Jackie Watson is a woman who lives in two different musical worlds. By day she is an instrumental music instructor at Millstone River School in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District. “It’s all about teaching kids about getting a good bow hold, sitting up straight, and getting along with their stand partner,” she says. Evenings and weekends, not unlike a superhero who sheds street clothes to morph into another power, Watson dons her concert wear and enters the world of Mahler, Beethoven, and Brahms as a violist with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, greater Princeton’s only resident professional orchestra.
“I love the connection between being a performing musician and being able to convey the level of commitment and passion that requires to young students,” says Watson. “I play with fantastic musicians. I learn from them and from my conductor, and I’m able to give back to my students an enthusiasm that I might not have had had I not been performing. And when I’m with the children, every year it’s new. I get to see music through their young eyes, and it’s very inspiring. I really do have the best of both worlds.”
The PSO offers award-winning orchestral, pops, and chamber music programs, as well as educational lectures and other events. On Saturday, October 1, the orchestra is teaming up with the Princeton University Art Museum to present a Festival of Music and Art. One of the main attractions will be PSO’s first-ever family concert, taking place at Richardson Auditorium at 2:30 p.m.
A kid-friendly introduction to live orchestral music that is sophisticated enough for adults to enjoy as well, the program is based on PSO’s first classical series concert of the season, Visions of America, which takes place on Sunday, October 2, also at Richardson. The family concert will open with Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” from “Rodeo,” Charles Ives’ “Variations on ‘America,’” selections from Dvorak’s “New World Symphony,” and John Philip Sousa’s famous march tune, “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
The family concert is part of the Festival of Music and Art, co-presented with the Princeton University Art Museum, noon to 5 p.m. on the same day. Before and after the concert, families can explore the museum’s vast American art collections in a scavenger hunt and create their own art.
Watson will be joined on stage by three of her fellow music teachers from the WW-P school district who are also PSO members. Mary Schmidt, who teaches at Community Middle School, is a flutist; John Enz, a cellist, leads the orchestra at High School North; and Hanfang Zhang, a string teacher at CMS, also performs in many quartets with Watson in addition to her duties with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
“This school district has incredible musicians who serve as teachers, and watching them perform gives students the opportunity to see where music can take them, as a career and something they will love for the rest of their lives,” says Watson. “Nurturing a love of music in children is just a part of teaching them how to play an instrument, and having teachers as musical role models gives children an understanding and vision of what they can achieve.”
Watson says there is a great deal of carryover from her life as a performer to her life as a teacher, especially when it comes to the discipline of learning something new and practicing it over and over again.
“When children have to learn a new piece of music, sometimes they may feel overwhelmed. They look at me and say, ‘I will never be able to play that.’ And I tell them, ‘Don’t you think I get frustrated too? But I get through it the same way the way you do, one note at a time.’ And then their eyes get huge. When I tell them about my professional life, they seem to listen more than usual when I teach. They love that. They come to my concerts. It’s a great sharing we can do because we are all in the same boat.”
Watson was born and raised in Trenton and started playing the violin through the Trenton school system’s music program, at the same age most of her students begin, in the fourth grade. She took private lessons at Trenton State (now the College of New Jersey) while serving as the concertmaster for the Trenton High School orchestra and playing second chair in the New Jersey All State Orchestra. In high school, she won the prestigious Evelyn B. Stokes competition for violin. “The prize money I won bought me my first car,” she says. “I really needed that car to drive to all of my many rehearsals.”
With the dream of becoming a music teacher, she went to Douglass College, intending to major in music, and continued her studies with a private teacher in Princeton. In college she shifted her focus from the violin to viola. “I started fooling around with it, and I absolutely loved it. I met Jerry Horner, the man who would become my teacher. He was principal violist of the Pittsburgh Symphony. I quit school and followed him to Pittsburgh to study with him. I practiced the viola six to eight hours a day.”
It was at Northern Illinois University in the early 1980s that she finally earned her bachelors of music in performance. Along the way, she met a fellow musician, a violist, who would become her first husband, and they traveled to Europe together. “We both got a job in Holland playing in an opera orchestra. We traveled all over the country and to parts of Germany and Luxembourg, playing opera everywhere. It was a great experience, playing music, traveling, and experiencing the world.”
In the 1990s, she played with the Meridian String Quartet in New York City, which gave her the opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall many times. “You know that joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice practice — and with all that practicing, I was finally playing at Carnegie Hall. My parents came, and it was very moving. My dad used to take me to my lessons and carry my violin case. At Carnegie Hall, he sat in the audience and wept. It was such a great moment for them and for me. I carry in my case every day a picture of my parents next to me in front of Carnegie Hall.”
Watson joined the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in the early 1990s. “I feel honored to be in that orchestra; my colleagues are incredible. As a musician, every once in a while, the stars align perfectly. Some magic happens, reality shifts, and everybody is on the same page. It’s the most magic moment, and that’s what feeds me and can get me through the entire year.”
She has the highest praise for Rossen Milanov, the PSO’s conductor. “Rossen is very good at imagery when he’s conveying how he wants us to play something so I borrow some of his images. He’ll make you imagine how you are to feel a phrase, and I’ll use that imagery with my students in guiding them to play.”
In the fall of 2005 Watson started teaching fourth and fifth grade string players and conducting the advanced fifth grade orchestra at Millstone River School. In 2007 she and her family moved to the village area of Plainsboro. Her husband, Jamie, runs the cable television station for West Windsor, Plainsboro, and the WW-P school district. As the station manager, he is pretty much a one-man band who shoots, edits, and produces the programming, including stories about the performing arts at the schools. They have a daughter, Anya, a 17-year-old senior at High School North. She is a talented photographer and is interested in the visual arts.
Watson says she loves teaching and every year she feels privileged to experience the joy of discovery with her students. “You put an instrument in a kid’s hand, you see this little light go off, and I can almost tell what instrument they’re going to pick. I tell the kids I’m psychic and when they say cello, for example, I inwardly cheer, and I say, ‘I think that’s the perfect one for you.’ To be present at that moment is so special and makes me remember why I’m a musician. I carry that with me to rehearsal. I may have a great rehearsal that night, and then the next morning I carry that with me back to school when I conduct my fifth grade orchestra.”
Watson quotes the words of one of her fellow PSO members, flutist Mary Schmidt, who teaches at Community Middle School. “Mary says she never stops growing as a player so she never stops growing as a teacher. That is so absolutely true and true of my life as well.”
Family Concert, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University. Saturday, October 1, 2:30 p.m. Refreshments. Concert tickets, $10. Concert is part of the Festival of Music and Art, in conjuction with the Princeton University Art Museum. Before and after the concert, from noon to 5 p.m., families can walk to the museum and enjoy its American art collections and create their own art. Refreshments. 609-497-0020 or www.princetonsymphony.org.
