by Christy Rodriguez de Conte
Derek Menchan brings Beethoven to Tallahassee through the Javacya Arts Conservatory’s 2022-2023 Arts-in-the-Heart Concert Series concert on Friday, Feb. 3, at St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral.
As children, we sat in our rooms staring at the carefully placed glow-in-the-dark stars, fantasizing about what will come. Will we grow to be rock stars or famous politicians? A doctor, a lawyer, a candlestick maker? Will we get what we wish for? For musician and educator Derek Menchan, these moments were karmic and cosmic visions of what was to come. And, as he says, “it’s pretty baller.”
With an eloquent poetic lilt, Menchan speaks of his journey as an artist as an interactive connectedness and constant communication with the cosmos through affirmation and intention. He believes he has been guided and, at times, been told by the universe, “That’s good for you” or “No, that’s not what you need right now.”
Menchan recalls a story that accentuates his point. When Menchan was a teenager he drew a picture of a string quartet of animals. A lizard, a tree frog, a mandrel, and a horned owl. “The Lizard is my alter ego. In his hands, he is holding [an] old Italian cello. I drew it when I was 14. I took time to put cracks in special places,” recalls Menchan gleefully. “Only to find out that last year, I go to Chicago, and I’m made aware that that very instrument that I drew was for sale. I now own it. I willed myself that cello. My whole family is gifted that way.”
This gift transcends into the ability to play the cello at a level that surpasses most and fills a room with the lower vibrations that excite Menchan about the cello. However, Menchan admits that the instrument’s possibilities were enticing. “I was attracted to lower vibrations, the lower pitches. The cello has the low side…and it goes up as high as you dare, as high as your chops will take you. I think I was attracted to what the cello can do in jazz and blues…I can dig it.”
The role of any parent is to nurture. For a parent of a musical prodigy, there is so much more. As musicians themselves, Menchan’s mother was a pianist, and his father was part of the glee club; his parents encouraged Menchan’s early predilection for music. Derek Menchan, having perfect pitch, took to many instruments throughout his early childhood: from the piano at 2, strings at 2, and finally, with his true love, the cello, entering his life at 8. Throughout it all, he credits his parents’ constant nurturing and introduction to new instruments as his foundation.
Menchan blossomed from a young music student in Orlando to a professional internationally known cellist working in New York City and Houston for numerous orchestras and ensembles, including Houston’s OrchestraX, the Orlando Symphony, and the New York Pro Arte Ensemble.
He earned a Master of Arts from the Manhattan School of Music, where he won the Pablo Casals Award for Musical Accomplishment and Human Endeavor. Menchan had the privilege of studying with some of the greats, like world-renowned Olga Rostropovich, daughter to master cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. After a successful career, he found stability and solace in the classroom.
A self-proclaimed “mad professor,” Menchan is highly regarded at Polk State College in Winter Haven, where he currently teaches in the humanities and serves as director of the Voices of the People Chamber Music Series, which features talented classical musicians.
Although he has traveled the world, Mechan claims strong ties to Tallahassee. His father went to Florida A&M University and pledged Kappa in 1948 on the yard. As a young man, Menchan recalls attending many National Association for the Advancement of Colored People events with his father. He eventually joined the legacy when he, too, pledged Kappa.
Read the rest of the article on the Tallahassee Democrat.
Learn more about the concert here.
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