Devin Cobleigh-Morrison, Horn.
Kite design. Publishing. Personal Training.
When you were 18, what were your career aspirations and how much (if at all) did those change by the time you finished university/grad school?
When I was 18 I had very strong career aspirations to either be in a wind band, play in a professional wind quintet or be 2nd horn in an orchestra. By the time I finished my undergrad, after a variety of extraneous circumstances I knew that I wanted to be a teacher but never wanted to lose my love for wind music. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to teach until about 2017. I also wanted to become a high-level sport kite designer and teacher, which is something I’ve always done on the side, but never really spoke up about in fear that it would diminish my reputation as a “serious musician.” I’m only recently speaking up about this now, and it feels fantastic.
Over the course of your entire career to this point — but prior to the pandemic — how have you pivoted or changed career paths and why?
Going through a variety of severe playing injuries and misdiagnosed disorders, I actually decided to leave the situation I was in a few years back. This did involve quite a bit of professional work, and teaching opportunities, but my head wasn’t right to sustain that and I felt horrible that I was exposing my friends and colleagues to this damaged persona (or even a damaged voice while playing) and had no idea how to handle it. I’m currently in my second year of the DMA at UWMadison. That was happening for about a year before the pandemic hit. With the schedule of the DMA, it allowed me to work on me both alone and with professionals both performances based and academic, be held to a high standard of wind performance thanks to my colleagues in the Wingra Wind Quintet, and also spend some (overdue) time with Skyburner Kites, which is a company I design kites for that are distributed all over the globe. It's astonishing how similar trick kites and horn playing are, when it comes to air pressure and distribution.
What were you doing at the start of this year (2020), prior to the pandemic?
I was perusing the DMA at UWMadison and playing in the Wingra Wind Quintet, was still with the Veritas Music Publishing Company as a contributor, designing sport kites and teaching freelance. I did have goals to start down a path to receive my personal training license, and luckily did not register for anything before COVID hit. It was certainly in my 3-year plan, though.
How has the pandemic changed your career path or goals moving forward?
This one is difficult. The time within COVID has let me process things I didn’t even know were happening both with me and in my playing, and I’ll never take it back. My love for music and the performance medium has never been stronger, with the extended time (not break) to really focus in on things I wouldn’t have had the space for (or rather didn’t know how to make room for) otherwise. What this has shown me is that I do need more balance with my work: I designed and released a new kite with various models for Skyburner Kites within this time, polished my previous designs, collaborated with Premier Kites, and am starting my own kiting company from popular demand which will launch in Spring 2021. COVID has shown me that I’m a faster worker than I give myself credit for and can easily overdo. I need to introduce more variety into my life. This being said I’d love to stay this involved in kiting- an industry I’ve been tied to since I was about 4. When things start to solidify, I’d love to volunteer for a suicide hotline and maybe become more involved with their workings. I am also in the middle of my DMA, and am half way through the process of study to get my personal training license. Lastly, part of my DMA project encompasses publishing and creating multitrack movies of 16 large scale works for horns. This includes works from new budding arrangers, the final trio arrangement from my own pen, and a new work for horns by Wayne Lu. They will be published periodically and recorded over multiple microphones such as a Yeti USB mic, Rode M5 matched pairs, and more.
When it comes to the horn, well, I’m not sure things have changed much--- I’d like to make more of my rest time. My drive hasn’t gone anywhere, in fact it might have grown in the areas I needed it to. I’d still love to play in a wind band, or play 2nd horn. Playing in a group of 5-10 winds is completely entrancing to me, although its uncommon these days to say the least.