Joseph (Joey) Demko
Hometown: Alexandria, VA
Year joined the BPO: I started playing with BPO in 2011
Hobbies other than music: I play roller hockey for fun, and enjoy watching hockey as well, especially my hometown team the Washington Capitals. I love to cook, and I also enjoy tasting and learning about new craft beers from around the world.
Earliest musical memory: I remember my parents playing instruments for fun-my Dad playing guitar and my Mom playing piano. Neither are professional musicians, but they always enjoyed playing once in a while. I think music always seemed like fun to me because of this, even before I knew that it was what I wanted to do as a career.
What's on your iPod? Amazingly, I don’t own an iPod! But I do collect LPs, I guess I’m behind the times. But some CDs I have on my desk right now are the J.B.’s Anthology (James Brown’s band), Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony with Rostropovich and the National Symphony Orchestra, and Gil Evans’ album “New Bottle, Old Wine”.
Other than performing music, I've always thought it would be fun to be a: brewer at a small craft brewery. I think it would be fun to experiment with ingredients and make some really unique beers.
Who is one person from musical history (living or deceased) you'd like to have dinner with, and why? Dmitri Shostakovich – I would want to ask him a ton of questions about his life and what it was like trying to balance his music with the political climate he inevitably had to deal with in the Soviet Union. I also would want to know to what extent these non-musical happenings ended up coming through in the music he wrote. There’s much debate about how much one should read into the political meaning of his music and I would be interested to hear the answers from the man himself.
Funniest concert experience: Actually it was at an in-school concert. I was playing for a room full of third graders and explaining all about the horn and playing lots of musical examples of what the horn can do (mostly easily recognizable things like Harry Potter and Star Wars) and one child asks me, “When are you going to play some real music? Like Mozart.” Some kids just know great music even from an early age I guess!