For over three decades, I have been principal second violin in the Newton (MA)-based New Philharmonia Orchestra and more recently also play in the violin sections of the Brookline Symphony. I get great pleasure from playing chamber music as well. For the last four summers, I have attended the wonderful CMC East chamber music conference at Colgate as a violinist and violist. Three years ago, I also decided to take violin lessons again, after a gap of exactly 50 years. My teacher is Miguel Pérez-Espejo Cárdenas — who turned out to be the perfect teacher for me. I have learned more about music and the violin from these lessons than I could ever have imagined possible.

My two most notable contributions to music:

• What Mahler really meant with all that German: written for and distributed at an April 1 New Philharmonia rehearsal of Mahler's first symphony. The players were suitably amused, but our conductor Ron Knudsen was in a terrible mood that day. My stand partner's husband posted it to a discussion page for conductors, and from there it went viral, even ending up in the blog of the New Yorker's music critic.
• Subtitles for the film Lieutenant Kizhe (with music by Prokofiev), a labor of love that I rashly undertook (it was very time-consuming!) when my orchestra programmed the famous suite made from the film music