I'm the Acting Associate Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic.

As musicians I think it's really important to all of us to have a voice, and that's why

we love music, because it gives us a way to express ourselves.

I think it's really wonderful to showcase women's voices in particular, because it changes

our paradigm about how we think about composers

and who's writing music, and who's performing music.

It was really important to me as a woman to start preparing and presenting music by women,

and I've given a couple recitals that have featured music by only women composers.

I love that the Philharmonic is showcasing the vast diversity in our field, and also that

it's open to everybody.

We did the World Premiere of Julia Wolfe's "Fire in my mouth," and that was a really impactful

collaboration. It felt so important to be in the midst of all that, just the creation

of a new work for so many voices celebrating something that was important to us as

New Yorkers, and important in a global sense, and there were all these social tie-ins.

We felt a really strong connection with the audience.

It's become very important for us to be really integrated within our communities.

We represent New York as the New York Philharmonic.

It's been great to become a little more outward-facing and do projects like "Project 19,"

like the Julia Wolfe premiere, that really resonate with a lot of people from varying backgrounds.

And it's been really rewarding actually to have more opportunities to really connect

with audience members in a more direct way — in a different way.

Part of the reason why it's important to me to play music written by women is that a lot of

these pieces just need more people to present them to the wider world.

It's great music that's just not being played.

It's just up to us as individual musicians to make a point to bring it into the public

eye, and hopefully more people will learn the music and more people will get curious about

discovering new music for themselves.

When you learn, you learn from a teacher, it's one-on-one, and eventually we all get

to a point where it comes time to give back and continue the cycle and pass on what you've learned.

I treasure the relationship that I had with my teachers all throughout high school and

college and graduate school.

There's a real sense that when you're a musician, you have an obligation to reach out to the

next generation and to be that mentor for them now, and I love that I can do that for students now.