JULIA KEHOE FINDS HER VIYOLO
CURRENT POSITION: Member Services Manager at Consortium for Energy Efficiency
LOCATION: Boston, Massachusetts
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEGREE: Environment & Organizational Studies
GRADUATION YEAR: 2015
ACTIVITIES AT MICHIGAN: Michigan Pops Orchestra, St. Mary Student Parish (Alternative Spring Break, Special Events Team, Parish Pastoral Council), Graham Sustainability Scholars Program (Camp Davis and UM Biological Station experiences), Graduate Library interlibrary loan deliveries, School of Public Health toxicology lab
MICHIGAN POPS ORCHESTRA INSTRUMENT: Viola
Listen to one of Julia's favorite Pops pieces while you read about her Pops Life!
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
October Sky
A CONVERSATION WITH JULIA
KELLY COMPTON, our Pops Life correspondent, finds out how music followed Julia to Michigan and the Pops, and how it has become a part of her life's adventures
KC: Julia, tell us about some of your musical background before coming to Michigan!
JK: I grew up in Flushing, Michigan (just outside of Flint, Michigan), home to the wonderful Flint Institute of Music (FIM). I started playing piano in kindergarten, but a few years later I picked up the viola at one of the FIM’s programs, Summer Fun with Strings, and have been playing ever since. In high school, I joined the Flint Youth Symphony and discovered a love for orchestra. My grade school and high school only had bands, so I played clarinet in grade school and did an “independent study” for viola in high school, which essentially involved me practicing in a closet. This was a time when smartphones weren’t so ubiquitous and we weren’t so easily distractible, so I think I actually must have practiced.
I loved my time with the Flint Youth Symphony and did things like Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp as well. When I came to Ann Arbor and didn’t immediately have any music structured into my routine, I noticed, and I wasn’t happy about it. I started taking some studio piano lessons at the School of Music until I found out about Pops, and the rest is history!
KC: What drew you to the Michigan Pops Orchestra initially?
JK: I have always loved playing in an orchestra more than I have loved playing solo. So when I started meeting a bunch of friends (through St. Mary Student Parish) that all played in Pops, I was sold. I owe it all to those friends for getting me to and through auditions - violinists Courtney Weber and Mary Walle, and trumpeters Neal Anderson and Peter Walle. Once I met more people, felt the energy of the group, and played the music, I knew that I wanted Pops to be a part of the rest of my college experience.
KC: Tell us about your experience with the MPO, and some of your favorite Pops memories.
JK: I joined as a sophomore and played through senior year as a violist. To have music be a part of my weekly routine again kept me both sane and happy. In addition to these personal perks, Pops gave me a group of friends that I loved getting to know and learn from week after week, both in and outside of Revelli.
Some of my favorite memories include progressive parties, running around the Fishbowl in a bumblebee costume for the Flight of the Bumblebee video, Groove collaborations, and “Conduct Us” on the Diag and Union lawns. Not to mention, every concert was a blast. Really, these are all such awesome memories!
KC: How did Pops influence your career decisions? Where are you now, and what wonderful things are you doing these days?
JK: I found Pops particularly awesome because it was made up of a bunch of super talented musicians, both undergrad and grad students, who pursued such a wide variety of academic and professional interests. Before I joined Pops I just couldn’t quite conceptualize orchestra being a part of my life beyond my childhood and high school, but joining Pops was a breath of fresh air in realizing that I could pursue whatever I wanted academically and keep playing music.
After graduation in 2015, I moved to Billings, Montana, to do a year of service with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest (a program which a few of my favorite Pops friends did as well - s/o to Courtney Weber and Mary Walle!). I worked for a grassroots conservation and family agriculture group called Northern Plains Resource Council, which is basically an organizing group that works across the state in local affiliates. I lived in intentional community and my community-mates and I did our best to live by the program’s Jesuit-inspired values of simple living, spirituality, community, and social and ecological justice. I was quick to seek out and join a small orchestra, the Billings Pops Orchestra, and loved the experience. We played concerts at assisted living homes and for the community.
After that year ended, I found a job and moved to Boston in January 2017. I now work as the Member Services Manager at a nonprofit called the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, a job that draws on both my Organizational Studies and PitE majors. Our members are US and Canadian electric and gas efficiency program administrators (mainly utilities - think DTE and Consumers Energy, they’re members!) that work together on developing cutting-edge strategies for efficiency that transform the market. It’s been really, really great so far. By March, I had joined a community orchestra, the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, which is about Pops-sized, and similarly full of cool, super talented people.
KC: What advice would you give to current orchestra members interested in pursuing a similar path?
JK: Career-wise? Use your connections! If you don’t have any connections, start with a professor or a family member or some random person on LinkedIn. Start having conversations with the people you find interesting. They’ll inevitably connect you with someone else, and so on. It will greatly expand your visibility of the post-college opportunities you’ll have and will make the job search for whatever you’re pursuing so much easier. I definitely wish I would have done more of this. Do it!
KC: What does the Pops mean to you personally?
JK: Pops was one of most impactful and fun experiences of my college career. I am grateful to Pops for showing me that I could keep playing music in my “adult” life and that I could have so much fun while doing it. Keeping my viola in my hands for all these years has been so special to me, and if I had stopped playing in college, I might not have picked it up again. Now, I see myself continuing to seek out these musical (and social) opportunities wherever I go next. I will always be grateful to Pops for that, and consequently, for all of the wonderful things that music adds to my life.
JULIA'S FAVORITES
- BOOK: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (somebody please read this and talk to me about it!)
- RESTAURANT IN A2 AND BOSTON: Ann Arbor - Sava's. Boston - I love to go to a place in East Boston called La Hacienda for pupusas (a Salvadoran stuffed tortilla dish) or to Highland Kitchen in Somerville for their bluegrass brunch on Sundays
- PLACE IN THE WORLD TO VISIT: Glacier National Park (or anywhere in Montana)
- SNACK: Chips and homemade salsa and guac
- POPS PIECE: Hard to pick a favorite piece, but Aquapops and Pops Takes Flight were a couple of my favorite concerts!
- CLASS AT MICHIGAN: HISTORY 195: “Gender and Law in Modern India” - this was my First Year Writing Requirement and taught me how to write well in college. My class became close, and we all kept in touch throughout the next several years.
- PERSON IN THE WORLD TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Lin-Manuel Miranda
10/1/17