Owen Sinclair of Windham is not your average teenage musician. An accomplished violinist for 11 years and pianist for seven years, Sinclair has won numerous awards and has performed in countless ensembles and festivals. Next week, he is to return for his third year at the WMMA Bach Festival in North

Conway, New Hampshire on August 26.

Though he will be playing violin in the upcoming festival, he is equally talented on the piano and has a difficult time deciding which, if either, he likes more.

“That’s a tough question and it comes up a lot in piano and violin circles,” he said. “The violin is much more expressive than the piano but the piano is better for composition. It is also easier to just sit down and play a piano, while it takes a lot of work to warm up on the violin.”

However, he prefers the violin for concert performance.

Sinclair will be starting his second year as accompanist for the Windham Chamber Singers next week, a position that he is more than grateful to fill.

“I had the choice to be in an excellent orchestra that met Wednesday nights, but I chose the Chamber Singers because it was better for the accompaniment experience.”

Performing with the choir has been Sinclair’s first experience accompanying an ensemble. During the summer, he is not involved in any ensembles because there is so little time. He does, however, play piano a few times a month for the Unitarian Universalist Church in Westbrook.

Sinclair is a self-employed, freelance musician and plays for weddings, festivals and many other events. He also teaches piano and violin lessons. He believes that teaching is a learning experience for both the student and the teacher.

“When I’m teaching I become more aware of how I play and the things that I should and should not be doing,” he said.

Sinclair comes from quite a musical family. Through his lifetime, his father has been proficient on 11 different instruments. His mother is an avid lover of Celtic music. Both of his parents were the first in their families to be musical.

The upcoming Bach Festival in North Conway is an event that Sinclair looks forward to every year. He has performed solo in the past two festivals and this will be his first time in the festival’s ensemble.

“I’m really excited for this. Usually with an ensemble, you’ll have a few rehearsals before performing. For this, we will rehearse for one hour the day before, but that’s all we’ll need because these are all such high class musicians.”

Sinclair has several other hobbies besides music. He practices archery and is an avid collector of stamps, coins, phonograph records and many other odds and ends.

As a soon-to-be junior in high school, Owen has begun considering his goals in higher education. While he has yet to make any final decisions, he currently intends to pursue music education, particularly theory and composition for the piano and violin. He is also considering a minor in musical performance.

When asked if he intended to broaden his horizons and learn to play other instruments, he laughed, “I’ve already got my hands full with the two I know.” However, he is taking lessons for the organ, and insists that despite popular belief, it is far different from the piano.

As an accomplished musician, Sinclair offers some tried and true advice to all musicians on practice: Do it well.

“It’s said so much by teachers and it’s become stereotypical; It isn’t how long or often you practice, it’s how well you practice. Instead of playing an entire piece over and over again, focus on certain parts and fix your mistakes. Just play a few measures over and over again until you get them perfect. You can get more out of a focused 30 minutes of practice than a spacey three hours,” he said.