Meet the Crew: Tina Tallon

Name: Tina Tallon

Nickname: My nickname in high school cross country/track and multivariable calculus was The Claw (since my last name often autocorrects to "Talon"). I've also been called T-Squared, or, less desirably, Tina the Tuna (although I do love fish tacos, so it turns out that it's rather apropos).

Titles: Photo and video documentarian and recording engineer at PCMF. Also composer, violinist, soprano, programmer, biological engineer, and fish taco connoisseur.

Friday night libation: A nice peaty single malt scotch, or a gin & tonic. Otherwise, anything with mezcal in it (...including straight-up mezcal).

Favorite piece that's being performed at PCMF 2016 and why: Am I allowed to have a favorite piece without ever having heard it? I'm particularly excited to hear Anthony Cheung's Violin Sonata on August 6th, as I love the rest of his music and am sure that this one is similarly well-crafted and engaging (and I can't find a recording anywhere, so I'm doubly intrigued)! As a composer, new music is what gets me particularly excited, and getting to document pieces I've never heard before is always an adventure. 

What are you looking forward most about spending a week in the Bay Area? My personal mission as a documentarian is to support artists who are working to bring music to a wider audience, and I am very excited about the educational outreach work that PCMF will be doing in Oakland. (Also, I've heard tell that cellist-extraordinaire Debbie Pae is an amazing chef, and I'm hoping to have the chance to sample some of her gourmet creations!)

What's the craziest or most memorable thing that's happened to you during a performance? During my last concert with my undergraduate choir (we were singing Haydn's "Creation"), a woman in the audience had a stroke and went into cardiac arrest (in the most cruelly ironic fashion possible, it was during Part The Second, around the time when the angel Uriel speaks about the breath of life...). The woman, her family, and the medical personnel involved were unbelievably courteous and level-headed, and managed to charge a defibrillator, whisper "clear," resuscitate her, and roll her out on a stretcher without interrupting the performance. Our conductor was so in the zone that he had no idea what was happening and kept conducting, all while the chorus and soloists were watching the situation unfold out in the audience and growing more and more horrified. Our stage manager at one point did pop out from the wings and whisper-yell the conductor's name to try to get his attention and suspend the performance, but he ignored her because he thought she was one of his parents or friends trying to say hello from the audience at an inopportune moment. Thankfully, the woman survived, but I will never again wish anyone good luck before a performance by means of an idiom involving bodily harm ("knock 'em dead," "break a leg," etc... ‪#‎tooclosetohome‬).