In the late Sixties and when my children were all in school, I decided to start playing the piano again after having studied for ten years.  I began studying with Virginia Calmeyer, a wonderful warm piano teacher and friend and one of the first persons to start getting together a group of private musicians in Chapel Hill.  After a few years she and her husband (from The Netherlands) moved abroad. She asked me to take over some of her students and that was the beginning of a new stage in my life after majoring in Zoology in college.  I continued to learn as I taught.  Before long The Chapel Hill Music Teachers Association was formed and several of us got together and produced a handbook.  I began studying with Barbara Crittenden in the late seventies.  We started out playing duets because I felt more comfortable playing next to another warm body, but soon I was playing solo pieces!  I not only benefitted from a remarkable teacher but gained a lot of confidence.  Among her other students were Barbara Clyde, Betsy Mann (also teachers), and Don Hartman.  We became friends and in the early Eighties I talked them into trying some eight-handed music. 
Not much had been written for eight hands until then, but we scoured both sides of the Atlantic and found enough music to begin performing.  What fun we had.  As the FourMost, we played together for over twenty years in various places in Chapel Hill (including our own student’s recitals).  It certainly changed my life.

    When I arrived in 1964 in Chapel Hill which was still a very small town, the University Music Department was the center of all music activities. Just about everyone attended the Tuesday Evening Concerts which featured music faculty - all accomplished musicians, in weekly concerts. WUNC broadcast the concerts live. Parking was no problem, as we just parked in the Music Department parking lot outside the door. Town musicians played in the Music Department symphony along with the students, and many people studied with the faculty.
    In addition to the university scene, there were many musicians who taught and performed on a regular basis. They formed the Chapel Hill Music Teachers' Association which thrives to this day.
    I was pursuing a Masters in Violin in 1965 where I met Mary Frances Boyce who was completing her Ph.D. in musicology (a name only musicians would understand - it is a degree in history and theory, as opposed to performance). Mary Frances was also a Suzuki violin teacher and persuaded me to join her, Nancy Brooks and Mary Ellen Bierk in founding the Chapel Hill Cooperative String Project teaching the then-new Suzuki method. The program took off as more parents, especially Asian parents, became interested. It is now a well established program almost 50 years later.
    In 1974, Musica della Collina was formed to perform baroque music on original instruments, the first in North Carolina. Newcomer to Chapel Hill, Jane Salemson - cello, Beverly Abel - harpsichord, (later, after Beverly left for the South, Jane Harris became our harpsichordist) along with Mary Frances Boyce and Ellie Kinnaird - violins, Joyce Peck and Florence Peacock - sopranos, performed in the Dialectic Society music room with its small stage and historic portraits in Old East. Our men's auxiliary carried the harpsichord up four flights of stairs in the 19th century building without an elevator. Many evenings of music and food in a beautiful setting were spent there.

Professor of Violin, Edgar Alden and his wife Dorothy Alden, were the heart of the string world. Dorothy, in addition to teaching many students, started the Young People's Orchestra which continues to this day as the Piedmont Youth Orchestra. Generations have enjoyed lessons, orchestra and chamber music in Chapel Hill through these varied and rich programs.

Tied in to the local scene, was the North Carolina Symphony, conducted for many years by Benjamin Swalin. His wife, Maxine Swalin directed the public schools programs for countless years. (She lived to
102, proving that music is the healthiest of activities. I heard her play magnificently on her 100th birthday). How many North Carolina 4th and 5th grade students remember tooting away on the recorder and autoharp with the symphony, perhaps their only exposure to classical music?
We have all been enriched by the opportunities available in this university town where music and learning is valued by all.

JANE'S BIO 
www.britcellist.com
Before arriving in the US in 1969, I had studied cello in England with Michael Evans, cellist of the Dartington String Quartet at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, and Bernard Richards at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After graduating, I was offered a position in the Haifa Symphony Orchestra in Israel. It was an incredible experience for 3 very happy years before returning to the US with my American husband and baby son. While raising two boys in New York, I started building a teaching studio, playing with the Huntington and Queens Symphonies and in chamber music groups before moving to North Carolina. In Chapel Hill I taught strings in the local public schools and privately, and played in the Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro Symphonies, and freelance groups. During this period, I started playing the bass viola da gamba in our Chapel Hill Baroque group, I Musici di Cappella della Collina. For several summers we all attended the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College where I studied with Caterina Meints.
From 1981-86 my family were away from Chapel Hill - in Princeton, NJ (the boys attended the American Boychoir School there), and then in England to give the boys for some English education, and for me, teaching in schools in Exeter, Devon, and playing with various ensembles. I continued studying the viol with Alison Crum and playing with local consort groups.
With the exception of those sojourns, Chapel Hill has been home. On my return in 1986 I rejoined the Raleigh Symphony and became principal cellist for 19 years, reluctantly leaving recently, due to commuting challenges and gas prices. However I continue to play with the Durham Symphony closer to home, and enjoy being back with old friends. For 22 years I taught cello and strings at the Emerson Waldorf School in Chapel Hill and was conductor of the Piedmont Intermediate Youth Orchestra for 10 years.  As organizer of the Chapel Hill Chamber Music Competition which ran for 12 years, I enjoyed hearing the young musicians grow musically. Although we had been playing together before I left Chapel Hill, on my return, with friends Mary Frances Boyce and Ele Kinnaird, we formalised Musica into a booking agency providing professional musicians for social functions, specializing in wedding music. www.musicamusicians.com.