Janet Gesme is a musician, translator, teacher, wife and mother of two. She earned her Bachelors in Viola Performance in 1995 from the University of Missouri, Columbia and a Masters in German in 2013 from Portland State University. She is an avid language learner who speaks German, Russian, Spanish, French, and is studying Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Hungarian. Ms. Gesme’s award winning translation of Martin Schleske’s “The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty” appeared in 2020. She now plays Schleske’s opus 304, the “Schorshi” viola.