Reid McLean is my neighbor. I have often walked by and heard him tootling away on his flute, the music wafting up through the casement windows. In fact not long ago, when I retired from playing, I delivered a small pile of music, though he tells me they're still sitting in a neat pile ready to be played.
Reid is a musician - in addition to the flute he plays keyboards and sax in rock bands - but he considers himself an audience member, not a player. And actually much of his career he's spent promoting music beginning with rock bands and then later working for the Minnesota Orchestra booking special events and other non-classical acts.
Nowadays Reid raises money for Macalester College, the school he also attended and graduated from. And he remains an avid music listener and concert-goer with musical tastes all over the map.
What really got our conversation going when I considered asking Reid to be a guest was his admitted penchant for the music of Bohuslav Martinu, a composer we play but only rarely.
Not a totally unknown composer, Martinu is definitely outside the top ten. Reid tells me that as someone not musically educated, he just listens and discovers what he likes and takes it from there, exploring music regardless of whether the composer is a top-tier composer or not. It opens the door to so many possibilities and I'm thrilled Reid shared his favorites with us!
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Reid McLean's playlist:
Steve Heitzeg, Nobel Symphony "Proclamation for Amnesty" - Charles Lazarus, trumpet/Craig Hara, guitar
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Next week Kevin Strauss from the Zumbro Watershed Partnership is my guest. He says when he listens to Dvorak he can imagine floating down the river - through small rapids during the fast parts and on the low, wide river curves during the slow parts.
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