Zeneba Bowers - The Violinist
"Snack time was brutal. They always had this green ceramic plate, and our snack was little chunks of liver. Why couldn't we even one time have cookies?"
No, it's not a voiceover line from a screenplay adaptation of Great Expectations. It's just one of several odd chapters from the strange life and times of Zeneba Bowers, classical musician. Those liver snacks were fed to her regularly by one of several Mennonite babysitters who watched over her when she was a young child in southeastern Pennsylvania. Still perplexed to this day, she wonders aloud, "Why did it always have to be a meat product?"
Currently the assistant principal second violin with the Nashville Symphony, Zen, as she's known, came to Nashville eight years ago from Miami Beach, where she had been a member of the New World Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. (She'd done previous stints with the Syracuse Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic.) But her greatest passion is Alias, the chamber ensemble she founded which features mostly fellow Nashville Symphony players performing a bold and challenging repertoire spanning the last five centuries.
It makes perfect sense that Alias would wander away from classical music's beaten path, considering Zen's offbeat upbringing. How about the time when her news-junkie dad, who had no patience for children's television, convinced her that those artists' renderings of criminal trials you see on the network news were actually cartoons. "When I was very small ... it must have been kindergarten ... that's where I learned that those court drawings they have on the news are not cartoons, and that cartoons move," Zen says. "Because my dad would say, 'This is the cartoon part of the news!' because it was a drawing. And I was too stupid to know any better."
And shortly after that hard lesson in animation, Zen's rebellious streak reared its defiant head — she got sent home from kindergarten for challenging the very limits of propriety, attacking ingrained gender roles and making her first political stand. The unforgivable offense? Playing in the sandbox. "Girls weren't supposed to do that," Zen says. "We were supposed to play in the cardboard kitchen."
And then there's that two-year stint at one of Minneapolis' roughest high schools, which no doubt contributed to her toughness and determination. It's even possible that her excellent sense of tempo stems from the clockwork regularity of the ass-kickings she says she received there, though she's quick to point out that it was no laughing matter. "These were not the 'I'll see you at the bike racks' kind of fights," Zen says. "When I was a freshman, a junior named Pedro was kicked to death in a gang fight."
That circuitous path from liver snacks to kindergarten suspensions to schoolyard beat-downs to top-flight classical violinist has no doubt informed the delightfully skewed musical sensibility that guides Alias Chamber Ensemble. If your perception of classical music is nothing more than the same stale chestnuts your grandparents listened to, Alias will shatter your preconceptions. From harmonically dense and sometimes dissonant works by modern composers to obscure gems from classical's back catalog to works by women composers highlighted in Alias' "Emerging Voices" series, Zen and her compatriots perform some of the most consistently unique and compelling music here in Music City, regardless of genre.
Just three weeks ago, Alias announced their most exciting and high-profile project to date. In partnership with Vanderbilt and St. Paul, Minn.'s world-renowned Schubert Club, Alias has commissioned a quartet by internationally acclaimed composer Gabriela Lena Frank. A young, vibrant composer of Peruvian/Jewish/Chinese/Lithuanian descent (yes, you read that right), Frank is on the cutting edge of modern classical music, creating works that reflect all of those cultural roots, not to mention her extensive travels through South America. In addition to live performances, the project will include a Naxos recording of Alias playing Frank's composition along with the recording premieres of several other pieces.
When she's off the clock, Zen travels extensively with her husband of nearly five years, cellist Matt Walker, also a Nashville Symphony and Alias member. "We have to stay in the herd," Zen says of her marriage to Matt. "You're so involved and attached to your work. We're working every Thursday, Friday and Saturday all through the year. Does anyone want to date you at 11:30 on a Friday night?" (Well, yes, Zen, but not the kind of guys you'd want to settle down with.)
Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't address the one question burning in all of your minds: What's up with the name "Zeneba"? Zen's mother, Carol, was visiting friends who were working with the Peace Corps in Chad. The local tribe had no hard "C" sound to say Carol, so they gave her the name Zeneba, which means "Father's jewel." So Carol passed the name on to her daughter.
Is it challenging going through life with such an unusual name? "I get asked about it a lot," she says. "I don't mind it. But if I go to Subway and order a sandwich, I'm 'Lisa.' " —JACK SILVERMAN
Photographed by Eric England at her home in East Nashville.
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