Today we’d like to introduce you to Diana Flores & Jordana Greenberg
Hi Diana Flores &, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We met while teaching together in 2018 and became friends, supporting each other through building freelance careers throughout Cincinnati. We would often talk about how much we love chamber music, and felt that it was an important aspect missing from our musical lives at the time. Even though we played together in many different settings, such as orchestra and various other gigs, we knew if we wanted to make chamber music a bigger part of our careers, we needed to start creating our own opportunities. Continuo was born from this desire, to make chamber music a central part of our musical lives. We love the process of “digging in” to a piece of music, working on the challenging and stimulating details, discovering what direction a phrase wants to go, how to express things through colors of sound, and when to hold back or let loose. There are many amazing artists in our city, and collaborating with our friends and colleagues, as well as discovering new artists, is part of the mission of Continuo. We are passionate about presenting varied and fascinating concerts that utilize many different ensemble and artistic formats. We have a dream of collaborating with dancers, visual artists and musicians of all different genres. Since our first official concert in March 2023, we’ve presented traditional chamber music concerts, as well as collaborations with bluegrass, Americana & old-time bands, collaborated with school-based non-profits, given interactive kids performances, and have performed throughout the tri-state area. We’re committed to making our concerts accessible to everyone, therefore many are free or donation-based.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Juggling our personal and professional lives while launching a new project has been challenging, but it’s a challenge we’ve enjoyed! Finding time between Diana’s busy touring schedule and Jordana’s life with two small kids is one of our biggest tasks. Sometimes it requires planning sessions that include babies, or quick FaceTime check-ins from hotel rooms. Our favorite way to plan new concerts and work on the non-musical details of a project is to meet at a coffee shop (where we are right now!) but sometimes we end up on the floor of a living room, simultaneously playing dinosaurs and typing, or talking through a program while hiking. This project has had a learning curve for each of us, as we navigate the modern and ever-changing demands of entrepreneurship, including building an audience both live and through social media, finding and communicating with venues, managing other artists within a project, and scheduling rehearsals and concerts between everyone’s busy lives. We try to manage all of this while honoring our core values as an ensemble, which include artistic commitment to performing at the highest level, seeking growth, communicating openly and with kindness and respect, and celebrating each other’s successes as we continue to pursue additional opportunities in music and life.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Continuo is a platform for us to explore and push the boundaries of our own creativity. Our goal is for each program to be unique, both in concept and presentation. We are most proud of the collaborations that we pursue. Working with a variety of musicians and artists allows us to present an endless array of interesting concerts and performances. This is what motivates us the most to keep honing our own craft, continuously evolving and challenging ourselves.
What’s next?
One of our biggest goals is to continue to pursue new performance opportunities. We also want to get the word out about our love of collaboration, and hope that other artists will approach us with ideas for projects! We’d love to provide strings for recording projects, help arrange original songs, and add music to soundtracks, plays or other dramatic works, or anything that might be enhanced by our instruments (and voices!). We believe that finding the connections between our art form and others is what makes great performances, so there’s no genre or discipline that we wouldn’t consider working with.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.continuo-cincy.com
- Instagram: @continuo.cincy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ContinuoCincinnati
- Youtube: @continuo-cincy
Image Credits
Tiffany Williams, and Zac Audette.
