I grew up in a very difficult neighborhood. There was a lot of crime and a lot of addiction problems and just people who didn’t have a lot of options in life. So my family grew up in that neighborhood. And somehow, at a really early age, I got connected to these music programs. One of them was called the Culture Recreation Band, which was put together by these grown jazz musicians who had this idea that they could help kids in the neighborhood stay out of trouble if they could have a horn in their hand and be basically held accountable to show up every week at this place and know what they were supposed to know. So these were mostly kids from my neighborhood, you know, from similar circumstances. On the other hand, I got involved in this program called the Chamber Music Society of Oregon, which was run by two incredible women, Hazel DeLorenzo and Dorothy McCormick, who really singlehandedly built this organization that provided free instruments and next-to-free classes, summer classes, and weekly orchestra rehearsal for children and older people and adults to keep alive the torch of chamber music, of live chamber music. So that was my little world in music. And wow, I of course couldn’t fathom how unique that environment was! I couldn’t fathom how difficult it is for working adults to keep an organization like either of those alive and floating and thriving and actually accessible to the kids who need it most. I mean, every kid needs and deserves access to music, but there really was no other option for a lot of the kids who were in this Culture Recreation Band. And wow, that was a really amazing — now I realize — way to grow up. And I got into music when I was five. So I always was around this world of grownups making miraculous things happen, and thinking that was just normal. And I guess because music is the thing that has remained the same since that time in my life, what I remember most from that time of my life in Portland are those individuals in these programs, teaching these programs, running these programs.