Today we’d like to introduce you to Carling FitzSimmons.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Carling. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In college, I was lucky enough to meet two women who shared my passion for small ensemble singing. After graduation, we decided to continue to make music together and try to turn our passion into a business. Chicago is such an arts-friendly city, and so we moved here together and founded La Caccina, a women’s vocal ensemble dedicated to exploring the power of the female voice and contributing new and innovative works to treble music.
That was 7 years ago. Since then, La Caccina has grown from three voices to nine, and has tackled so many exciting projects, including a guest appearance with the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, tours and masterclasses with students from universities across the Midwest, collaborations with Pavo String Quartet and bluegrass trio Glass Mountain, and dozens of commissions and premieres of music by composers from around the country.
Most recently, I was awarded a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events that allowed us to record our second full-length album, Open Book, which features several pieces commissioned or premiered by La Caccina, including a piece by Chicago-based composer Augusta Read Thomas. This year, La Caccina became a registered non-profit organization, which means that our dream of becoming business owners has come true.
Rather than stopping here, though, we’re ready to move onward to bigger projects, including a national tour, collaborations with some of Chicago’s most innovative performing ensembles, and a greater representation of all feminist voices in our music.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Ha! I don’t think any creative endeavor has ever been a smooth road.
Founding and running La Caccina wasn’t easy, mostly because of a steep learning curve that comes with forging a new path. When we were starting out, there was no other ensemble in the city doing what we were trying to do, and, having come from a small liberal arts college in the middle of Ohio, we thought that marketing consisted mostly of creating a Facebook event and hanging some posters. That doesn’t exactly work in a big city like Chicago!
That’s why it’s been so important for us to take risks in our music, and push against the expectations of what a female vocal ensemble should be. We sing everything from medieval chant to folk songs to Joni Mitchell, and with each new concert, we try to keep our audience surprised. The greatest compliment we can get is when an audience member comes up to us after a performance and says, “Wow! I’ve heard you before, but I didn’t know that you could sing this music too!” It shows that we’re changing people’s understanding about women’s voices, and breaking barriers that define singers within a specific genre.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
La Caccina has come to be known for our excellent music-making, our innovative programming, and our concerts that are more an experience than a performance. I’m proud of a lot of things about this ensemble, from our professionalism to our grit, but I’m mostly proud of the way we all approach the music.
It would be easy for any one of the women in La Caccina to lead the ensemble; all are superb musicians with years of training and expertise. And yet, when we come to rehearsal, we leave our egos at the door.
There’s never a sense of self-aggrandizement with La Caccina; we know that we’re here to serve the music, not ourselves. As a result, singing with La Caccina feels like being with family. We know each other so well because we spend so much time together, and I think the love and enjoyment that we feel when we sing together to communicate to our audiences too.
What were you like growing up?
Oh, I was a very serious child, which is not like me today at all! My mom likes to complain that, whenever I was hurt as a child, I wouldn’t run to her arms to be comforted. Instead, I would go find a quiet place to sit alone until I had comforted myself. Now that I teach young children, I can understand why that would have alarmed her, but at the time I just thought of myself as being fiercely independent.
I’ve always loved music too, but I never thought it would be my livelihood. I grew up playing the violin in orchestra and singing in choirs at school and in my community, but I was also interested in theater and in writing. I think I imagined myself making music as a hobby, but I realized in college that nothing set my soul on fire as much as music, and so I really didn’t have a choice but to pursue it as far as I could.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lacaccina.org
- Email: info@lacaccina.org
- Instagram: la_caccina
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/lacaccina
Image Credit:
Sebastian Orr
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