Sue Miller |
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Flute |
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I grew up in Detroit playing piano, clarinet and flute. Since my elementary school was packed with the leading edge of the baby boom generation, instrumental music lessons met under the school in the heat tunnels/air raid/tornado shelters.
During high school I played flute in my high school marching band, concert band, orchestra, and the All-City Honors Band and All-City Honors Orchestra. Summers I spent at Interlochen Arts Camp playing flute in the high school orchestra. While at Interlochen I took beginning violin one summer from the father of now famous violinists Ani and Ida Kavafian; little Ida would sit in the back, drawing in her coloring books--and occasionally play circles around us on her tiny violin. I also spent a memorable afternoon in the camp laundry room next to a then-teenage soprano Jessye Norman (unfortunately she did not sing as she ironed her camp shirts). Although I majored in English, I played flute through college in the University of Michigan Concert Band and got into Michigan home basketball games for free by playing in the basketball pep band. After college I taught high school English in Michigan and helped my husband Dennis, then a high school band director, with flute sectionals and as a chaperone at his summer marching band camps and band competition trips to Disney World, NYC, Boston, Mexico City and Montreal. The day came that I looked around at my family of three little boys, including infant twins, knew something had to give, and I put the flute away in the closet. We relocated to Rochester in the late 70's for positions with the Brighton Central Schools. My husband was the district arts administrator until his death in 1997, and I completed my master's degree at Nazareth College and taught English at Brighton High School. When I retired in 2009, I dusted off my flute after its 35 years in the closet and joined New Horizons. It is a joy to have the privilege of playing in a symphonic band again. And what fun it is to go to New Horizons band camps at Chautauqua and northern Colorado, no longer as a chaperone, but as a "kid" who gets to play music all day long. New Horizons is the best! |
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