News & Community

Angelene McDaniel Boto is a licensed structural engineer in San Francisco currently designing buildings in the bioscience and hospital sectors. Originally from Tulsa, Boto attended OSAI in 1999 and 2000 as an orchestra student, and her love for playing the violin still continues to this day.

“I loved my time as a violinist in the Orchestra program at OSAI!" says Boto. "The Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute was held at OU during the years I participated, and I loved the campus experience, the program music, my violin coaches, and the fellow musicians I was able to play with. Best performances that I remember: Respighi's Pines of Rome with the brass situated over and behind the audience and Philip Glass's Funeral of Akhenaten (what! This is classical!?).

"Participating in OSAI has had its benefits: after my first summer in the program, I was Concertmaster of the OMEA All-State Orchestra, where I loved being able to spend time again with the musicians I already knew from OSAI. The music we performed at OSAI has resurfaced again and again: past fingerings from OSAI bubbled up while playing principal 2nd Violin with the University of Texas at Austin University Orchestra, or more recently while playing in the 1st Violins with the Peninsula Symphony here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I'm currently taking a break from the Symphony after having my second child! In the meantime, I'm in a 'Mommies' string trio/quartet, where on Saturday mornings we'll play for fun in one of our backyards while the kids romp around and have their own fun.

Professionally, I'm a structural engineer, and I started my professional career after graduate school working on the structural design of performing art centers. My work currently focuses on hospital and scientific lab facilities' structural design in California's high seismic regions.

By the way, choosing to take ballroom dancing as an elective at OSAI was probably one of the better choices I've made in my life!”

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