How are Oklahoma City and the Norman area very arts-orientated?
A couple of months ago, I interviewed my conductor Katie Noelker about OU Civic Orchestra, and her response related to me very well and how the OKC area is very arts-oriented. She explained it so well.
She said, “So, Norman, specifically, well actually no Oklahoma in general, the OKC area is really arts-oriented; more so than where I was. So, I think that support is much more prevalent; the music programs in the schools are much bigger; they have more orchestra programs. There weren’t nearly as many Orchestra programs in Kentucky, so we didn’t have as many people feeding into our collegiate programs. You’re starting to compete for out-of-state people, and you don’t get that nearly as often as they can go to a state school. So there weren’t as many string musicians, specifically, so there’s not as much of an orchestra there as there is here, which is wonderful. There’s many more orchestral musicians. But other than that a lot of it’s really similar to. The community orchestra that I played with back in Lexington was very similar to the community Orchestra here. I was playing in that one instead of conducting very differently. But I think that’s what’s so wonderful about community orchestras, there’s always just that you are who you are and you come in and you bring what you can and sit down and play music because we love it. So it’s nice it feels a little bit like coming home, and then away when you go into an orchestra like that cause it’s that same feeling. It’s just that I’m here because I love music and feel very comfortable and familiar so it’s nice wherever you go you can always find a musician.”
I then put my input in the conversation.
I said, “We didn’t have a lot of really good orchestra programs my junior year of high school. We’ve had like over like 15 seniors that time and after they graduated, everything has like gone downhill. of course I’ve done orchestra for seven years since I started when I was 12 well 11, and so, it’s just like it’s different because again coming from Southwest Oklahoma there’s not a lot of like music programs versus coming to like like Oklahoma City for a concert where it’s very arts-orientated. One of my best friends convinced me to join. I said ‘because I love you and we’ve been friends since seventh-grade, I’ll join because of you. They even came to the concert too.”