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Prosecutor scores high on any scale Photo by Steve Johnson Violinist Michelle Pauly, the new concertmaster for the Rogue Valley Symphony, spends her days in court as a prosecutor with the Jackson County District Attorney's Office. New symphony concertmaster mixes law, music By BILL VARBLE In a courtroom, Michelle Pauly doesn't fiddle around. After work is another story. In her day job, Pauly is an assistant district attorney in the Jackson County D.A.'s office. As a classical violinist, she's just been named concertmaster of the Rogue Valley Symphony. The concertmaster is the leader of the orchestra and serves as a sort of musical conduit between conductor and musicians in establishing the tone of a performance. Pauly replaces the Symphony's Robert Dubow, who recently stepped down after 10 years on the job. Pauly says there's nothing like a few passages from, say, Dvorak after a day in the legal trenches. "It's such a wonderful change of pace," she says. "This uplifting thing." Francis Van Ausdal, executive director of the Symphony, says Pauly stood out in blind auditions for the concertmaster job during which performers were screened from the judges. "She was just the best," Van Ausdal says. For Pauly, 45, the job is the latest step in a long musical career. She was a standout violinist by the third grade. "It was special," she says. "Something all the other kids didn't do." She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree in violin performance from the University of Michigan. Oddly, she had a violin teacher who had been a lawyer. "He always said music was fine, but study something that's going to get you a paycheck," she says. In 10 years as a symphony musician in Arizona and Mexico, she played with the likes of Marin Alsop, Zubin Mehta and Eugene Ormandy. The orchestra in Vera Cruz, Mexico, was a rare opportunity for a young violinist. "I was young and it was a big adventure," she says. "It was a fantastic orchestra, paid for by the government. We played in towns so small they didn't even have a restaurant, and they'd have a first-rate orchestra playing for them." After a stint as principal second violinist with the Tucson Symphony, Pauly moved to Eugene, where she joined the sizable population of musicians scratching to make a living there. She played with the Eugene Symphony, a Mozart group, taught music, played weddings, was concertmaster of the Eugene Opera for years. "I wanted to live in Oregon," she says. "It was very hard to make a living." Among the jobs she had in those days was one working for a couple of women lawyers who did a lot of criminal law. She found she loved it. She remembers being fascinated just reading police reports. So she went to law school at the University of Oregon ("Music school was much harder," she says), where she decided in her last term she wanted to do trial work and prosecution. She earned her law degree in 1991 and came to work for the Jackson County D.A.'s office two years ago. Her debut as concertmaster is Oct. 2 at the Rogue Valley Symphony's first concert of the season, at South Medford High School. She isn't the only lawyer in the Orchestra. There's flutist Penny Austin and bassist Dave Miller. She's not even the first stringed instrument-playing assistant D.A. in the Orchestra. That honor goes to Doug Fong, who played with the Orchestra while with the Josephine County D.A.'s office. These days, when she isn't juggling pizzicato motions with legal motions, she finds time to get SCUBA certified and start a rock garden. She still tries to practice the violin a couple of hours a day. She says music is an emotional release. "If I had a bad trial on a performance day, it would be tough," she allows. On her fridge is a story about one of those studies that found that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. "I like to think I bring a creative bent to my work," she says. "Or maybe just bent," she adds with a laugh. After all, as any good lawyer will tell you, trial work is a bit like being onstage. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA