RAQUEL LANERI,
SHINING BRIGHT IN THE BIG CITY
CURRENT POSITION: Features Writer for the New York Post
LOCATION: Brooklyn, New York
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEGREE: English Language & Literature and Music Performance
GRADUATION YEAR: 2004
ACTIVITIES AT MICHIGAN: Michigan Pops Orchestra, SERVE (a community service and social action leadership group)
MICHIGAN POPS ORCHESTRA INSTRUMENT: Viola
Listen to one of Raquel's favorite Pops pieces while you read about her Pops Life!
Kelly Compton, our Pops Life correspondent, talks with Raquel about her adventures in The City That Never Sleeps, and how the Pops helped bring the joys of music back into her life.
KC: Raquel, tell us about your musical background!
RL: I actually was a music performance major at Michigan. I started playing piano at the age of 7, but when my sister started playing violin, I begged my parents to let me play a string instrument too. I started viola when I was around 11. Soon I was playing in the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony and spending my summers at music camp, where I would practice 6 hours a day. I wanted to be a professional violist, and so that's why I ended up in Michigan, but during my sophomore year I began to have second thoughts.
KC: What drew you to the Michigan Pops Orchestra?
RL: A friend of mine, Chris Lees, became the new conductor of Pops my junior year and asked a few of us from the music school to join. So, I mostly joined because my friends did. But it actually was a nice break from the classical music and the intensity of the groups affiliated with the music school. It ended up being so much more fun than I thought it would be.
KC: What are some of your favorite memories of being part of the Pops?
RL: My roommate played violin, and she played in Pops with me. We used to make faces at each other during rehearsal and giggle a lot. We also got to play Harry Potter, which was super exciting --- and much harder than you would expect!
Also, this isn't necessarily a *good* memory, but one time during Pops I dropped my viola and it broke and I had to get it repaired and it was out of commission for about two months. (Fortunately, a violinist at the music school had a viola she wasn't playing that semester that I could use!) I had pulled an all-nighter writing a paper the night before, and I sort of fell asleep while I was playing. The viola just slid off my shoulder. It was totally mortifying! But it makes for a good story, whenever someone says to me, "Hey, your viola sounds great!"
KC: How did your experience with the Pops influence your career?
Click on photos in this article for more info!
Click to read Raquel's article on Bjork!
RL: I took an essay writing seminar my senior year at Michigan, and my professor encouraged me, saying that I was a good writer. That gave me the courage to go to the Michigan Daily with my friend and, well, ask for a job. I started writing for the arts section, mainly about film and fashion, but music has definitely had a profound influence on my writing. In music, you are always thinking about --- or sometimes just feeling --- the phrasing, dynamics, and shape of the thing. Well, it's the same with writing, but instead of notes you are dealing with words. The best writing has a sense of musicality to it. And I've gotten to write about music a few times! I interviewed the Kronos Quartet for the Daily Beast, and I wrote about Bjork for the New York Times.
KC: After you graduated, how did you end up writing for the New York Post?
RL: I started writing for the Michigan Daily my senior year and had an occasional fashion column, which I loved. So the summer after I graduated I interned at Pittsburgh Magazine (which is where I grew up), and then worked there as a part-time fact-checker and at a book store while applying to grad school for journalism. I ended up going to Syracuse University's arts journalism program, with a concentration in fashion writing.
After school, I ended up getting a copyediting job at Forbes.com and basically wrote every chance I got --- fashion and lifestyle stories as well as book reviews --- and eventually got hired on the Opinions team, where I served as an editor. It was a volatile time for journalism (I moved to NYC in 2008, right as the economy was about to collapse!), and I was there at Forbes four years before I got laid off.
Click for Raquel's take on public art!
Click to read Raquel's article on Michelle Obama!
Fortunately, many other people had been let go or had jumped ship during that time, and so I had lots of colleagues who had landed at other publications helping me out. They helped me get culture assignments at the Daily Beast, New York Times, and Time while I worked contract or part-time editing and writing jobs.
