Morristown Green enjoys ‘Great Conversation’ with James Roe
NJSO President & CEO James Roe joined other prominent leaders as conversationalists at Morris Arts’ sixth Great Conversations benefit gala on May 1—a unique evening of dinner and engaging dialogue with celebrated hosts from the arts, sciences, food, medicine, civic life, sports, industry and more.
Event attendees mingled and dined with the conversationalists, learning about these remarkable individuals, their work, their insights into their fields and the experiences that shaped their lives.
Morristown Green was on the scene, sitting at Roe’s table. Kevin Coughlin writes:
Our featured table guest, James Roe, indulged our curiosity about what it’s like to perform in an orchestra. He compared it to an athletic feat, requiring a blend of muscle memory—achieved via rehearsal—and concentration.
James returned recently to Michigan to perform a Mozart piece with his hometown orchestra, where he got his start as a youth. His role as president and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony leaves little time for the oboe; he had not played the instrument for seven months, in fact, and worried if he still had the “mental stamina” to get through the concert.
Of course, he did.
The joy, he said, comes from interacting in the moment, nudging and being nudged by other passionate musicians, adding the subtle nuances that inform the magic ... each performance is a unique journey with your symphonic comrades, an experience never to be repeated.
Read the full feature—and find out which viola jokes Roe shared—at morristowngreen.com.
RELATED: James Roe closes oboe career with MI concert
Last month, Roe performed Mozart’s Oboe Concerto and Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. It was a homecoming that also brought his robust, decades-long career as a professional oboist full circle.
Onstage and off, it was a fitting place for Roe’s performing finale. “Because I was hired for this concerto before the NJSO’s CEO search, the idea that I would be coming full circle in my career was not yet in place,” he says. “But once the search happened and I had this change in my life, I was happy to be able to [cap my performing career] in this way—it was very meaningful.”