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In about 2 hours, I’m going to start rehearsals for my concert next week with the UW-Madison Symphony.

There are gigs, and then there are gigs- this is really a gig of gigs  for me. I’m a Madison native and a faculty brat (my dad is still teaching from the same office in the Chemistry building he moved into the year before I was born), and as it happens, not only did I more or less grow up going to UW Sym concerts, it was probably the first orchestra I heard in concert.  I couldn’t begin to count how many concerts I went to hear, how many I played in, or how many pieces I heard for the first time as a kid on that stage.

I guess I don’t have much more to say than that- it just seems like a moment that should be treasured. I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

If you’d told a six year old Ken that one day I’d be conducting that very orchestra (or the same orchestra with 100% different personnel!) in a concert of Elgar and Mahler, you can only imagine what I’d have said….

“Who the hell is Elgar?”