order to photograph three ISO musicians. Riley Giampaolo (Bass Trombone), Conrad Jones (Principal Trumpet), and Austin Huntington (Principal Cello) have had a busy past 13 months as they look forward to their return to performing at Hilbert Circle Theatre.
Riley: "Beckie, thanks again for coming out and for sharing our stories with this project!
I'd say the biggest thing that happened with us during this past year was us moving to Bloomington! Our lease was up in August, and our concerts had been cancelled through April, so we decided to move outside the city to get a bigger place to make being home all the time a little more enjoyable and give Conrad and myself a nice space to rehearse and continue to work together! These pictures (you shot) were actually taken during our last days in Bloomington, and we're back downtown (Fountain Square) now!
We also took advantage of not working by spending a couple weeks on the road visiting my family in the Southwest and seeing some live orchestra concerts in San Diego (Mainly Mozart Festival where Austin and Conrad were performing)!
It's been a very challenging time not being able to perform for our community with my amazing colleagues at the ISO. I've been very fortunate to spend a lot of my time working with Conrad on our brass chamber duo, The Two Gabagools. It's definitely kept me musically fulfilled, allowed me to connect with some of the community, and in relatively good shape on the horn! We've had a great time collaborating with First Person Advisors on creating new arrangements to pair with wine from around the globe, and we spent a lot of January and February collaborating with Austin, Kevin Lin, Hayato Tanaka, and Anthony Taddeo on our video recital for Colburn's 'Next Up' Series!"
Austin: "During this year when the orchestral stage has been silent, I decided to move down to Bloomington to begin a Masters degree in Cello Performance at Indiana University. I was thinking of doing this even before the pandemic hit, so it seemed like a way to turn a horrible situation into something productive, at least personally. I'm studying with Eric Kim, who I have worked with many times in the past. One of the main reasons why I wanted to do a Masters degree was to improve my pedagogical knowledge and experience, and studying with Eric has been more enlightening than I could have ever imagined. I leave each lesson feeling exhausted yet energized with new ideas to try in my own playing and teaching. I have one more semester left after this current one, so I will be balancing my final credits of classes, lessons, and ensemble at IU with what I am very hopeful will be our return to Hilbert Circle Theatre with the ISO's 2021/22 season and the end to this pandemic.
I have also been very lucky to find an incredibly supportive and positive new fitness community at OrangeTheory here in Bloomington which has kept me going through some darker days. As was the case with many people, the first half of the pandemic felt like life suddenly grinded to a halt and everything came toppling down around us. Finding motivation to get up and move or do much of anything was in scarce supply during that time. This community, and my new puppy, helped turn things around for me. My puppy, Honey T, is the single most amazing puppy I've ever met. I know everyone thinks that they have the best dog, but this puppy is special. I grew up with dogs, but nothing prepared me for the amount of responsibility, stress, and pure joy that comes with raising a puppy of your own. Honey T is now 11 months old and the absolute sweetest little fluffball you could imagine. He's incredibly smart and loves watching people walk by as he sits on the hill by my apartment and watches attentively. He goes with me everywhere now and is perfect in every way, though we are still working on some obedience issues..."
A note about the chair in the photos... it was one of the last remaining pieces of furniture at their home in Bloomington and we thought it would work well as a prop!
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