Cheryl Hollinger Photo: Supplied / NZSO
Cheryl Hollinger has no doubt about what she's going to do with her extra time now she's left the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: horse riding.
Speaking to RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump, Hollinger says she fell in love with horses when she went on a riding holiday in the US State of Wyoming.
The smell, the freedom, not to mention the view from the saddle - Hollinger was hooked.
Wyoming - great horse riding country. Photo: John St James
Hollinger spoke to RNZ about her time with the NZSO, where she's been Associate Principal Trumpet since 2000, and shared some of her favourite brassy bits with listeners.
They included "The Trumpet Shall Sound" from Handel's Messiah, the trumpet-heavy finale to Mahler's First Symphony, and even a number from the rock band, Nine Inch Nails.
Scroll to about 2'20" into the video and you'll hear a trumpet lick playing over the top of the mix - that's Hollinger.
She was working for the Louisiana Symphony in New Orleans at the time, and got a call late one night asking if she could play a trumpet part in a rock band recording.
"Sure," she replied, "What day do you need me?"
"Ah, could you come right now?" replied the voice on the other end of the line.
Hollinger recalls driving to a poorly-lit building, being met by a woman with two ferocious guard dogs, and walking through a labyrinth of rooms with folk lying passed out on the floor until she came across a recording studio deep in the bowels of what (it turns out) had once been a funeral home.
There, a "very nice" Trent Reznor (the brains behind the band) handed her a sheet with some notes to play on it. The rest is rock and roll history.
Hollinger's taste for the trumpet came early, brought on by her mother's love of Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass.
Hollinger persuaded her parents to buy her a trumpet, and soon she was a key member of the high school marching band in her home state of Pennsylvania, USA.
But what really hooked Hollinger was classical music.
She recalls going to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play Richard Strauss' tone poem "Ein Heldenleben - A Hero's Life". For most folk, one hearing of the epic 40-minute work Strauss composed, portraying himself, is enough. Hollinger went back to hear it again three nights running.
So why did the move to New Zealand?
Hollinger wanted a full-time orchestra gig, and the NZSO had one; in New Orleans, the orchestra job only ran for nine months of the year.
She came, she settled, she found the woman of her dreams and 25 years on, while trips to Wyoming are definitely on the wishlist, so is staying put in Aotearoa.
Hollinger says she's looking forward to having more time and energy for teaching, and if the call does come through for her to fill on on trumpet with one of the local orchestras, she'd be keen. Just don't call her after nine at night.
