Check Out Nick Tisherman’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Tisherman.

Hi Nick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up a stone’s throw from New York City in a sleepy little suburb. Surrounded by musicians in my family–an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, and most critically, my grandfather–It became evident that my twin brother and I had a clear spark of curiosity and some aptitude for music from the start.

When it came time to pick our instruments, there was one which spoke to me above all others. I was so proud to bring my little black oboe case back and forth to school every day. The oboe was the instrument known for being “too challenging” for an eight-year-old. No one else wanted to play the oboe, and I liked that. It was different. It was perfect. It was mine.

I come from a great deal of privilege: a happy household, a well-off upper-middle-class family, a great school music program, and supportive parents. I realized just how lucky I was while hearing the story of a colleague while on tour with the Orchestra of the Americas, a festival orchestra composed of representatives from every country from the tip of Chile to Canada.

A trombonist from Venezuela described to me how he had to practice endless hours and win a competition all without access to the caliber of training I’ve enjoyed every step of my career– just for his own family to take him seriously as a musician. Thus, It has been the greatest blessing, one which I will never, ever, take lightly, that throughout my life, all I’ve ever had to do was to work my tail off.

When I was beginning to show interest in studying more seriously, my parents gave me the gift of a CD player and a couple of CDs for my tenth birthday. I loved one album more than the others–a recording of the oboe concertos of Richard Strauss and a living composer, David Mullikin. I used to pop that disc in and fall asleep to it every single night, at which time Mother would come in and pry the headphones off me ever so delicately so as to not wake me up from my Strauss-induced slumber.

Hearing the sound of the oboe was so exciting every single time. Upon checking the liner notes, I noted that the soloist was someone named Peter Cooper who happened to be the Principal Oboe of the Colorado Symphony, which sounded very far away at the time. For me, the goal was never to win a specific spot in a specific orchestra; I simply wanted to see how close I could get to recreating that sound I loved so much.

Flash-forward almost twenty years and a couple of music performance diplomas later, I sit next to and perform with Peter nearly every day and am grateful to call him a colleague, mentor, and friend. I serve as chair of the Musician Trustees on the same board as the donors who provided the funds to commission that concerto from Colorado composer David Mullikin, the very piece that made me aspire to become an oboist.

Whenever I get bogged down by balancing life with the grind of preparing music and oboe reeds for different programs every single week here at the Symphony, I remind myself how lucky and charmed a journey it’s been. And it’s not over yet.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest obstacle for a working musician can often be the audition process through which a candidate is selected for full-time employment in an orchestra. These positions are offered with salary, benefits, and usually some form of tenure barring a one- to two-year probation period.

Contrast that with the uncertainty of the other 99% of work for a musician out there which is freelance-based and not always high-paying, combined with the temptation to perform some of the most amazing music ever written week in and week out, and the number of applicants trained in conservatories at an all-time high, and it’s not terribly unexpected to get 100 to 200 applications for a single spot in an average-paying ICSOM orchestra.

But how does a not-for-profit organization fly out the 80 oboists who have passed through the resume round? Simple: they don’t. My journey of budgeting for airfare and board, preparing for months, flying to a new city, getting shuttled out alone onto an unfamiliar stage, playing behind a screen for five minutes, receiving news that I will not be advancing to the next round, and flying home began when I was a junior in college studying at the New England Conservatory.

After rinsing and repeating with steadily bettering results, three years later, on my fourteenth try, after twelve hours and five rounds of auditions, I was incredibly fortunate to receive an offer from the Colorado Symphony to be their new Second and Assistant Principal Oboe.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
First and foremost, I’m a performing artist. Every note, rhythm, and squiggle on the page I play will fall under two objectives: 1) make people fall asleep, and 2) wake them up. When a concert is at its most in-the-moment and spontaneous, it is so rewarding, that it can almost be spiritual. However, as someone who lived for decades with undiagnosed ADHD, I can’t really sit still: I’m equally proud of my activities outside of my chair in the Colorado Symphony as my performances onstage.

Throughout my career, I’ve been active not only in performance but also in service, education, advocacy, and even entrepreneurship. I’ve put in service at both board levels here at the Colorado Symphony Association. I’ve stewarded the Associate (Young Professionals) Board for the past six years through a rebrand of our YP group, now known as the Crescendo Society.

It’s a huge passion of mine to share excitement for composed music with fellow 20 and 30-somethings. I’ve made so many great connections through the board and the events we put on, like our biannual signature music/yoga event, Music Moves. Three years ago, I was also elected to the Board of Directors for the Symphony, where I chair a committee of nine Musician Trustees all with the same voting power as our community trustees.

Part of my job is to weigh in on programming decisions, and it’s an incredible responsibility to be on the front lines of expanding our programming of music and composers underrepresented on the symphonic stage. I’m also the first with the knowledge of which artists the Symphony will play with at Red Rocks, so in addition to honor and privilege, my board service can be quite exciting, too. Though I make most of my living as a performer, being an educator is truly what pushes me, inspires me, and even caffeinates me.

The process of coaching someone through a piece of music is when I’m at my most present and creative. I’ve built a studio of private students who teach me more than I teach them. I’m pursuing more opportunities to teach at the collegiate level, and while a stark lack of advanced degrees and teaching credentials bars me from a lot of the full-time work out there, no one has stopped me from teaching master classes at universities around Colorado and beyond.

Every student comes with different strengths, weaknesses, and ideas, which makes mentoring anyone at any level incredibly exciting for me. To say I’m stoked to work with some of the advanced collegiate oboists at the Round Top Festival in Texas this summer would be an understatement.

Finally, it’s important for me to advocate on behalf of music and the arts. We as a society fundamentally understand how important it is for human beings to hear and study music, yet the arts are always the first programs on the chopping block. I’m always looking to create a personal experience for a listener that will encourage them to engage again. I’ve helped create experimental concert experiences through the house concert platform Groupmuse and through our own Crescendo Society.

Getting up close and personal with the music and musicians is exponentially more memorable than attending a stuffy performance and never returning to the concert. Some of the side projects I’m most proud of are my pre-concert lectures before Symphony concerts, during which I try to engage both casual and seasoned classical music listeners with insight and humor.

After all, classical music is approachable, even silly and absurd sometimes. Will my back-of-a-napkin idea for a monetized symphonic comedy show ever come to fruition? Who knows, though I’m certain I will continue to make audiences smile through both my playing and my speaking.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
My door is always open for collaborating, but between my teaching and performing schedule, your best chance to work with me is to join the Crescendo Society board, engage me to perform at a private event, or come to a show (maybe even a pre-concert talk) at the Colorado Symphony!

Contact Info:

• Website: nicholastisherman.com
• Instagram: @nicktisherman

Image Credits
Diana Yakhlef (Chromatic Mirage Photography)