Oboist Amy Collins grew up in Boston and after some other moves, her family wound up in Florida when she was in elementary school.
Her father helped her choose a musical instrument in middle school. And music is at the core of her life.
She's lived in Tarpon Springs for the last 25 years.
In this conversation, she talks about how she adopted her father's instrument to drive her music career, and other topics.
The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.
Parents always want musicians to study law or something as a backup. Did your parents have that?
No, my mom and dad said, “Do whatever you want to do,” and my dad was thrilled that I went into college with music.
Was there ever a time when you felt daunted from the way things were? I think about musicians in the past who ran up against challenges because they were women.
Right. By the time I was getting into the professional world, that wasn’t an issue. Back in the day, I’m sure that was. I know several musicians, like one who is now acting principal of the New York Philharmonic, who went through that.
How do you do everything that you do? Can you talk about some of the things you do?
I teach at University of South Florida. I play a lot of shows that come through the Straz Center, but since the pandemic, those have really gone down. After two years of not having any legit oboe parts, I’m finally doing “Wicked” in February for the entire month, so I’m excited about that. I’m principal oboe in the Venice Symphony in Venice, Florida, and The Villages (Philharmonic Orchestra), but those are part-time. And then I own my own business and make and sell about 300 reeds a month, and they go all over the world. I have people screaming at me now because I’m behind on orders, but there’s only so much I can do.
Tell me about your duo, "Amici," the woman you perform with, and how that got started.
We met in Italy probably 12-14 years ago. We played and taught at a music festival, and we just clicked. And she was at Baylor University, teaching, and I was at USF, and her husband landed a college job at HCC (now Hillsborough College) and moved here from Texas. When Kim McCormick retired from USF, I was in the director's office saying, “You need to get Francesca Arnone.” So, she ended up getting the job. And we commissioned a lot of works, so we had to come up with a name. Originally, we were “Amici Musicale,” and would bring on a third-party if we needed, like a piano. And then several years back, USF hired Andrea Feitl, and all three of us just clicked. And so, we decided, “OK, this is "Amici" now, this is our group.”
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How does it work when you commission music?
Well, you find these composers that you like, and then you’re lucky enough to either land a grant or just work it out with the composer. Sometimes they really want to write something for us, so we give them a little bit. Most of the time we get grant money. With this project we're doing now, I actually applied for a Creative Pinellas grant. And the week that they were announcing the grantees, the city commissioners defunded the whole program. So, it's like, “OK, I guess this isn't going to happen.”
When I'm in Venice, I stay with what is called a host family. And (the wife) she said, “Amy, we need to do this project,” and I said “Well, yeah!” And she said, “I'll pay for the commission.” And then when I can't stay with Gerry and Pat, I stay with a person named Eleanor. And Eleanor said, “I'll match that,” and then another neighbor said, “I want to put in for that.” So that's how this came to be. It was privately funded, which is awesome.
But we find a composer we like, open communications and say, “We'd like you to write a piece for “Amici.” You could do flute, alto flute or piccolo. You could do oboe, English horn, or oboe d’amore. You could have a piano or no piano. We prefer piano because that's a lot of playing, if it's just the two of us playing all the time.”
And so, we found (composer) Kimberly Osberg. Francesca knows her. She's pretty popular in the flute world for composing, and she's an up-and-comer. And then I just said, “This is the artwork, this is the main inspiration. You can find other artwork as well,” which she did, and we’re tying it all in with Chris Still’s works.
I'm sure there are a lot of conversations you all had with the composer.
We always try to leave it up to the composer so they can be creative. I just told her that it’s all about the artwork of the Tarpon Springs seal. It's all about Tarpon Springs, there’s a Heritage Museum where you can find a lot of Chris’ paintings, and a lot of his paintings are painted in Tarpon Springs. We wanted it to be about 15 minutes for that original grant idea. But then we got this funding, so we bumped it up to 20 minutes. And we would like multi-movements, so she can just go for it and let her juices flow. She's got a cool thing where she literally has sketches of her ideas when she was looking at the paintings.
Will it be with the three members of “Amici?”
Yes, it’s for flute and piccolo, oboe and English horn, and piano.
Wow. What would you call the music, stylistically?
I hate to say contemporary, because that just opens this whole can of worms. It has some interesting moments, but it has really cute themes. So I don’t know what I’d call it, because saying “contemporary” turns ears off. “Today’s Music,” maybe?
Who came up with the title?
The composer. “Anathallō." Osberg defined this Greek word as “to flourish again." She said it was "a way to honor the Tarpon Springs community efforts to protect and renew their environment in restoring the lighthouse, the West Klosterman preserve victory, etc., she said.
I called the whole project “Where Land, Water, and Music Meet,” but she came up with the name of the piece and the names of the movements on her own.
How do you know Artist Chris Still?
We went to high school together, Dunedin High School. I really got to know Chris there.
Can you talk about him a little bit?
He’s amazing. How his brain works is incredible. When he does a painting, he’s immersed in the history of whatever he’s painting. When he paints something like the seal, he mocks up an entire 3D version of a seal. And then he’ll do a sketch, and a painting. He’s funny and down-to-earth. We used to sit in the back of history class and get in trouble all the time. Whatever the teacher was talking about, he’d sketch, and we’d be laughing. He was drum major of Dunedin High School in our senior year. He’s a really cool guy.
You’ve done so much in your musical career. What’s your favorite part of music, your favorite aspect of what you do?
Just being creative! It’s not a job to me; it’s a way of life. I mean, when I have a bad reed, it’s a job, but it’s very fulfilling for me. Back when my father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away, 38 years ago, I wanted to give back somehow, because I saw hospice come in and take care of him. At the time, they offered music practitioner classes. (These are individuals who provide live, acoustic music at the bedside of sick or dying patients). So I took them and became a certified music practitioner so I could play by the bedside of someone ill or coming out of surgery or getting cancer treatments. What that taught me was that music is its own language. It touches people in ways that you can’t describe.
So now, when I’m at a concert, I watch the audience, and I find those people that struggled to get there, or whose whole world is coming to a concert, and I just try to touch them through how I’m playing. I know it sounds corny.
No, it doesn’t. I think that’s a wonderful thing. Do you have any hobbies that aren’t related to music?
I like to cook, and I’m really starting to get into growing herbs and vegetables. But really, I have no other time for hobbies.
