“The Degollado Theater feels like a second home. And its acoustics are so good.” Harp player Caroline Bembia is reflecting on her seven years in the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra (OFJ) as she prepares to leave Guadalajara in July for a job in New York City, her hometown.
“And of course I’ll miss the Guadalajara weather,” she adds.
But Guadalajara’s pull on Bembia’s heartstrings is overshadowed by excitement about returning to New York—and not to any old job, but to a position she auditioned for this spring with an orchestra—the New York City Ballet—that played a big role in her teenage musical yearnings.
“My friend and I would camp outside the stage entrance trying to catch a glimpse of our favorite dancers entering the theater before Saturday night performances,” she reminisced. At the time, Bembia was in the Juilliard Pre-College program, domiciled in the Lincoln Center, which also houses the New York City Ballet. She went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Juilliard.
Bembia pointed out that the New York City Ballet, founded in 1948 by George Balanchine, has its own orchestra and that she’ll be playing down in the pit below the dancers. (The Ballet’s home is the Koch Theater in the multifaceted Lincoln Center complex, where besides the Juilliard School, the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera are also situated.)
As if this story about a triumphant return to home turf were not enough—“quite literally a dream come true,” Bembia raves—she tells about a similarly momentous and almost comic beginning to her years in the Orquesta Filarmonica de Jalisco.
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