She was 12, and it was at a music camp where she was playing the violin, an instrument she took up at 7.
Then she heard that oboe.
 Jessica Pearlman holds her oboe in her El Granada home. |
"I loved it," she says.
Thus began a pattern that lasted into Pearlman's college years. She'd gone to Oberlin College in Ohio to double-major in biology and music, planning a career in medicine. But then, like before, something made her rethink music.
Now, she's in her second year of graduate study in music at Yale University, with plans to become an orchestral musician.
"I'm really happy performing music," she said.
She will take a major step in that direction Sunday, when she plays the oboe as a featured soloist with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, now in its 15th season and conducted by Anthony Quartuccio.
The concert takes place at 7 p.m. at Le Petit Trianon, at 72 N. 5th St. in San Jose. It will be preceded by a pre-concert chat at 6:15 p.m.
Pearlman will tackle the lively "Grand Concerto on Themes from I Vespri Siciliani." Based on a work by Verdi, the piece was written by Italian virtuoso oboist Antonino Pasculli (1842-1924), who was called "the Paganini of the oboe."
It's challenging, "flashy and fun," said Pearlman.
Pearlman is up for it, given her determined path toward the oboe.
Growing up in El Granada with parents Rodney and Anne and sister Ilana, Pearlman started with the violin but told her parents she wanted to play the oboe while at Cunha Intermediate School. At first, they resisted, but she persisted. For her birthday, she got her wish: oboe lessons.
"I was really drawn to it for the sound," she says.
She played oboe in the Cunha band, and in the Peninsula Youth Orchestra, which she joined in eighth grade.
She started high school in Half Moon Bay but finished it at the School Of The Arts in San Francisco. In her junior year, she participated in a performance tour of Ireland, Russia and Lithuania with the San Francisco Youth Orchestra.
Then she entered Oberlin, seeking a bachelor of music degree with emphasis on oboe performance, and a bachelor's degree in biology. When she learned the biology program would take longer than she anticipated, she was having second thoughts.
She decided she was more interested in music, and realized she could get an advanced degree in the same amount of time. And she didn't want to spend the next decade pursuing a medical license.
"I didn't expect to be a musician," she said. "It just felt right."
Music and doctoring have since fallen into place for her. Medicine "is more an interesting hobby to me," she said, but "music is completely hands-on."
She now wants to be an orchestral musician with a Bay Area orchestra.
Currently living in New Haven, Conn., she expects to have her master's degree from Yale in 2008.
For information on Sunday's San Jose Chamber Orchestra concert, call (408) 295-4416.
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AT A GLANCE
What: Concert by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra
Where: Le Petit Trianon, 72 N. 5th St., San Jose
When: 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 14; pre-concert chat 6:15 p.m.
Cost: $30-$45
Information:
(408) 295-4416
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