Making Music

Posted May 11th, 2008 by Jen in education, features, music

I met Julie at a church women’s retreat a few months after moving to Central Oregon. I’d seen her leading worship on several occasions, and thought somebody should turn up the mike. I was thrilled when we ended up rooming together at the retreat. That first night was the typical stay-up-half-the-night-talking-women’s-thing. It seems like I’ve known Julie forever, but I guess it’s only been about 3 1/2 years! This is a picture of us last summer at Drake Park in Bend, catching up while our kids played with the ducks.

Julie teaches private piano lessons, and she was kind enough to answer some questions for my blog readers. She is in high demand and has a waiting list for after-school hours, but for homeschooled students who can fill in earlier school hours, you’re in luck! Julie and her husband, Cory O’Neill, run Joyful Noise Music Studios in Redmond, Oregon, and between the two of them, offer a wide range of piano and guitar classes. A side note on Cory: coming up is his fabulous summer guitar camp for beginning and intermediate students, June 16-20. Classes are for 9 - 14 year old beginners, 15 year old - adult beginners, and then an intermediate class. Class includes 5 hours of instruction, CD with all the music and a binder with all the music. Held at Redmond Music Supply. For more information, contact the O’Neills at corynjulie[at]gmail[dot]com.

I asked Julie to include some details here on her little bro, David Klinkenberg, who, if you haven’t heard, is the most amazing fiddle player ever, and shares his sister’s really awesome, silly sense of humor. I can’t remember when I’ve been to a concert and seen such a dynamic connection between a performer and his audience.

Jen: How did you get started with teaching private piano lessons?

Julie: I perform a lot and have had many people over the years almost beg me to teach them too. I vowed I’d never do it, truly. I really didn’t think I’d want to do it, as practicing and lessons for me were always a hard thing to do as a kid. It takes a lot of discipline to stick with something like music long enough to be good enough that people enjoy listening. I remember as a kid, practicing the piano while my brother was down the hall practicing his violin, to the backdrop of kids outside playing. It was hard to understand why, as a kid, I had to practice instead of play. I did get to play, eventually, but there was always piano practice between me and my freedom to go play. But all along I was learning something vital - what perseverance, stick-to-it-iveness and commitment to something looked like, and now, who knows what those kids playing outside are doing, but David and I are getting to use our music professionally and are so blessed by it.

So, I ultimately was convinced to start teaching piano when I just couldn’t resist this sweet Hispanic middle school girl’s insistence that she wanted to learn from me. It took only one lesson, one-on-one with this great gal, to realize that this could be fun. One-on-one teaching with some of the best students around is any teacher’s dream and it’s what I get to do as a piano teacher. It’s also a lot of fun to have a business with my husband. We bounce ideas off of each other, manage the business together, and combine our talents to offer a studio that teaches piano and guitar. We have quite a few families where one of the children takes piano and the other child takes guitar. Families love it!

Jen: You and your husband are both involved in music ministry and music education; with your children, are you able to trade off the childcare and the teaching and cover for each other, or how does this work?

Julie: We remodeled our home so it has a studio in it. It makes it easy. When I am teaching, my husband is on kid patrol and vice-versa. Next school year, we are hoping to teach out of the music store downtown. It’s gotten more difficult to teach at home with elementary age children of our own now. To have 20 some families coming to our door each week has put some strain on the ease of family duties at home. So our goal is to have me teach one night and Cory to teach guitar the other night down at the store.

Besides teaching music, we also get to lead worship at our church together. There is hardly anything more fun than worshiping God together with music. It’s so powerful to be united in song in praise to God, building the intensity of a song together as we both feel moved to do, with one’s spouse.

Jen: I’d love for you to share a little bit of your latest adventure with touring with your brother, David Klinkenberg. I’m a big fan of his (and yours) and want to make sure my readers get a chance to hear about this piece of your life.

Julie: I mentioned a little about David, my brother. What an amazing opportunity I have recently been given to tour around the country performing with my little brother, David Klinkenberg. We have played together since we were 4 and 6 years old - countless church appearances, weddings, banquets, festivals, competitions, and other random events, but when David was approached some years ago by members of his church to go to Nashville on their dollar and record an album, my time with him was temporarily done.

Four albums later and tours with Jim Brickman, Big Daddy Weave, Mark Schultz, Richie McDonald, Lonestar and many others, David decided to give his long time favorite pianist another whirl - and it worked! We love to joke about our lives growing up together on stage, but we also bring to our shows many meaningful moments of challenge for the audience. Audiences seem to easily connect with us, as we are so real with them while on stage. Ultimately it moves many to tears to see a brother and a sister a) getting along and b)performing like we do together. I tease David that we are the next Donnie and Marie Osmond.

