Spring in Detroit: Exploring Outdoor Sights and Sounds with Tabita Berglund
Making music requires all of your energy: mental, emotional, and physical. The ability for a conductor to be fully present in this way, from one program to the next, across the globe, means learning how to recenter and balance the demands of the creative process.
DSO Principal Guest Conductor Tabita Berglund achieves this balance by running and skiing in the forest and mountains surrounding her Norwegian home—and she carries this practice with her on the road. On Tabita’s latest visit to Detroit, she got to know the city through two of our favorite outdoor spaces: the Detroit Riverfront and Belle Isle.
Belle Isle Park
Detroit’s love of Belle Isle runs deep; whether you say on, or at, traveling across the MacArthur Bridge brings a familiar feeling of anticipation. On Tabita’s drive, she scanned the adjacent walkway, making mental notes for future running routes.
Visits to the island often result in meeting new friends, and it’s not uncommon for them to have fur. On this early spring day, 30 °F but with full sun, the Eugene and Elaine C. Driker Trail was busy with dogs and their human companions. Tabita noted their presence with joy: “Growing up, I relentlessly asked my parents for a dog or cat. I’m hoping to finally get a dog this summer—a wolf hound. My partner and I are thinking about naming it Sniff.”
Off the main trail, several worn paths wind through the natural grasses to the Blue Heron Lagoon. Traversing one to the water’s edge, Tabita, perched on a log over the melting ice, mused about the park lifting the spirit.
Tabita’s takeaways from Belle Isle underscore the intent focus intrinsic to her personality and the role sound plays in her life: “The birdsong reminded me that soon everything will come to life. I love the nakedness of nature early in spring. You see the structure so clearly, all the branches, roots, stones, every little bump in the landscape shows. On Belle Isle, the trees and grass have a silvery quality that reminded me of the hair of wise women.”
Running the Detroit Riverfront
On another outing, Tabita jogged the Detroit riverfront, which was voted Best Riverwalk in the USA by USA Today three years in a row.
“The river was full of ice,” she recalls. “Watching how the flakes bumped into each other, slid across one another, spun around and slowly moved downstream, some of them piling up and others floating freely, listening to the sounds when the big pieces softly collided and the smaller pieces were ground between the bigger ones—I found it very satisfying.”
This description aptly illustrates how she engages with the world. When asked if she wears headphones in metropolitan environments, to study music or quiet the sounds of the city, the response is decidedly “no:” she is anchored by observation and listening to life unfold around her.
What’s surprising about this part of the city? “How close Canada is!”
