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From Our Community

I’m No Expert

Mandy Meisner
Mandy Meisner

By Mandy Meisner

Something funny has happened. People assume I know a lot about music.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, I’ve been regularly writing about the Minnesota Orchestra for the online version of Showcase, recapping concerts, interviewing musicians and even observing a rehearsal. Understandably, people might think I have expertise in this field—but really, I don’t.

It’s not that I’m completely ignorant. I went to an arts high school as a music student, managed to play flute in the top-level orchestra of Minnesota Youth Symphonies, and studied with some amazing teachers. But I was a bit of a laggard, only getting serious about my studies in my later years of high school. That was a long time ago, and it’s pretty much where my music education ended.

Fast-forward to the present. I’d been blogging for years, covering topics of interest to various communities, but never on a consistent theme. Feeling nostalgic one day, I wrote about my MYS days playing under Manny Laureano, the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal trumpet. I pitched it to the Orchestra’s editor and was invited to write more.

Repeatedly writing about a specific subject—particularly an art form and an ensemble I revered—was intimidating, and it was something I had never done before. But I decided to embrace my good luck, get over my nerves and give it my all.

I started telling people about my blogs. About our Orchestra. About our musicians. And then the questions started coming. What did I know about the Orchestra’s history, or the music’s structural elements, or critiques of past performances? I had no idea about these things, no good answers.

So, if I’m not a music expert, then what exactly am I doing? Just this: I write about how the music feels, and I write for the people who, like me, are head over heels in love with music.

My time at Orchestra Hall has connected me with people who can’t read a single note of music or tell you a thing about the composer. (Even though some have been coming for enough decades to remember when the Orchestra played at Northrop at the University of Minnesota.) We come to the Hall and mingle in the lobby, an assorted throng of the casual and the sophisticated, and take our seats in the auditorium.

We may start side by side as strangers, but as we hold our breath together, we become silent comrades as the music washes away our daily trials. We listen to notes that sound first like a thousand butterflies—uncontainable and magnificent in their abundance—then give way to something mysterious, lush and rounded and dark. We experience moments when the music is so sweet and pure and fleeting, we want to weep for its existence.

Sometimes, when I can’t make it to Orchestra Hall, I sit alone in the dark and listen to the Orchestra on Minnesota Public Radio. Without the grandeur of the Hall’s space and my high heels, the broadcast feels like an intimate conversation with an old friend.

These are the things I write about.

I like to think it’s universal and why music exists. To know what beauty is. And now when people ask me about my expertise in music, I finally have a good answer, one I say with heartfelt enthusiasm every time.

I’m not a music expert. I’m a music lover.

Mandy Meisner believes in the power of stories and that we all have important ones to tell. She has been guest blogging for the Minnesota Orchestra since 2016, is a regular blogger on Fridley Patchand is nationally published on several different syndicates. A graduate from the Perpich Center for Arts Education, she considers being a guest blogger for the Minnesota Orchestra a dream gig! This would be followed by a close second to blogging about good food and wine.

By day Mandy is a local politician and serves as an Anoka County Commissioner. She is also a cast member of the reality TV series Miss INNdependent airing on KSTP Channel 5, and is one of nine women co-owners of The Guest House on Lake Minnetonka. She lives in the Twin Cities.