Hockey player-psychotherapist-Buddhist-flutist Brena Lever has many interests. This Saturday, March 12, she will perform as a featured soloist with the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra at Town Hall.
"The thing is that I'm not busy enough," Lever said. "I have the potential to be really busy."
'Falling into place'
Lever has played the flute since she was 12 years old. She started out wanting to play the trumpet, drums or clarinet, but her mother convinced her to take up the flute.
When she played with a band for the first time, in seventh grade, she knew that was what she wanted to do in life.
"Everything kind of fell in its place in a very logical, pragmatic way," Lever said.
She went on to earn a bach-elor's degree in music from Indiana University and a master's degree in flute performance from the Peabody Conservatory.
Her upcoming performance of Charles Griffes' "Poem for Flute and Orchestra" will be the first time Lever has played the piece with an orchestra.
"Getting a good sound is not something everyone can do," she said about playing the flute. "As long as it's written down. I can play it."
Finding opportunities
This is Lever's second season with the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra, an all-volunteer orchestra, for which she plays flute and piccolo.
"I saw it as an opportunity, and I love to play," Lever said about the orchestra.
In the past, Lever has performed with the Delaware Symphony, Harrisburg Symphony and Annapolis Symphony and Opera. She still practices the flute at least two hours a day.
After studying music in college, Lever went for a master's degree in social work in Employee Assistance Programming.
Finding Sergei
Several years ago, in California, she began working in the field of international adoption, and she met Sergei.
He lived in an orphanage in Russia, and his feet had medical problems. Lever brought Sergei to the United States for medical attention and, in the process, grew to love him as her own child. But Sergei had three strikes against him in the adoption world: He was male, he was no longer an infant and he had a medical condition.
Lever decided to adopt him, and now at 7 years old, Sergei is walking again at a steady pace.
"He's very dramatic," Lever said. "He's going to be on the stage."
Lever wrote a children's book based on Sergei called "Sergei and a Stork Named Whoopsie," which she hopes to publish someday.
She continues to work in the field of international adoption at a Seattle agency and also has a private psychotherapy practice at her home in Ballard, where she has lived for about two years.
"I escaped from San Diego," she said, adding that she moved to Seattle for the weather.
"There's just more culture here that I can get involved with."
Lever, an avid ice-hockey player for the last five years, also plays center for the Seattle Women's Hockey Club. She was recently honored as Player of the Game in a local tournament.
"I have to keep busy," she said.
Upcoming performance
The upcoming Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra concert will take place Saturday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall, at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street on First Hill. Special guest Julian Patrick will join Lever on-stage as he narrates Copland's "Lincoln Portrait."
Pre-ordered tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. Tickets at the door are $8 and $5. Call 353-5128 or visit www.psso.org or www.brownpapertickets.com.
Contributing writer Jessica Davis can be reached at needitor@ nwlink.com.
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