Then, in 2015, one of my former Forbes colleagues asked me if I would be interested in writing some freelance pieces for the New York Post's luxury supplement, Alexa. And I did that, and so when the paper was hiring a features writer, well, they already knew me!
KC: Tell me about your job at the New York Post and some of your most interesting assignments!
RL: As a features writer at the Post, I spend a lot of my time talking with and interviewing people, trying to chase interesting stories and, well, writing (or staring at a blank Google doc on my computer!). Some of my most interesting assignments have been a story on Ann Lowe, the forgotten black designer who made Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress; a history of salsa music (which was actually founded on the streets on NYC!); and a series of interviews with immigrant grandmothers who cook their favorite home dishes at a Staten Island restaurant (one woman was a recent Syrian refugee, and her daughter-in-law was there as a translator. Her story was so moving, that all three of us were in tears and hugging each other by the end --- it was very profound).
KC: What advice would you give to students interested in a similar career path?
RL: Write for your college newspaper! Read A LOT. And don't be afraid to reach out to writers you admire via email or through Twitter.
Read one of Raquel's early Michigan Daily articles!
KC: What has been the best career advice that you've received?
RL: Well, it's not necessarily career advice, but I remember reading, a long time ago, an interview with Yo-Yo Ma where he said he practiced every day. This is the greatest cellist in the world, and he said that he could never just relax and rest on his laurels, that there are always new ways to push himself, more ways to deepen his understanding of a particular piece of music. He can always get some phrasing better, or have better bow control, or something! Anyway, knowing that even Yo-Yo Ma thinks he can always do better was a complete revelation and inspiration to me.
Hear Yo-Yo Ma speak on what inspires him about music
KC: What does the Pops mean to you personally?
RL: Pops was wonderful because I think it helped me have fun with music. I didn't mention this before, but during my sophomore year of college, I was really depressed. I was very stressed out, and the music school was so intense and competitive -- and I was such a perfectionist -- that it stripped all the joy out of playing music for me. Pops came at the right time in my life, because it reminded me of why I had fallen in love with playing viola: the camaraderie of being in an orchestra and of making music together. And it also showed me that you can get as much satisfaction out of playing Harry Potter or the Ghostbusters theme song as you do playing Shostakovich 5!
RAQUEL'S FAVORITES
Click to visit all the yumminess at Victor's Cafe!
MUSEUM: The Detroit Institute of Art (for the Diego Rivera mural and the amazing African-American art collection)
RESTAURANT IN A2 AND NYC: Ann Arbor - Jerusalem Garden (the chicken shawarma pita is so delicious and so cheap) and Blue Nile (which was an expensive treat that I only could go to when my parents were in town...A2 was the first place I ever had Ethiopian food, and it was a revelation!). NYC - I guess I have to go with Victor's, which is this fancy Cuban place in Midtown where I've been going since I was a baby, practically...my mother is from Cuba, and my grandparents knew Victor (the owner, who has since passed away) for decades, but it really feels like a home away from home...everyone who works there still treats us like family, and they make the best mojitos in the city!
FASHION ICON: Anna Karina (French New Wave star)
SLICE OF NEW YORK PIZZA: Roberta's
POPS PIECE: Harry Potter!
CELEBRITY YOU'VE INTERVIEWED: David Lynch – does he count as a celebrity? It was in the super gaudy Russian Tea Room in New York, and we talked about sandwiches
PERSON YOU'VE INTERVIEWED: The photographer Ming Smith --- oh my gosh, this lady is amazing. She grew up in Columbus, Ohio, went to Howard University and majored in microbiology, and then came to New York City to pursue photography. She was the first female member of the African-American photography collective Kamoinge, devoted to putting out positive images of black life in America. And she photographed black communities throughout the country --- as well as black cultural luminaries like Sun Ra, Alvin Ailey and James Baldwin. Her stories were amazing, and she is also just this beautiful soul. Meeting her has really had a profound effect on me.
Click to read Raquel's feature article on this legendary photographer!
12/25/17