If
there is one thing Marcia Henry Liebe-
now has learned in the 40-plus year she
has played the violin, it’s that you can’t
fight nature.
For her, it started when she was growing up
in Mansfield, Ohio, a town of about 55,000 in
central Ohio. The middle of five children, her
father, Percy Hall, taught music and orchestra in
the schools there. Her mother was an organist at
their church.
Her older brothers played cello and viola,
respectively. “So, when I hit fourth grade my
parents said, ‘why don’t you play violin?’ I said
ok. I didn’t know if I would be good at it, but it
seemed natural right away. Music was always
all around us growing up, so it was very normal
to us,” Liebenow said.
As nature would have it, her talent was such
that she became a concert-level professional
violinist and for the last 20 years, Liebenow has
been the Concertmaster violinist for the Peoria
Symphony Orchestra.
She also teaches strings at Bradley University,
brought there in 1992 to build the university’s
strings program and, in a combination job
between the university and the symphony, to be
concert master for the symphony.
To this day, she revels in both positions and
believes this is where she is meant to be even
though she had no preconceived notions about
it when she came. “I’m in a place where I have
become involved in the community. Things
keep developing in the community to keep me
interested. It’s not easy to pick up and leave a
place and I have no desire to, anyway,” she said.
She said she is looking forward to the start
of another Peoria Symphony season, the 115th
of which begins Sept. 22 with a concert titled
“
Broadway Tonight!” in the theatre at the Peoria
Civic Center. “We’ve been doing some really
cool things and the symphony sounds better
and better every year,” she said.
Liebenow became known in Peoria music
circles as Marcia Henry, her face and talents
gracing the stage at the Peoria Civic Center or
other local venues during symphony concerts.
She married writer and poet Mark Liebenow
in 2004 and she said they plan to combine their
talents in an event soon, perhaps in the spring.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
FOR MARCIA HENRY
LIEBENOW THE
VIOLIN IS
JUST NATURE
PAUL GORDON
36
THEPEORIAN.COM