At a show near Nashville in February, David’s manager came to the Civic Theater where we were performing without us knowing. I caught them backstage talking with beaming smiles. Apparently, the whole show was a hit. Without even wanting to be, I was suddenly in on the national music scene. A couple days after that, I got a call from his management asking if I’d want to be his road manager - advance all the shows, do all the reports, take care of all the details for each event and much more. I recall laughing but I don’t recall screaming YES. Thoughts of my studio, my two children, my husband, my already FULL life, blocked any enthusiastic response from me. But despite that, an hour later, emails came streaming in with my job description, sample reports, sample contracts, etc. I was on.

I am glad that God sometimes works that way. He takes doubting Julie and doesn’t really give me a choice sometimes. He uses me despite me. I am teaching piano not because I purposed to do it, but obviously because God wanted to use me in the lives of students one-on-one. He wanted me to challenge and deeply love students through the medium of teaching them music and as a way to express themselves and believe in themselves.

He wanted me to tour with my brother. I would never have been able to see how this could logically work out with my already full life, but it’s been like the parting of the Red Sea. I am walking on dry land as God has parted my life and made a way. And because of that, I get to meet people all over this nation, encourage them, love them, listen to them, and pray with them. And, I get to be my brother’s sister again as we discover who each other has become. Check out David’s music at www.davidklinkenberg.com. The multi-media tab has some clips of him performing.

Jen: It’s neat how both you and your brother are such musical talents, and I know your brother started really young. What advice would you give to parents of young children who don’t have a lot of money to spend on private lessons but still want their kids to get a music education?

Julie: My parents didn’t have a lot of money either. My dad was a biologist with the Federal Government making a basic salary. It’s about priorities though. It was highly important to my mom that we take lessons. The truth is, that takes money. My parents spent a lot of money, gas, time, and tears to support us as we took lessons all the way through high school.

A music education has a lot of levels to it. Basics could simply include renting cool CDs from the library and listening to them together - check out Jazz, blues, African music, or classical CDs and listen, dance, discuss what you like and dislike. Without private lessons, most kids won’t master an instrument, but if that’s not the goal then parents could check out neat group classes like Kindermusik. I put my kids in Kindermusik and they loved it and truly learned an appreciation for different types of music, concepts like dynamics, rhythm, and acceleration and social skills as well.

Some kids, when raised in homes that support and love them and encourage them to be all that they want to be, do self-learn instruments. My husband did this with the guitar. He had a passion and made it happen.

Jen: You have many interests besides music. You’re an avid runner and you also like to write, educate people on health issues, do photography and quilting, and you’re a soccer mom, among other things. How do you find balance?

Julie: I find balance by not over-booking myself, by not letting guilt motivate me to volunteer too much. I find balance by making sure I have time to do what I need to to stay connected to who I am - that includes adequate time outside, running, alone time, reading the Bible, hanging out with girlfriends, quilting, dating my husband. I find balance by taking time to go to coffee with a friend. I also don’t try to accomplish everything you listed above in one day. I have a pretty good sense of what a day can handle and if too many things pile up for one day, I cut stuff out. Making sure that we eat a healthy meal is quite important to me so I can’t allow a day to crowd that task out, for instance.

If I ever do get overwhelmed, I stop and think: what one thing could I do on the list that would relieve that feeling of being overwhelmed and allow me to then be able to tackle the to-do list? Sometimes just getting the laundry done is all it takes for me to feel grounded again, not out of control, and able to calmly deal with the rest of the duties.

Another thing on balance for us is our choice of occupation itself (teaching). It lends itself to a work hard, play hard lifestyle, but it allows for much needed long breaks - like 10 weeks at summer of hiking, backpacking, camping, swimming, sun! We work hard to live by our wage and have been so amazed at the difference no debt makes on our life. We don’t have to work to pay off large mortgages or car payments or credit card payments. It means that we can set boundries on our time (for instance, how many students we can teach) and not be forced to have to take on more than a balanced lifestyle can handle.

Didn’t you just love this time with Julie? If you’re lucky enough to live in Central Oregon, and have kids, you may want to explore the possibility of music lessons with Joyful Noise Music Studios. If you’re a stay-at-home mom with musical talent, and have been wondering how to bring in additional income, I hope you’ve been inspired to take the leap and start teaching. And I’ll be sure to let you know if Julie and David are coming to a town near you.

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