- I play on a viola by Carlo Tononi.

It's a 18th century instrument.

It is on loan To me.

It's easy to get around this instrument because of its size and the dimensions of the body.

It also just has, I think, this incredible depth of possibility within the sound.

But playing it has definitely changed the way that I approach music and the way that I approach sound.

I feel very, very fortunate to get to play on this instrument.

I'm Rebecca Albers and I'm the principal violist of the Minnesota Orchestra.

The Minnesota Orchestra viola section has a really strong culture of playing together.

We work as a unit and it's sort of my job to decide how that unit moves, figuring out the direction that our bows will be going, the kind of articulation we'll be using, the direction of our phrases, how to make sure that we are doing what the conductor's asking while also bringing out things that we are aware of that maybe a conductor isn't aware of.

90% of what I'm doing is based on what I'm hearing, and maybe 10% is based on what I'm seeing.

So of course, I'm watching the conductor making sure that I'm helping to support their vision and I'm listening.

I have an ear back for the winds and for the brass and percussion because people interpret emotion from the conductor in a different way.

And then listening actually, so that I'm not coming in in front of the people around me.

So it's often, I think it's, it's easy when you're leading something to then play ahead, but it's important to be listening back.

I absolutely love the position.

I love my section, I love my colleagues.

It's a lovely group of people to work with every day.

Welcome to Game Night.

Always a lot of laughter in this section gets together.

- For Thanksgiving... You cook a or a ham?

Yes.

- Our section, historically, it's a very silly group.

It makes work much more fun and actually makes all of us closer when we are a little bit silly.

The section has changed a lot actually.

In the time that I've been in the orchestra.

It's a very young section right now.

When I started, I was very much the youngest, you know, and so it's funny to have that role reversal.

This past summer we lost an incredible colleague, longtime member of the viola section.

Ken Freed, you know, your work colleagues become your family and, and so I think losing Ken was, it was really hard for all of us.

Ken would bring a level of levity that just is really unmatched.

I'm so glad that the newer, younger members of our section knew him and, and hung out with him.

And you know, he went dancing with them.

You know, his presence on stage is missed every day.

So I grew up in Colorado in Longmont, which is a small town near Boulder, and I am the youngest of four kids.

Both of my parents are musicians.

My mom is a Suzuki violin teacher, actually here in Minneapolis.

And my dad was a choir director and a pianist.

My sisters are still musicians.

My sister Julie is the principal cellist of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and my sister Laura lives in New York City and is a freelance violinist.

So growing up I always looked up to my two sisters.

Seeing them practice made me want to start to play an instrument.

We would do little family concerts at Suzuki Institutes around the country, and then every winter we would go around to different care facilities and hospitals strolling through the halls playing Christmas carols.

It was just a very joyful communal feeling and something that I'll always cherish.

So I started playing violin when I was two, and I also started playing piano at the same time.

And when I was nine, I switched from piano to harp.

Also right around then, my mom needed a violist for a string quartet with her students, and so I got to learn to play viola, which was really exciting.

I went to my first chamber music camp on viola at a Suzuki Institute in Colorado, and I worked with the Cavani String Quartet, who was at the Cleveland Institute for years, and they're just, I think, maybe the most incredible chamber music coaches that you could ever work with.

I've completely fell in love with the viola.

I loved its role, I loved its voice, and I loved just actually kind of being inside the action, which is often the role of the violist.

You're not usually the star, but you're the person who's kind of making everything work for the people around you, and it was just so much fun.

So the viola has four strings, just like the violin, and we share three of the strings, but we have, instead of an E string on the top, we have a C string on the bottom.

I love the depth of the C string.

I love what it provides to me.

It's a more mellow, deeper, and darker voice than the violin.

As I was making that shift from being at home with my parents to kind of being in the world, it felt right to be kind of going more like my true self, which is that as of a violist rather than as a violinist.

So I decided to switch, basically for college auditions.

I went to Julliard where I studied with Heidi Castleman and Hsin-Yun Huang, and I was with them actually for six years.

I stayed for my master's my senior year at Julliard.

I auditioned for the Marlboro Music Festival and I was accepted.

And so I spent the next three summers there in the mountains in Vermont, just playing chamber music for seven weeks each summer with just incredible colleagues and incredible teachers.

And that was actually where I got to know Maiya, my wife, but then she won the position with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

When that happened, I was completely devastated, which is a funny response when your partner wins a fantastic job.

All I was thinking was like, okay, now I have to figure out how to be in the same place as Maiya.

I have to figure out how to get to Minnesota.

When the Minnesota Orchestra posted their audition in the spring of 2010, I decided, okay, that's my chance.

And so I practiced as hard as I could and, and I won the assistant principal position in that audition.

We were exhilarated to finally be able to picture a life in the same place where we both had satisfying jobs.

Maiya just recently played our Symphonie fantastique program with us, - But it was super fun playing with Minnesota Orchestra.

I mean, it's obviously a fantastic orchestra, but to see Becca leading in that kind of strong and artful way, I was super inspired and impressed.

- Maiya and I have two children.

We have Lillian, who's six, and Naoki, who is three, and Lillian is already taking violin lessons and piano lessons.

She studies violin with my mom through the Augsburg Suzuki Talent Education program.

But my mom was actually also my teacher growing up.

So until I was nine, I studied with my mother.

My mom and stepdad are an enormous help in pretty much every way they kind of make our lives possible with their generosity and time and, and love.

You know, we're, we're very fortunate to have them in town.

I teach at Mercer University at the McDuffy Center for Strings, and also at the University of Minnesota.

At Mercer, I share a really phenomenal viola studio with Victoria Chiang, who teaches at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

At the University of Minnesota, Maiya and I are sharing a studio, and it's, it's, it's a small studio now, and, but it's great to actually be teaching here in town.

I, I love teaching, you know, it's, it's, it kind of makes me think about what I'm doing also, like, it, it, it changes the way that I play to think about how I teach, and it makes me think about things that I wouldn't necessarily notice, I think if I weren't teaching.

Chamber music is still a very important part of my musical life.

Accordo is a chamber ensemble that is comprised of the principal players from both The Saint.

Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra.

I love that through Accordo.

I get to play with the members of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, particularly Maiya, and actually my sister.

Julie and I used to play together all the time in our trio with our sister Laura.

But now that we all have kids and jobs, we don't, we don't often get to play together.

So it's nice when it lines up that we're both doing Accordo at the same time.

- What is that one?

- Every day I feel fortunate to have the life that I have, to be living here in the Twin Cities, working in this incredible orchestra with my amazing colleagues.

This community supports music and the arts in a way that I think is very rare, and we are so fortunate to be here.

Are you gonna sing the rest of it?

There aren't many places in this country where we could live and work and have the jobs that we have.

And it's also a really great place to raise kids.

So we feel very, very fortunate.